Mirror, mirror on the wall...

March 28th, 2012, 5:00 AM
   I lay in bed this morning thinking about the need to be thankful. I thought about the Old Testament sacrifices and their connection to the giving of thanks to GOD. I  recalled how GOD struggled so with His people, after bringing them out of generations of captivity as slaves in Egypt, to get them to be a thankful people. Weren't their four decades of desert wanderings meant to get slavery out of the hearts and minds in order to restore them to believing, thinking and living as the children of GOD?
   I wondered why so few couldn't or wouldn't make this transition. Why couldn't they make the move from captivity to freedom? After all GOD had done to get them out of slavery, why wouldn't they trust HIM to get slavery out of them? Why did they so often seem to have one eye back on Egypt, and seem so ready to turn around and go back to where GOD rescued them from? Why couldn't, wouldn't they see the indescribable work of grace and strength GOD exercised to set them free? Why does it seem that so few ever made the leap from discontent and resentment, to authentic, heartfelt, unshakeable, deep-down, desert-surviving, GOD-honoring, authentic thanksgiving? Maybe they couldn't see the big picture. Maybe they couldn't look ahead to what GOD was doing because they were so preoccupied with the looking back.
   I remember a time when I would go out of my way to walk by a mirror, now I try hard to avoid them. The older I get (now 56) the less impressed I am by what a mirror reflects back to me. Well over their forty years, on my own spiritual journey, trying to follow where GOD is leading, (made obvious by the miles long set of heel-shaped furrows in the sand), and I don't have to right either. Oh, how I hate mirrors. "Mirror, mirror, on the wall, who the dumbest guy of all..."
 

The Danger of Spirituality

Deut. 30:19
I call heaven and earth to record this day against you, that I have set before you life and death, blessing and cursing: therefore choose life, that both thou and thy seed may live:



The danger of spirituality is not knowing if it is authentic spirituality. Authentic, Biblical spirituality, takes the words of God (Father, Son and Holy  Spirit), and then sets out to literally apply them to our lives. In the case of Deut 30:19, when God told His people to choose life, He meant it literally. God wasn't asking for mental assent or correct knowledge. It wasn't that He was looking for the Israelites to agree, memorize and then parrot the words back to Him. God, quite literally, set life and death before them and told them that they had to literally go to work every day, in every situation, and choose life. False spirituality is satisfied to read, to know, and even to teach God's commands, without taking them literally and applying them to own own lives.  It was this kind of spirituality that Jesus blasted the scribes and pharisees for having. Jesus told those following Him that it was the wise man, who after hearing Jesus' sayings, went to work to build his entire life upon them. To do otherwise, Jesus said, is as useful as building a house upon sand. That house may look good, and the average person might never be able to tell the differences between it and the house next door that was built on a foundation of rock, but those differences will soon be as clear as day when the black clouds of a significant storm bring damaging winds and pounding waves. 

   Authentic spirituality is hard work. It requires love that is willing to pay the costs attached to discipline and determination. And anyone who has decided to practice authentic, Biblically spirituality, knows this very well.    

Choose Life

Deut. 30:19

"I call heaven and earth to record this day against you, that I have set before you life and death, blessing and cursing: therefore choose life, that both thou and thy seed may live."

   The trouble with humanity is, that as a race, it keeps choosing death. In Romans Chapter 8 the Apostle Paul give an extraordinary revelation of the two principal laws that govern the world we live in. It is hard to come to terms with, but difficult to deny, the reality that the presence and power of these two laws, though they are spiritual in nature, actually govern the physical world we are so attuned and accustomed to. Writing under the inspiration of the Spirit of the Living God, the Apostle Paul pulls back the covers on what is really going on the physical world around us. Is it possible that the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus, and the law of sin and death, through the powers that each law holds, power that is exercised by humanities choices, actually influences the physical world? 

   In Deut 30:19 God makes it crystal clear that He has set life and death before His people, but He has not dictated which they much choose. Clearly the moral choices we make, everyone of them, fall into one of these two categories, since God does not reveal that there is a third. Think about the moral choices you have made, then look at the results. I'm confident that you will see pretty quickly whether your choices produced life or promoted death. Did they bring you joy and peace or leave you with regrets and sorrow. 

   There are only two choices and God has set them clearly before us. The trouble with humanity is, that as a race, it keeps choosing death, and death has power because it is tied to a law. It is law that has power, just like the law of gravity has power. Both are unseen, but both are irresistible. Both can be denied, but denial doesn't have any affect on reality. In his brillant revelation about the existence of the Spirit's law of life in Christ Jesus, and the law of sin and death, Paul uncovers an extraordinary thing. He explains that though both laws exist and both have powers, that their powers, no matter how they are compared, are by no means equal. Read the chapter and you will see that God has condemned sin and in doing so He has established the Spirit's law of life in Christ Jesus as the predominant power over all things visible and invisible. Why is this critical? Well beyond the obvious, it means that if we stop making choices that give the law of sin and death a right to operate in our lives, and begin to purposely choose life, then the greater power of the Spirit's law of life in Christ Jesus will start to transform our lives. How? By the power that God has given to the law of life that is found only in His Son. The force and power of the Spirit's law of life in Christ Jesus will begin to reproduce His life within us. How? How it is possible that an invisble law could have that kind of power? How does the law of gravity have so much constant and consistent power that it holds you to face of this planet?

   Granted it will not be easy to begin to change, especially when we have been making bad choices for so long, but you have to ask yourself if its worth it, which do I desire? I am tired of being under the bondage of the power of the law of sin and death? I am tired of not having a life to live, since the power of the law of sin and death is really controlling me? Do I desire life and all that it means to me and those around me, or do I desire death and it's continuing effects? God lays the choice at our feet and then says to us "choose life".

"I call heaven and earth to record this day against you, that I have set before you life and death, blessing and cursing: therefore choose life, that both thou and thy seed may live." Deut. 30:19