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The Dream of ETERNAL LIFE
I have wondered at times, Where do we go from here? It's been a long time since we have seen God Almighty have His way so completely in a people that there is no thought of self-service. Rather, an expunging of all our precious possessions in order to follow the One Who alone is worthy. Oh the dreams God dreams over His church, His bride. They are fathomless to all but the ones most intimate with the Son of God. We have glimpses in the New Testament of the sweet, majestic splendor of Christ in all that the Father has purposed for the culmination of all things. However, it is a guaranteed revelation for no man, but only for those whose hearts beat and break for God's glory above all things. "He answered and said unto them, Because it is given unto you to know the mysteries of the kingdom of heaven, but to them it is not given" (Matthew 13:11). But it is not only about what is to come some day far off. Eternity is to be the present experience of all the children of the Almighty, who have been made partakers of Christ, and by direct consequence, have been made partakers of Eternity in Him.
Eternal life...It is not so much a quantity of life, but a quality that is contained fully within the Godhead, revealed most dramatically in the life of Jesus Christ as He walked amidst the strangely commonplace things of life. With dust on His feet, sweat on His holy brow, in thirst, in sorrow, in wrath, and in weeping the Lord of creation exhibited one sublime truth in His brief thirty-plus years as a Man on the earth--Eternity, in the scheme of God, is intended to be compacted into the most drastically dull of days, transfiguring all actual circumstances by the sheer glory of His Presence. And we are to be seated together in heavenly places in Christ Jesus, all the while manifesting His life and light in our daily treading of this world's dirt, walking as He walked (Ephesians 2:6 & 1John 2:6).
"I am the...Truth and the Life" A statement that seems so simple, yet contains in its few words the hope for all the broken, all the spiritually dead, all the dense individuals wise in their own sight. This is Reality, Jesus Christ Himself is REALITY. All else is but a vapor that comes and goes, created, and can therefore be removed by one word from His lips. But Himself, the Eternal God, He remains. And this is the life unto which every one of us is called.
Whenever we stand, or sit, or bow before the Lord Jesus Christ we face a moment of eternal consequence. He bids us come, and we appear before Him in a moment of crisis. Throughout the Gospels we see men and women who faced an everlastingly important decision in their contact with Christ the King of glory veiled in unimpressive human flesh (Isaiah 53:2). The word for judgement found in the New Testament is the word "krisis," from which our English word "crisis" derives. God's kingdom is an eternal expression of His nature, because He has ever, and will always, reign. His is the kingdom that became manifestly present at the arrival of God on earth as Man in the Son, but that is also yet to come at the end of all things when Jesus Christ returns. The ministry of the Son of Man on earth was two-fold: to give life and to execute judgement.
"Verily, verily, I say unto you, The hour is coming, and now is, when the dead shall hear the voice of the Son of God: and they that hear shall live. For as the Father hath life in himself; so hath he given to the Son to have life in himself; and hath given him authority to execute judgment also, because he is the Son of man" (John 5:25-27).
This is why we come to appear before the throne of His majesty in a moment of judgement (crisis); because we are brought face to face with the Ultimate Reality in Who He is. And each and every breath in our lives we are to live in the ever-present experience of intimacy with the Lord Who will one day send forth His voice to break open the graves of men, calling their lifeless bodies from the dust to appear before Him one final and decisive time for the commendation of a King to a faithful son or daughter, or to the condemnation of a bastard child. So we tread lightly each time this Holy One beckons, wanting only to look upon Him with love, with holiness, with a heart that overflows with the very love He has shed abroad in us by His Eternal Spirit.
All too often we dream of that which suits our own carnal desires for a life "well-lived," even attempting to justify such selfish ambition by arguing that these dreams are from God. However, we do so without regard for the claim of Jesus Christ over our lives, dismissing the priceless blood that bought us. Life takes on a new meaning, becoming an aim that is strangely temporal and foreign to the New Testament idea of Eternal Life. The Voice that once called so clearly, with an authentic authority that struck us with holy fear, becomes faint, fading into the background of the clamour and noise of voices inviting us to prosper at the expense of the only Abiding Reality this world has ever known. A new authority has taken control, one which is not new at all, but was the original idolatrous self-rule that characterizes every soul outside of the Son of God. A troubling majority of these so-called dreams originate in a pernicious lust for something grand for ourselves, as they are borne by the flesh which conceived them.
Therefore, the question is begged, What are you? The first thought that comes to mind in answer to this inquiry, what is it? Was it an answer that calls to mind your career, "I am a teacher," or "I am a doctor." Was it relational, "I am a mother," or possibly, "I am an husband." Maybe something much more elemental like, "I am a woman," or "I am a human being." The answer to the most fundamental meaning for life rests in how we respond to the above query. If we identify ourselves first and foremost with anything or anyone other than the Lord Jesus Christ, whether our careers or our families or by nature's most rudimentary facts, there is something or someone who dominates us more than He; which, by necessity, means that is He is not LORD over me. Thus, life's true meaning and intention, as set forth and established by God, is nullified, as each individual life is created by God for His glory alone. And Eternal Life is but an elusive shadow, a will-o'-the-wisp to the one who refuses to yield to the absolute Lordship of Christ. "Thou art worthy, O Lord, to receive glory and honour and power: for thou hast created all things, and for thy pleasure they are and were created" (Revelation 4:11). Moreover, Jesus Christ died and rose to life again in order to purchase for Himself "a glorious church, not having spot, or wrinkle, or any such thing; but that it should be holy and without blemish," indeed a people who will love Him above all, no matter what the cost (Ephesians 5:27).
Moses turned to see why the bush did not consume, though it burned with a furious flame. Trembling, John turned to see the Voice of the One Who called as of a trumpet. Will you turn to see? Will you turn to hear? Or will you stand haughtily in your status quo, scoffing at reckless abandon to God the Almighty Father? Will you, too, cast your commonplace shoes from off your commonplace feet, and fall as dead at the Feet of Eternal Life Himself? Our true relationship to God in actual fact can be seen in our response to this simple question. Do we live for ourselves, waking with the thought of what we want to do with our day, rubbing the sleep out of our eyes only to rise and walk as one still asleep to the Call of God to Come Unto ME? Do we walk on as in darkness, with ambitions estranged from any relationship to true Reality in Christ, without the slightest vestige of remorse for the grief we cause the Holy Spirit by our unceasing spurning of His Voice in the details of life? Oh will you hear His Voice today? Will you hear God crying out from the very heart of heaven, and gaze into the midst of His flame, with a longing for Him to burn away every selfish aim and ambition, until He reigns sovereign over everything you are and do?
"And ye came near and stood under the mountain; and the mountain burned with fire unto the midst of heaven, with darkness, clouds, and thick darkness. And the LORD spake unto you out of the midst of the fire: ye heard the voice of the words, but saw no similitude; only [ye heard] a voice. And he declared unto you his covenant, which he commanded you to perform, [even] ten commandments; and he wrote them upon two tables of stone" (Deuteronomy 4:11-13).
This alone is what it will be for those who enter into Eternal Life. Reality requires a holy disillusionment from all that we have given our lives to. And I am convinced that there is no other way than to come with the nothing that we truly have in our hands, and give ourselves over to God without respect for the cost. Because, dear child, it will cost everything. But isn't Jesus Christ worth it? Yes, a thousand times, YES! Yet you will need to decide for yourself; and the day-to-day drudgery of your life will serve to expose you for the faithful follower of the Father of Glory that you are, or regrettably, for the fraudulent fool who has convinced him or herself into believing that the title Christian and a half hour of reciting a list of wants to God a few times a week will suffice at the end of all things. Judgement is inevitable, for the sinner and for the saint. The difference being, the saint receives God's judgement on his sin now in desperate and willing identification with the Cross of Christ; whereas the sinner refuses any such momentary judgement, choosing rather to suffer such wrath as will be poured out without abatement for eternity, because he essentially says to God, "I am much more worth it than you. Please do not bother me any more with your calls for repentance or for prayer or for devotion. These things are all together impractical in the modern age in which I live."
Do you groan deep within for the changing of all things, for God's sovereign reign to be displayed in actuality, for mortality to be swallowed up by immortality, for eternity to do away with the seeming impertinence of the temporal and vain things of this earth? Or is the television too loud for you to hear His voice? Do you long forlornly for something, nay, SOMEONE, that will take you beyond your own little world and into an Eternal Reality that moves at the cadence of Heaven's heartbeat? Or is the pursuit for life, liberty, and happiness taking up too much of your time for you to bother with such things? In fact, maybe these are the high and lofty imaginations of one too busy dreaming to live life in the "real world." Tell that to Jacob. Have you seen the opened heavens? Have you seen the ladder leading from earth to heaven? Have you seen the Son of Man enthroned with an innumerable company of angels ascending and desceding upon Him? (see John 1:51)
Moses encountered God on the backside of the desert, as a shepherd of sheep forty years after he had left Egypt. Peering into the Fire he was too fearful to lift his eyes, lest he look upon God Himself. John beheld the unveiled Glory of the Resurrected and Exalted Christ in the land of exile, gazing upon the Eyes of God as they raged with a relentless flame. This beloved disciple who had rest upon the breast of the Son of God in human flesh now withers as a dead man at the same nail-pierced feet he had followed for over three years on the earth. And after years of selfish supplanting, Jacob found himself at the gate of heaven, indeed the very house of God, and knew it not until he dreamed God's dream for him. Any one of these three would readily delineate the dreadfulness and delight of the moment they saw the LORD, finding that Jesus Christ is in ultimate verity "the true God, and Eternal Life" (1John 5:20).
It is time to dream the dreams of God in Reality once again, most notably at the expense of our reputations before all "rational" men and women. It is time to turn to see and hear at the least breath of God's Voice, collapsing in view of the unspeakable Perfection of Beauty. It is time to face the judgement of God upon everything in our lives that is not of Him, that He will have in us a people upon whom He can write His Name in love, marking us for Himself a holy habitation of His Spirit.
ETERNAL LIFE, a qualitative intimacy evidenced in the smallest details of life, revealed in the sanctified soul abiding in Jesus Christ, thriving, breathing, living, loving, leaving everything else behind for the supreme delight of the KING of kings. "And this is life eternal, that they might know thee the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom thou hast sent" (John 17:3). Oh, my Lord Jesus, dream Your dreams over us once again, purging from our lives everything that would cause us to live a farce of life feigned, drawing us nearer Your Majestic Footstool to bow broken and live with You in the Reality of Eternal LIFE.
Eternal life...It is not so much a quantity of life, but a quality that is contained fully within the Godhead, revealed most dramatically in the life of Jesus Christ as He walked amidst the strangely commonplace things of life. With dust on His feet, sweat on His holy brow, in thirst, in sorrow, in wrath, and in weeping the Lord of creation exhibited one sublime truth in His brief thirty-plus years as a Man on the earth--Eternity, in the scheme of God, is intended to be compacted into the most drastically dull of days, transfiguring all actual circumstances by the sheer glory of His Presence. And we are to be seated together in heavenly places in Christ Jesus, all the while manifesting His life and light in our daily treading of this world's dirt, walking as He walked (Ephesians 2:6 & 1John 2:6).
"I am the...Truth and the Life" A statement that seems so simple, yet contains in its few words the hope for all the broken, all the spiritually dead, all the dense individuals wise in their own sight. This is Reality, Jesus Christ Himself is REALITY. All else is but a vapor that comes and goes, created, and can therefore be removed by one word from His lips. But Himself, the Eternal God, He remains. And this is the life unto which every one of us is called.
Whenever we stand, or sit, or bow before the Lord Jesus Christ we face a moment of eternal consequence. He bids us come, and we appear before Him in a moment of crisis. Throughout the Gospels we see men and women who faced an everlastingly important decision in their contact with Christ the King of glory veiled in unimpressive human flesh (Isaiah 53:2). The word for judgement found in the New Testament is the word "krisis," from which our English word "crisis" derives. God's kingdom is an eternal expression of His nature, because He has ever, and will always, reign. His is the kingdom that became manifestly present at the arrival of God on earth as Man in the Son, but that is also yet to come at the end of all things when Jesus Christ returns. The ministry of the Son of Man on earth was two-fold: to give life and to execute judgement.
"Verily, verily, I say unto you, The hour is coming, and now is, when the dead shall hear the voice of the Son of God: and they that hear shall live. For as the Father hath life in himself; so hath he given to the Son to have life in himself; and hath given him authority to execute judgment also, because he is the Son of man" (John 5:25-27).
This is why we come to appear before the throne of His majesty in a moment of judgement (crisis); because we are brought face to face with the Ultimate Reality in Who He is. And each and every breath in our lives we are to live in the ever-present experience of intimacy with the Lord Who will one day send forth His voice to break open the graves of men, calling their lifeless bodies from the dust to appear before Him one final and decisive time for the commendation of a King to a faithful son or daughter, or to the condemnation of a bastard child. So we tread lightly each time this Holy One beckons, wanting only to look upon Him with love, with holiness, with a heart that overflows with the very love He has shed abroad in us by His Eternal Spirit.
All too often we dream of that which suits our own carnal desires for a life "well-lived," even attempting to justify such selfish ambition by arguing that these dreams are from God. However, we do so without regard for the claim of Jesus Christ over our lives, dismissing the priceless blood that bought us. Life takes on a new meaning, becoming an aim that is strangely temporal and foreign to the New Testament idea of Eternal Life. The Voice that once called so clearly, with an authentic authority that struck us with holy fear, becomes faint, fading into the background of the clamour and noise of voices inviting us to prosper at the expense of the only Abiding Reality this world has ever known. A new authority has taken control, one which is not new at all, but was the original idolatrous self-rule that characterizes every soul outside of the Son of God. A troubling majority of these so-called dreams originate in a pernicious lust for something grand for ourselves, as they are borne by the flesh which conceived them.
Therefore, the question is begged, What are you? The first thought that comes to mind in answer to this inquiry, what is it? Was it an answer that calls to mind your career, "I am a teacher," or "I am a doctor." Was it relational, "I am a mother," or possibly, "I am an husband." Maybe something much more elemental like, "I am a woman," or "I am a human being." The answer to the most fundamental meaning for life rests in how we respond to the above query. If we identify ourselves first and foremost with anything or anyone other than the Lord Jesus Christ, whether our careers or our families or by nature's most rudimentary facts, there is something or someone who dominates us more than He; which, by necessity, means that is He is not LORD over me. Thus, life's true meaning and intention, as set forth and established by God, is nullified, as each individual life is created by God for His glory alone. And Eternal Life is but an elusive shadow, a will-o'-the-wisp to the one who refuses to yield to the absolute Lordship of Christ. "Thou art worthy, O Lord, to receive glory and honour and power: for thou hast created all things, and for thy pleasure they are and were created" (Revelation 4:11). Moreover, Jesus Christ died and rose to life again in order to purchase for Himself "a glorious church, not having spot, or wrinkle, or any such thing; but that it should be holy and without blemish," indeed a people who will love Him above all, no matter what the cost (Ephesians 5:27).
Moses turned to see why the bush did not consume, though it burned with a furious flame. Trembling, John turned to see the Voice of the One Who called as of a trumpet. Will you turn to see? Will you turn to hear? Or will you stand haughtily in your status quo, scoffing at reckless abandon to God the Almighty Father? Will you, too, cast your commonplace shoes from off your commonplace feet, and fall as dead at the Feet of Eternal Life Himself? Our true relationship to God in actual fact can be seen in our response to this simple question. Do we live for ourselves, waking with the thought of what we want to do with our day, rubbing the sleep out of our eyes only to rise and walk as one still asleep to the Call of God to Come Unto ME? Do we walk on as in darkness, with ambitions estranged from any relationship to true Reality in Christ, without the slightest vestige of remorse for the grief we cause the Holy Spirit by our unceasing spurning of His Voice in the details of life? Oh will you hear His Voice today? Will you hear God crying out from the very heart of heaven, and gaze into the midst of His flame, with a longing for Him to burn away every selfish aim and ambition, until He reigns sovereign over everything you are and do?
"And ye came near and stood under the mountain; and the mountain burned with fire unto the midst of heaven, with darkness, clouds, and thick darkness. And the LORD spake unto you out of the midst of the fire: ye heard the voice of the words, but saw no similitude; only [ye heard] a voice. And he declared unto you his covenant, which he commanded you to perform, [even] ten commandments; and he wrote them upon two tables of stone" (Deuteronomy 4:11-13).
This alone is what it will be for those who enter into Eternal Life. Reality requires a holy disillusionment from all that we have given our lives to. And I am convinced that there is no other way than to come with the nothing that we truly have in our hands, and give ourselves over to God without respect for the cost. Because, dear child, it will cost everything. But isn't Jesus Christ worth it? Yes, a thousand times, YES! Yet you will need to decide for yourself; and the day-to-day drudgery of your life will serve to expose you for the faithful follower of the Father of Glory that you are, or regrettably, for the fraudulent fool who has convinced him or herself into believing that the title Christian and a half hour of reciting a list of wants to God a few times a week will suffice at the end of all things. Judgement is inevitable, for the sinner and for the saint. The difference being, the saint receives God's judgement on his sin now in desperate and willing identification with the Cross of Christ; whereas the sinner refuses any such momentary judgement, choosing rather to suffer such wrath as will be poured out without abatement for eternity, because he essentially says to God, "I am much more worth it than you. Please do not bother me any more with your calls for repentance or for prayer or for devotion. These things are all together impractical in the modern age in which I live."
Do you groan deep within for the changing of all things, for God's sovereign reign to be displayed in actuality, for mortality to be swallowed up by immortality, for eternity to do away with the seeming impertinence of the temporal and vain things of this earth? Or is the television too loud for you to hear His voice? Do you long forlornly for something, nay, SOMEONE, that will take you beyond your own little world and into an Eternal Reality that moves at the cadence of Heaven's heartbeat? Or is the pursuit for life, liberty, and happiness taking up too much of your time for you to bother with such things? In fact, maybe these are the high and lofty imaginations of one too busy dreaming to live life in the "real world." Tell that to Jacob. Have you seen the opened heavens? Have you seen the ladder leading from earth to heaven? Have you seen the Son of Man enthroned with an innumerable company of angels ascending and desceding upon Him? (see John 1:51)
Moses encountered God on the backside of the desert, as a shepherd of sheep forty years after he had left Egypt. Peering into the Fire he was too fearful to lift his eyes, lest he look upon God Himself. John beheld the unveiled Glory of the Resurrected and Exalted Christ in the land of exile, gazing upon the Eyes of God as they raged with a relentless flame. This beloved disciple who had rest upon the breast of the Son of God in human flesh now withers as a dead man at the same nail-pierced feet he had followed for over three years on the earth. And after years of selfish supplanting, Jacob found himself at the gate of heaven, indeed the very house of God, and knew it not until he dreamed God's dream for him. Any one of these three would readily delineate the dreadfulness and delight of the moment they saw the LORD, finding that Jesus Christ is in ultimate verity "the true God, and Eternal Life" (1John 5:20).
It is time to dream the dreams of God in Reality once again, most notably at the expense of our reputations before all "rational" men and women. It is time to turn to see and hear at the least breath of God's Voice, collapsing in view of the unspeakable Perfection of Beauty. It is time to face the judgement of God upon everything in our lives that is not of Him, that He will have in us a people upon whom He can write His Name in love, marking us for Himself a holy habitation of His Spirit.
ETERNAL LIFE, a qualitative intimacy evidenced in the smallest details of life, revealed in the sanctified soul abiding in Jesus Christ, thriving, breathing, living, loving, leaving everything else behind for the supreme delight of the KING of kings. "And this is life eternal, that they might know thee the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom thou hast sent" (John 17:3). Oh, my Lord Jesus, dream Your dreams over us once again, purging from our lives everything that would cause us to live a farce of life feigned, drawing us nearer Your Majestic Footstool to bow broken and live with You in the Reality of Eternal LIFE.
posted by Bryan | 1:56 AM
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