Grasping eternity as evidence that we know and believe in God to be real.
Relationship and intimacy with God produces a feeling of His presence in your life. Just like if my mom comes to my room and strokes my hair and tells me how much she loves me and how proud she is of the hurdles she's seen me go through with courage, in that moment with her talking to me I am no more or less legally her daughter. The difference between that moment and the minutes before she entered my room to talk to me is that I feel her love for me. I am filled with the feeling of love and value that she gives me, and this affirms me that I'm so loved. Her words and time with me confront my fears and insecurities, sweeping them away with her presence. Her presence in my presence is what makes the feeling real. Otherwise I am legally her daughter by knowledge without feeling, and there is a lack of intimacy because people can only be as intimate and close with others as they bring their presence and feelings to life. Presence without meaning is presence without feelings. If you don't feel loved by your parents then their love has little meaning aside from an assumption that they have to love you because they're your parents. Which of course is as real as saying Obama is your friend. But without feeling it, it's not an experiential reality! So how do we feel the meaning of the presence of others and God?
By experiencing their real presence!
Presence is one thing, meaning is another. How do we approach one another (and consequently God) as a meaningful presence? In other words, how do we become close and genuinely attuned to one another with a real actual feeling of love?
This is going to shock many, but the answer is we do this by being ourselves with one another. That's a scary thought, I know it is for me, because I'm self-critical, self-absorbed, and self-reliant so the thought of being myself with another person is social suicide. How could anyone accept someone like me? But that's just the self talking again, because when we come humbly to one another as we are, broken, insecure, and needy for love and affirmation, we come ...as we are! And that is the only way our presence and the presence of whoever we approach, be it another human being or God Himself, will have actual meaning. Are there risks of rejection and pain in the process of this experiential practice? Heck yea! However when talking about humans and God the risk of being rejected is only present in the former, for if we are drawn to God it is only because He first loved us, so that the system of walking in obedience to God's command for us to love one another must be as connected to our loving God as light is to its speed. There is nothing known to man that moves faster than the speed of light. Likewise there is nothing known to man more evident that He loves God than the way in which He loves others. We recognize light as light because of the speed of its particles, and we recognize love for God by our love for one another.
So all this is right and biblical, to love one another as Christ loves us, because that is how we know that Christ loves us! How can we love others as Christ loves us if we don't first know how much He loves us? Only then can we have a standard of which we walk in love for one another. But this is beyond love as defined by His sacrifice and service to us, this is about our relationship with God. The experience we have of being loved by God for our true selves, the forgiven and redeemed selves, the more we will be naturally able to love others likewise. If we have a bunch of concepts and ideas of what being loved by God is like based on the bible or books we read, without any actual experience of being loved for who we are, what does that do? It gives us much knowledge of presence but little meaning of presence. I can know my parents love me, but there is a difference between knowing they love me because they say it or do something to show it, but if I don't genuinely feel loved by them then I don't have a personal experience of my self being approached in all my senses to that infused felt meaning of the word. I have to feel it myself for myself to experience it! Feelings are the sacred language of the soul because no one can tell you that your feelings are what they are. You are the only one who has direct access to feeling your feelings!
So as we become open and honest about our feelings, since they are our personal true selves coming out, then we can genuinely see each other for who we all really are. Some may be found greedier than others, some more vain, some more seemingly rude, some more pretentious, but we don't reveal our feelings in order to hurt others. We reveal our feelings to be honest with one another as our goal is to know one another intimately and truthfully. Accepting one another, forgiving one another, and learning to trust one another as we become less and less deluded by our false ideal of our self--who we want others to perceive us as, apart from who we really are (or how we really feel) because we think that is the only way we will be loved and valued.
While sins secretly embed themselves in us we may hauntingly justify this unwanted thing by busying ourselves with "good deeds" or spiritual disciplines that run a course completely unconnected to the heart. We say "I love you brother, I love you sister" and turn around and inwardly judge or criticize them for their behavior.
Our sins are not something we do, they are something we are. Having people know us helps us better see ourselves and the blind spots that are making us stumble. To be known, felt and heard is crucial for another to be able to assess and help us as God's vessel, because God uses the church to communicate with His children.
"To be specific, the self-sins are these: self-righteousness, self-pity, self-confidence, self-sufficiency, self-admiration, self-love and a host of others like them. The more we are honest with our feelings, thoughts, opinions, and questions, the more we avail ourselves to be examined by the body of Christ for wisdom and biblical corrections for our character."
-Tozer
I was speechless and quiet; I kept silent,
even from speaking good,
and my pain intensified.
My heart grew hot within me; as I mused,
a fire burned. I spoke with my tongue:
“ Lord, reveal to me the end of my life
and the number of my days.
Let me know how short-lived I am."
(Psalms 39:2-4 HCSB)
David wrote this psalm and at first I never understood what it meant, it was so vague and I kind of just related to bits and pieces ambiguously. However, reading this again, I find that perhaps there was a time when David, too, was in so much of his own thoughts and his self was so isolated and kept unexposed that when all he had was God to cry out to it felt painful because life seemed so vaporous and unmeaningful, cruel. God sovereignly isolated him to bring out these emotions in him. David said he was speechless and silent and it intensified his pain! He found out that keeping silent was not that great after all, and this was by God's grace that he came to understand this. We are not called by God to be perfect, because that WOULD most likely mean we would keep silent and relate to people as little as possible thinking that no harm done is better than harm done. But David teaches us that the harm done to our self is worse! We see and experience God as cruel, we make nothing of His power and His sovereignty, as we try and minimize our show of wrongdoing. Many of us do this because we simply think it's the right thing to DO, regardless of the condition our hearts end up in. God is about the heart, not what we do! Because where your heart is there your treasure will be also (Luke 12:34).
Does your heart treasure God?
Does your heart treasure the people in your church?
What does your heart treasure?
If you don't know, being honest about your feelings will help others be able to help you more to see where your blind spots are. A wise man learns bed those that correct him, but a mocker hates it and wants to avoid it at all costs so he'll more likely not be open and honest for fear of being wrong!
(Proverbs 9:8)
"Don't rebuke a mocker, or he will hate you; rebuke a wise man, and he will love you."
God is a reality.
Love be is a reality.
Otherwise it's all a phony fake play of things where we approach one another as someone we are not. We don't share our feelings or thoughts that are most real to us concerning the other, and instead we keep our judgments to ourselves based on our lofty assumptions rather than speaking and seeking the light of truth. For example, when I get asked on dates I can never bring myself to say that I simply am not interested because the thought of hurting the other person's feelings makes me uncomfortable. Now the truth is sometimes that I'm simply not interested, but the truth hurts, and so I may drag things on for a while or simply run away or ignore the guy because at least that way I never had to actually say what I thought would hurt him. I just don't want to be the bearer of bad news. The truth is ugly and hurtful, and yet I know it's more about protecting myself because on the flip side I would prefer guys to be honest with me if they were not interested rather than playing fake and leading me on or making me question myself as if I did something wrong and letting my assumptions torment me. Of course this honesty is hurtful especially if it means rejection, but wounds that come from an honest heart are sweeter than kisses from an enemy (Proverbs 27:6).
This is the very courage we need to learn to walk in for our sake because being honest with others, especially when it means that we might be seen in an unwanted light, or risk awkwardness, this is where we trust in God's Word about the truth being better than a lie, about light being greater than darkness.
This means we see the other as deserving of our honesty, we see the other as honorable. In other words, we believe that Christ is in the body of believers, that we all together make up His presence.
Naturally we speak honestly to those that we love most because we want the best for them even when we understand that there is a risk of losing something if we do, and usually there is. But God desires for us to walk in truth with each other because the opposite of that is walking in distances and fakeness from one another harboring judgments in our hearts which we ironically find more acceptable than outwardly saying something honest because it might hurt them or ourselves. Is not the heart what God sees, though? So it matters more to God what's in our hearts over what we do, because what we do is naturally messing up. That's why God gave us the command to forgive one another as He forgave us (the parable of the servant who was given the all clear for his gigantic debt to the king, and later beat up another guy who owed him far less than what he had owed the king! That guy was then called upon and thrown out for such an evil act of unthankfulness. When we don't forgive someone it's an affront to God because it means we aren't thankful for the fact that He forgave us for a much greater offense we did to Him). But we are allowed to mess up with one another, because we have the powerful card of forgiveness when we do! Every believer who believes he or she is forgiven gets this freedom card of being able to then forgive others. God didn't say to always look nice and clean on the outside while the inside is ugly. That's a Pharisee! Real love from a pure heart is one that walks in an experiential practice of love and forgiveness with others, and that in turn draws us into the experience of the meaning and feelings we get from the presence of God as He says "I love you, you are my delight, and my child--heir to all that I have in My kingdom."
Heaven becomes a reality. Eternity becomes something actualized throughout this process.
When we see eternity with our eyes hear God's voice with our ears, we are becoming more like Him.
Tozer prays:
"O God, I have tasted Thy goodness,
and it has both satisfied me
and made me thirsty for more.
I am painfully conscious of my need of further grace. I am ashamed of my lack of desire.
O God, the Triune God, I want to want Thee;
I long to be filled with longing;
I thirst to be made more thirsty still.
Show me Thy glory, I pray Thee,
that so I may know Thee indeed.
Begin in mercy a new work of love within me. Say to my soul, "Rise up, my love, my fair one, and come away."
Then give me grace to rise and follow Thee
up from this misty lowland where I have wandered so long.
O God, quicken to life every power within me, that I may lay hold on eternal things.
Open my eyes that I may see;
give me acute spiritual perception;
enable me to taste Thee and know that Thou art good.
Make heaven more real to me than any earthly thing has ever been.
Amen."
Sometimes other people pray the words that I myself cannot begin to form, and I thank God that I am not alone for this very reason, to see God more clearly through the eyes that surpass my own two.
Jmegrey
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