Living On The Edge

"I am a material girl, and I am living in a material world," sang Madonna a few decades ago.  She was singing about a girl who loved things. Things she could touch. Things she could see. Things existing here on earth.  But Jesus said His Kingdom is not of this world. His Kingdom, The Kingdom of God, is not material.

The Jews waited for The Kingdom of God, understanding it to be a physical reign by a physical Messiah, a Kingdom that would replace all the oppressive governments of this world and set this world to right. Christians claim to understand what The Jews didn't and yet much of our conversation concerning faith is about things of this world. Jesus did not come to bring a kingdom of earthly stuff. Jesus came to bring a Kingdom of Eternal stuff.

God has placed eternity in our hearts. He has put a longing in our spirit for something greater than this world.  God never planned to redeem the world we live in.  His plan is to create a new heaven and a new earth!  Once the seed of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil entered man our perception of all things was skewed to the material. The mental course of man was irrefutably changed from The Eternal to the material.  Yet we still long for eternity.

I have always had difficulty with the completely random manner God seems to grant miracles, bring healing, to answer prayers. There are teachings as varied as the fishes in the sea on this subject because we want and need to understand suffering and loss. We want to know why God does not fix our pain, prevent the loss of our loved ones, give us what we ask. We all see miracles, provision, healings beyond what is possible. However we all have prayed for all of those things and been disappointed.

These experiences can make us doubt God or become angry with God. Whether our experience with prayer brings us happiness or pain, we respond by trying to discover how to manipulate God so that He will grant us healing for our sick loved one, money to keep us from losing our house, a job, a car, the mate of our dreams. Because we are material beings, we often fail to see The Eternal treasure just as present in our poverty, lack, sickness, death and pain. We want to be happy here on this earth and we are sure we know what will make us happy, but f we think the purpose of God's Kingdom is primarily for our physical and emotional comfort in this world, we are wrong. This world is owned by God, but the way it works, the way man has operated in it after Eden is not God's way. God will not fit into our plan, our needs or our expectations. We're trying to force the ocean onto a train track, but God is establishing His Kingdom and it is not material. It is Eternal.

Jesus came to usher the Eternal One into our innermost being! Before Jesus, God interacted with man within his world. Unless God spoke to a person, or The Spirit of God came upon a person, God was accessed through material things. Priests, sacrifices, laws written in rocks, messages sent by angels, life and death. Jesus came to make God's Kingdom accessible to us, and Eternal things can't be touched or understood, or explained or manipulated, or put into a five step plan. Eternity is experienced through communion with The Holy Spirit of God and Divine revelation. Jesus' body was of this earth intentionally. His body was literally torn and destroyed unjustly so God could provide us with acess to all that is Eternal while we are still material. Jesus died so that His Spirit would be present within us and teach us how to live in His Kingdom.

Why do you think Jesus said that The Kingdom of God must be entered as if you are a child? Because a child finds it easy to believe in what they can't see and we need to be able to believe the reality of God's unseen Kingdom. Children clamored to be close to Jesus because they could feel Eternal Love in Him. Children long for safe, nurturing intimacy and we need to be able to believe The Eternal Love of God for us and trust the Eternal Safety of His heart. Children don't long for things. They don't want Jaguars, or a bigger house. They are trusting and needy and helpless, all the things we learn not to be, because we become obsessed with the material things in this life.  Obsessed with what we want, not what we need. Obsessed with what we love, not with love. Obsessed with fear not trust.

A poor man sees a fortune in a sprout of corn, and eternity in a fountain of water. Jesus said, "You who are poor are blessed because The Kingdom of God belongs to you."   Jesus said it was easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter The Kingdom of God.   Things distort our spirit's ability to percieve a non-material King.   Fear of not having things distorts our ability to trust the love of  God.  Living in the material world perverts Faith in The Eternal into a method, a formula we think will move God to give us and do for us what we want. Making our fallen world better, good and pleasant was not and is not part of God's plan although that is a part of what happens when His Kingdom reigns. God created this world to be what He wanted it to be in the beginning and He has not changed His mind. God knows all we have need of in this world, but Jesus told us that if we understood The Kingdom of God witnin us and sought after the reality of that Kingdom, all the things of this world would fall into place.

We hear and use the phrase "in Christ". What this really means is us as we are in Eternity. God doesn't see our material selfhood. God sees our Eternal spirit unfettered by this world. When we recieve a glimpse of Eternal Father God and who we Eternally are in Him, our praying changes.  When we encounter God's Eternal view everything material melts in the all consuming love of God. We enter the Divine Now and vibrate with the abundant life of Jesus Christ bringing priceless Eternal things into our physical world regardless of what lies ahead. As Paul The Apostle says, " ..everything in this life is worthless when compared with the Eternal value of knowing Christ our Lord. To know The Eternal One, I have discarded everything else, considering it garbage so I can become one with Him." Our lives can be experienced this way when the Kingdom within us becomes more real than the material world we live in.

How then shall we pray? As Jesus did when He feared the loss and pain that He was to endure; Not my will be done Father, but your will be done. Jesus had been shown the joy that was in His Eternity on the Mount of Transfiguration. Jesus also knew the will of God at that moment meant He would physically suffer and lose His material life and all that was part of the world He loved, but He accepted that God is not preoccupied with this world and agreed to His revealed Eternal will.  What God wills is beyond what we can ask or think to ask because it is Eternal and must be placed in our hearts by His Spirit. Faith is putting our material concerns aside and seeking to know what The Great I Am wills for our spirit in our present earthly circumstance. Faith is knowing The priceless knowledge of our Eternal God will be revealed to us as we experience our life submitted to His will.  This is Eternal Treasure, Heavenly Treasure. Faith is putting aside our requests for finite things and asking, "Lord, what are You doing in this person, this circumstance, this need, this provision, this loss, this fear? Show me Lord. I long to be part of birthing the reality of Your Eternal Kingdom into the here and now."