We have not to do with a God who is off there above the sky, who can deal with us only through the violation of physical law. We have instead a God in whom we live and move and are, whose being opens into ours and ours into his, who is the very life of our lives, the matrix of our personality; and there is no separation between us unless we make it ourselves.
~Rufus Matthew Jones (1863-1948)
Since therefore it remains for some to enter it, and those who formerly received the good news failed to enter because of disobedience, again He appoints a certain day, “Today,” saying through David so long afterward, in the words already quoted, “Today, if you hear His voice, do not harden your hearts.” …So then, there remains a Sabbath rest for the people of God, for whoever has entered God’s rest has also rested from his works as God did from His. Let us therefore strive to enter that rest, so that no one may fall by the same sort of disobedience. For the word of God is living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing to the division of soul and of spirit, of joints and of marrow, and discerning the thoughts and intentions of the heart. And no creature is hidden from His sight, but all are naked and exposed to the eyes of Him to whom we must give account. Since then we have a great High Priest who has passed through the heavens, Jesus, the Son of God, let us hold fast our confession. For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but One who in every respect has been tempted as we are, yet without sin. Let us then with confidence draw near to the throne of grace, that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need.
~ from Hebrews 4
Oh beloved, it is true. Some of us have come through a beating only a very good Father could have given. And to our amazement, there are no bruises. There are no wounds. There is only a profound wholeness. It is the wholeness we thirsted for for so so long, yet spent many years trying to slake in other ways.
And now we are alive and real and whole. And oh my. We simply never knew how Good He is. All of everything is heading in a very good direction now: in, by, through, for, and towards Him. We find that it is Him who both made and is The Way.
And after the discipline a Father like Him may have needed to pour out onto our lives. He now begins to restore the goodness we once had with a goodness which is now beyond measure. That which we, once, thought good is, now, only a shadow of the reality He is working in and through our Lives in Him. We are being given opportunities and favor once thought impossible. And the change He brings in us – and to others through us – is simply astounding.
Lives get changed for the better.
People get healed.
People get loved.
People get set free.
Eternity gets better each day as we come to more fully know Him.
Then, He begins to restore even the simple things to us in life with which, once, we could not be trusted. He begins to restore our finances and privileges in this world. And herein, we see the astounding changes He has made in our new Lives.
They now mean nothing to us.
The cars and houses and trinkets only serve as reminders of the fallen mess in which we live and will soon leave. We now Live and move and have our being within Him. And the world system we now navigate, we navigate as outsiders – even those looking in from the outside through some window. Oh yeah, they tempt us and call out to us as they did in the past. But the hunger and thirst we had is no longer there. And the lust inside us is just a false flag towards some sort of gluttonous behavior. We are now sated and marinated in His Love and the love of the brethren.
Can we see it? As we surrender to Him and come to a full resting stop, the hungry soul has been both carved away from our spirit – and is now resting in its proper position. The old mind and intellect that used to scream about our need for all the shiny and sparkly and corrupted things of this world has finally come to understand that all those things were only just shiny and sparkly and corrupted kindling for the fire to come on That Day. The mind has come to rest in the spirit, now renewed in His Spirit. And in coming to rest, it now receives Truth and processes it properly, instead of trying to create support for the facts it itself proposes.
It does seem that He gives us much of our old life back to us beloved. But it does seem to this fool of a writer that He is not restoring these things to us as overt blessing (though they may make our logistics a bit smoother sometimes). No, rather, He gives us a little (or a lot) of the nice materials and circumstances of our current lives as reminders that we no longer need them – for He is now more than we could ever hope for or want.
For now, He is the Bread of our Life. He is our very sustenance. Oh He is amazingly delicious. To finally breathe His Life in our lungs and serve in His Kingdom… oh my!
