Reality for most people is a question of what we can feel, sense and touch. For millions therefore the aim of their life is to amass as much money or wealth in the belief that material possession is the meaning of life, what makes us happy.
Wrong, of course. Yes, life does have a material dimension which we perceive with our physical senses. But life is far more than what we can see or touch. Yes, there is the realm of thinking and abstract ideas. That is part of our reality too.
But I am thinking about what is back of all that exists which we see and touch, or indeed can think about. I am thinking about the unseen but all powerful spiritual realm of our existence.
In the Gospel of Mark in the New Testament of the Bible and chapter 1 we read that Jesus taught with authority, and not like the scribes; that he cast out demons and healed sick people. How did he do that ?
Jesus being divine approached life from a divine perspective – seeing all as a question of the primacy of the spiritual dimension. Unseen yet very real and very powerful. Indeed it is the dimension out of which all material existence has been created. The reality and true perspective is that the world is primarily spiritual, and not material. And it is the spiritual we must address and understand if we are to live in the reality of what this world is really about.
That world is the domain of God and in it God rules. Which is why Jesus was perceived as having authority – people recognised his teaching as special, they recognised its importance, and they could see that he was different from the scribes.
The scribes merely went through the motions of the dead letter of their belief. They demonstrated no reality, no awareness, no contact with the source of their belief – God.
Today is no different. There are religious people who go through the motions of ritual. There are plenty of different religions claiming to have the answer and to bridge the gap to the spiritual world.
But there is only one faith where God himself came to show us the way, and did so by living it, not just teaching it. One faith where God himself reaches out to individual lives, and in which God himself enables people to live the life he calls them to live. Where God indeed heals people of the disease of sin in their hearts and actually delivers them from the power of darkness and evil so prevalent in this world.
And he can heal your life and he can deliver your life from oppressive spiritual darkness.
Love divine all loves excelling, joy of heaven to earth come down; fix in us thy humble dwelling, all thy faithful mercies crown. Jesus thou art all compassion, pure unbounded love thou art; visit us with thy salvation, enter every trembling heart.
Breathe oh breathe thy loving Spirit into every troubled breast; let us all in thee inherit, let us find thy promised rest; take away the love of sinning, Alpha and Omega be; end of faith as its beginning, set our hearts at liberty.
Come almighty to deliver, let us all thy grace receive. Suddenly return and never, never more thy temples leave; Thee we would be always blessing, serve thee as thy hosts above; pray and praise thee without ceasing; Glory in thy perfect love.
Finish then thy new creation, pure and spotless may we be; let us see thy great salvation perfectly restored in thee. Changed from glory into glory, till in heaven we take our place; till we cast our crowns before thee, lost in wonder, love and praise.
Something evidently happened to Charles Wesley for him to have written such a hymn !
A man touched by the pardon and the reality of God.
Christian Preacher
Christianity 