If You Cannot Understand Earthly Things....the kingdom of heaven on Earth

I am excited because we are trying to take every thought captive! We are trying to apply Gods word like it is the standard! We are trying to submit our reason and logic to Gods word.

Remember the two men who had been walking and talking with Jesus, but didn’t know it was him after his resurrection. Jesus made clear many things to them and after he left them they said, did not our hearts burn inside us! (luke24:32) There have been so many times the last two years , maybe at Robs house, talking with my wife, during a Sunday service or during lunch afterwards or just as I am thinking through something I’m writing, where as you press in on a point solely on the basis that Gods word says XYZ and you realize that you must let go of what your mind says is the accepted normal conclusion and lo and behold that allows your mind to see something that before just couldn’t be. The scales fall away.….did not our hearts burn within us!

Jesus made the point, if you cannot understand earthly things how will you understand heavenly things? (john3:12) For the longest time we have dismissed the earthly things so we could focus on spiritual things. We have had it backwards! We must get adept at applying Gods word to the earthly things first! Or by the words of our Lord there will be much that we may see and understand wrong concerning heavenly things.

Because for the most part we have all come out from evangelicalism where Christianity was a truncated shadow of what it is supposed to be. At least my understanding and worldview resembled more of a raisin than that of the robust faith Martin Luther proclaimed, which enabled him to stand before popes and emperor’s and defy them on the basis of Gods word. Hallelujah!

Believers for a long time have been having this huge rummage sale with all of Gods stuff. (Col1:16-20 ) It made the bus stop untidy and cluttered up the area. But as with the servants, the master will return and say what did you do with my stuff? (matt25:15, luke 19:13) We know from the word that if we take what belongs to Christ and hide it, that we will be described by him as a wicked servant. (luke 19:22) I am at a lost, scripture wise, as to what he will say for what we evangelicals have done. We didn’t even bury it or sell it, we kinda pushed it away.

All of the stuff and systems of this world is what we where to take captive and make them obedient to Christ, it was what we were to make disciples over. Because Who made it all? Why does it exist? Who has authority over it? Who does it belong to? What sayeth the scriptures? How should we then live?

Why isn’t this easy? Because we were given the wrong worldview and now its rough for our brains to make this new wine fit into the old wineskins. But our minds try to do it. Even if it must fold things in half to make them fit.

My son Nathan at 18 months will bring a book to you, bend over and twist up his head so that he is looking straight into your face and while tapping at the page and say “car, car” He has limited cubbyholes formed in his brain and he is always trying to relate new info, to that which, he already knows.

A pertinent example, for today being 911 is this description from that fateful day…..

….The first boom shook our office walls. I scanned my desk and asked my team, "What the hell was that?"

One of our analysts yelled "The World Trade Center's on fire!" as we turned to see flames raging and black smoke billowing into the clear blue sky.

At 40 Fulton St., we were a few blocks away from the towers, and from the 24th floor we had a bird's-eye view.

….. I've since learned that the reason we couldn't look away from the towers was that our minds had no way to process the information.

No matter how hard we tried to mentally digest what our eyes were seeing, there was nowhere to "file" images of human beings diving from the World Trade Center.

It's an image I can't shake to this day: bodies falling through a maze of confetti like ants falling from a tree. It's a sight I wish I never saw…( whole story is from here)

There is a documentary about the people in the world trade center after the first plane crashed saying they saw clothes falling down outside their windows. It was really people wearing clothes falling to their death but there minds couldn’t accept it, it just couldn’t be. Their eyes did see people in the clothes, but the mind wouldn’t accept it and so made the information fit with the world as they knew it had to be.

We are trying to take every thought captive with minds that have been soaked in pragmatism and we can see how it cripples our thinking as Christians. This is why we are commanded to disciple our children in the light of Gods word and can never give them to Caeser to be fitted with the Americana view of life that has been given a spritz of ode de neutered Christianity perfume, but which is really humanistic to the core.

Now, just because we were disobedient and slack and let society, government etc etc go to pot doesn’t mean we can say “no way will we touch this ungodly mess.” Imagine you have a family that you haven’t cared for in a biblical manner, and now you are saved. How would we counsel that person? Forget it, it’s too far gone. Its too corrupted. Would we not disciple that person on what God has said pertaining the family and get on our knees in prayer with them and say put your hands to the plow and don’t give up till the savior returns or your family kills you.

Like people who have come inside from a muddy humanistic yard we must now take time to make sure we don’t drag old unbiblical thinking through the new house with us. Palin has just been a ripe topic. To most Christians its a no brainer, but we are going, wait a minute…. To the law and to the testimony! (Isa8)

Ok final thing, Kevin Swanson has this talk that exactly addresses the Pietist idea that we aremissinf themark to be looking at all this political stuff.
, mp3 the kingdom of heaven on earth. I could’ve just sent this hyperlink but I was ready to shuck some corn. Just for you Rob!