What Happens When Our Tent Fails

 

 

I lost my youngest brother in an automobile accident many years ago.  There was no good-bye, no closure.  He was just gone!  And the hole and the ache, although tempered by the years, still remain.  I knew God was in control and that Tommy was with Him.  I also knew I would see him again someday.  But I had lots of questions.  On May 21^st this year, I lost my sweet mama and this time there were goodbyes and wonderful moments that we got to share.  We had time to prepare and yet when she left, the ache and the hole in my heart is the same. This past week my husband and I buried a wonderful friend, who was like a brother to us and then a young man we had grown to love,  both taken from us too soon, suddenly and without warning.  The sadness has been overwhelming, but this time was a little different for me because I had less questions and more peace and understanding… things the Lord had shown me about going home.  I wanted to share what I have learned with others this week but there wasn’t time, so I am sharing it now in hopes that it will touch your hears too.

I know many of you have suffered heart crushing losses as well and maybe you have had the same questions that I did.  Where are they? What are they doing?  How far away is heaven?  Where exactly is heaven?  What is it like?  We have all read the books about life after death and the glory and joy on the other side and I believe the accounts, but my “ferret” brain wanted more!   So, I began to pray and look for answers.  I am not sure I really expected an answer…” but God”…  (one of my favorite phrases in scripture because it always precedes an amazing intervention, on His part, in our lives)  OMG!  He came through loud and clear!   One day, when I wasn’t even thinking about it, He just seemed to open my mind’s ears and eyes and He spoke straight to my heart.   He started tying so many things I had learned over the years directly to the answers I had been seeking.   He poured light on things I knew but never put together.   He showed me wonderful truths that explained so many things for me.  (John 14:26) How is it that Truth can be right under our noses for years and suddenly we discover it?

Ferret Trip coming!  It is a real heart blesser!!!  Woop Woop!  Ferret dance….

I am, by nature, curious about everything.   I want to know spiritual truth but I also have a desire to know how everything works in the natural world when it is tied to spiritual laws.  In other words, I love it when science connects the dots to scripture!  So, I spend lots of time studying things like electromagnetic energy (light)  and quantum physics,  neurological physics  and even mathematics (my least favorite subject in school)!  I tell you this because my adventure began with the natural world and  then  came its connection to the spirit.

The whole trip started with my past adventures through quantum physics and through my study of light.  So some background information is necessary here to get you up to speed:

First stop… Einstein!  Physicists will tell us that there are at least 10 dimensions in the material universe but there are probably more.  In the spirit or immaterial world, God only knows for sure!  But every dimension is real and substantive whether we can sense it or not!   Many of the dimensions overlap between spirit and material like height, width, length and depth.  In Ephesians 3, Paul is praying we would come to know the breadth and length and depth and height of God’s love.  So what is the bridge that links the seen and unseen dimensions of existence?

The short answer is… GOD!   When God said “Light Be”, He wasn’t creating light, God IS light.  But rather He took the very substance of His own being and caused it to materialize and then He used that light to create a material world.  The material world was created out of the spirit realm!  (IJohn 1:5)   Quantum Physicists Einstein, Frank, Neils and Bohr, discovered that a quark of light is the smallest particle of existent matter in the physical universe and… are you ready?…  it is the only existent particle that can be both material and immaterial! Yep! Light (the very substance of God) is the building block of all that exists, the fabric of our universe, and it crosses dimensions between the spirit and the material.  These physicists concluded that, dimensionally speaking, the immaterial is superimposed on the material, in other words, these dimensions coexist in the same space!  And the material world mirrors or is a pattern of the unseen. (Heb. 9:23-24)  In fact, Jesus confirmed that!  The drum beat of Jesus teaching was the phrase “repent, for the kingdom of God is at hand”. .  In the Greek the word “repent” means change the way you think and the phrase “is at hand”, in the Greek, is translated – superimposed upon.  So… Jesus was saying change the way you think, the kingdom of heaven is superimposed on you. (Matt. 4:17) He taught us how to live an overcoming life dwelling in multiple dimensions.  After all, we are a spirit being superimposed on a material body.  Which is more real, our physical body or our spirit being?   Whoa!!! Think about that for a minute! He used picture stories to show us how the spirit world affects the material and how we can live victoriously if we understand the connections, the laws and forces and the power of God. (Please note, I am not discounting turning from sin!)

For a little while, suspend your old understandings and look at creation with new eyes…ready?    Our existence spans many dimensions some material and some immaterial.  Yep!  Just what Einstein discovered!  And everything that goes on in the spirit affects the material just as everything that goes on in the material realm affects the spirit world because they are inextricable.  Want some examples?  When our words which are spirit (unseen) are sown in the kingdom of heaven, they bring up a crop of material fruit. (Matt. 7:16-19, Matt 12:33-37)  What the devil does in the spirit realm causes all kinds of problems in the material realm (Matt. 13:1-30)  Again Jesus taught us that spirit and flesh are connected inextricably,  in unseen ways and, therefore, what happens in each dimension affects the other. (Matt. 18:18-19)    Every parable was about spirit truths that pertain to overcoming in a material world.   In II Cor. 4: 18, Paul tells us to look at the unseen because it is eternal while the seen, the material, is temporary.

Ok!   Are you confused yet?  Well, let me add to your new way of thinking…  The material or flesh world is subject to time and space restrictions but the spirit world is unrestricted by time and space and yet they are superimposed on one another!  How does God do that?  Go figure!  In Col. 2:1-7 Paul was speaking of being in Christ Jesus and though physically, he couldn’t be with the Colossians, he was with them in the spirit enjoying and beholding their order and their faith in Christ Jesus.  (He isn’t talking about just “thinking of them”.  He literally means in the spirit he is there!)  While physically they were separated by time and space, they were one in the Spirit in Christ Jesus and therefore together, outside the bounds of time and space.

Now, to connect some dots…

All my life I had been thinking of heavenly things, in a material fashion with geographical locations and certain time structures in my mind. The earth was in a galaxy with the sun at its center and nine planets arrayed in orbits around it. We spin on our axis every 24 hours and circle the sun every 365 days. We are the third planet from the sun.  We are a part of the Milky Way Galaxy and our tiny galaxy is a speck in the entire universe.   Heaven was somewhere up in the sky but I was never sure where or how far away.  Some said God’s Temple and Throne were beyond the North Star… who knew!  It was all a good guess.

But when I began my study of the creation of this material world in Genesis, I took some time to study the works of the Jewish writers in the Targum to help me understand the Hebrew language and the proper interpretation of so much of the Torah (first 5 books of the Bible).  It was totally mind blowing!  “Poof!”    Try this for a new perspective….

God is immeasurable, infinite and beyond confinement.  He cannot be comprehended by an earthly mind.  Because He has no boundaries in size or scope and time has no parameters for Him, there is no place that can exist outside of His being.  And He is not outside of anything that exists but is a part of it all!   Everything that exists is WITHIN HIM, the visible and the invisible.  He is a part of all things and by Him all things consist (are held together) Col. 1:13-17.  In other words… everything that exists in any type of form or shape by human understanding, seen or unseen, such as the heavenly throne room of God, the heavenly Jerusalem, the heavenly temple, Eden that is God’s Garden, the places Jesus has prepared for us,  and the infinite array of created beings all have their existence IN HIM! God does not exist in one place or another, He is Spirit, He is Light and He is omnipresent!  Expand your imagination… make God so big in your understanding that He had to make room within Himself to create everything that exists.  For our purposes, Heaven and Earth as we think of them, are within God, a part of Himself, just as we are within God.  It is just that we exist across many dimensions in a God-like manner and our flesh (which is fallen) is a separator keeping us from being fully in His presence.

You and I are spirit, soul and body… multi-dimensional beings!  (Gen. 1:26 in His likeness and in His image). We live in both the spirit and the material world where our spirit is superimposed on our flesh…  just like God, who is multi-dimensional as well… father, son and Holy Spirit!  And, like God, we span the same dimensions, the soul being the bridge between the spirit (unseen) and the flesh (seen).  In Genesis 2: 7 God formed for us a material body out of the clay, but then, to make us in His image and likeness, He breathed into us His divine essence and we became “speaking spirits” (Targum writers’ explanation) housed in a material body with a brain that is capable of grasping the spirit and the material. Jesus, the humanity of God, was also a Spirit being housed in the body Mary knit for him in her own physical womb.(Luke 1:33-35)

Hang in there with me!!!

While our true, eternal spirit selves are housed in a temporal flesh body, we are able to navigate in a material world, only, as individual people restrained by time and space.  We are separate from each other and we cannot be in two places at one time.   But in the spirit, there are no time or space constraints everything is connected in God.  In Christ Jesus, we who believe and have made Jesus the Lord of our lives, are one with Him and one with each other  in the spirit, forever inseparable (those still alive and those who have gone before us).  John 17:20-21 “Neither pray I for these alone but for them also that believe on me through their words.  That they all may be one; as you, Father are in me and I in you, they also may be one in us…”  Bottom line all who believe in Jesus and have made Him the Lord of their lives are ONE in Christ Jesus, separated by flesh in the material world but completely and eternally connected in the spirit.  And because our spirits never die, even when our tent fails, we (our spirit selves) are alive all of us who believe are still one in Jesus Christ!  To be absent from the body is to be present with the Lord! (II Cor. 5:1-8) When we die our flesh is no longer in the way and there is nothing separating us from the full presence of the Lord, He is fully in us and we are fully in Him!  Right now, our fleshly relationships are finite with a definite number of days but our spirit beings are eternal and our connections and relationships are eternal!  The spirit person that we love and miss is still alive and well even when though their tent has fallen and our relationship goes on with them.  They aren’t lost to us at all and they aren’t millions of miles away in some heavenly temple as if it was a geographic location. So, what is this relationship like for them and us?

Ok, now for the really cool part…

In Hebrews chapter 11 the writer is talking about those in Christ who have gone on before us, who have shed their earthly tents but are still very much alive in the spirit.  In Chapter 12:1-2 the writer says “Therefore, seeing we are also compassed about (perikeima’i  – encircled, enclosed, to be bound with) with so great a cloud of witnesses, lets us lay aside every weight and the sin that does so easily beset us and run with patience the race that is set before us; looking unto Jesus the author and finisher of our faith…”  Whoa! SO!!! There they are and that’s what they are doing!!!  All those wonderful people are encompassing us, bound to us.  The writer uses the image of a great arena where the track and the playing field are the material world and the grandstand is the heavenly or spirit realm.  The two dimensions are inextricably connected in one purpose, seeing the Will of God play out as He designed it to be done.   The stands are filled with all those who have gone before us and they are very much interested in us and cheering for us as we run our race before them.  They know what is going on in our lives and they are actively watching.  I like to think they are also shouting cheers and encouragement to us.  Thinking of many of my own family members, I am sure they are coaching from the stands!  LOL !!!

Like every sporting event, the athletes on the field can’t distinguish the specific voices in the crowd.  They can’t talk to them or hug them but they are very much aware of their presence.  That is the same for us!  By faith we know those we love are there and they know all about us and they are still interested in what we do. No, we can’t talk to them, or see them or interact with them but we can be certain they are witnessing what we do as we run our race because Scripture tells us that it’s so!

So, what does that mean for us?  We all find ourselves overwhelmed with sadness and the pain of loss and sometimes it grinds us to a complete hault!  There are days when we don’t want to get out of bed or face another day.  There is even guilt at feeling joy again.   But God has called us to lay aside every weight and run. What are those weights?  The Lord told me, it is like a heavy sweat suit that a runner strips off before he runs, we need to strip off the heavy grief, sadness, depression and oppression, that deep inescapable sense of loss that wraps around us like a heavy blanket sometimes bringing us to our knees so we can’t fulfill our calling, we can’t run our race.  We must lay it all aside if we are to run with purpose, recognizing that the stands are filled with people who love us and care for us.  Then we need to avoid those sins that cause us to trip. For instance, don’t look back (doubt, regret) and don’t look at others (insecurity and fear), don’t become self-absorbed in sorrow and push Jesus out of the way.  We need to refocus on our loving God and our life’s calling, keep our eyes on the goal and focus on Jesus our coach who by faith will bring us across the finish line.  Be lifted up and encouraged by the spirit presence of that great cloud of witnesses.  With the surety of the Word in our hearts… every day we can run our race with purpose and with joy in our hearts!

What I learned is that Heaven isn’t millions of miles away… it’s dimensional, superimposed on us… surrounding us! The people we love aren’t millions of miles away… they are a part of us as we are a part of Father, Son and Holy Spirit!  We haven’t lost anyone, they are much closer than we can imagine!  We are eternally connected!  And there will be a time when we will all be completely reunited!

Isn’t that just amazing?

Woop! Woop!  Happy ferret dance here!