Taking It to Work:
I am a fisherman, and I love going out on the open ocean. I can sit for hours looking out over that beautiful, blue expanse. Sea turtles, deep water dolphin, flying fish, and when we lived down in Mexico for a while, whales. Huge fin whales that would be close enough to actually see their blow holes open and shut as they took a breath – bad, bad breath too.
Anyway, as beautiful as that ocean is on the surface, I’m a diver too. As you have likely seen on TV, the surface can’t hold a candle to the beauty of the undersea world. The depth, the color, the variety of life under the surface is so phenomenal, that there is just no comparison to the surface. I imagine the sailors of old who spent their whole life on the sea, and loved the sea, but had no clue what was under the surface.
We are reminded today that we have a clue. Although, we live, work and play on only the surface of God’s creation, and as beautiful and memorizing as life can be, the deeper life He has planned for us is infinitely more.
In 1 Cor chapter 9, we are told that we can’t fully imagine all that God has in store for us. But in verse 10, Paul says that through the Holy Spirit much has been revealed. Later in Colossians, he says we are to keep our eyes on these deeper things.
Work is not all there is to life, and for a Christian, even “normal” life is not all there is. We have been given an understanding that the natural life we experience every day is just the surface. Without spending time in the Word, in church, in prayer, we tend to focus only on the surface, obtaining things of the world, instead of deeper things of God and a super-natural relationship with Him.
We spend the vast majority of our waking hours at work, and that’s OK. Good Christian parents spend thousands of dollars to give their children a good education, and that’s OK. but what are we doing to invest in ourselves and our children, helping them to build a rock-solid faith?
Let’s not get fixated on what the world has to offer. If you believe what God says about His total creation, let’s look past the world, and upward, to see what God has to offer to those who love Him and seek His Kingdom.
The visible of His creation may try to hold our full attention, but it is nothing more than a shimmering surface of His total creation for us. Set your mind on things above, that is our deeper destination, as His Word works in you, today.
2 Cor 4:17-18 (ESV) – For this light momentary affliction is preparing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison, as we look not to the things that are seen but to the things that are unseen. For the things that are seen are transient, but the things that are unseen are eternal.
1Cor 2:9-10 (ESV) – What no eye has seen, nor ear heard, nor the heart of man imagined,
what God has prepared for those who love him – these things God has revealed to us through the Spirit. For the Spirit searches everything, even the depths of God.
Colossians 3:2 (ESV) – Set your minds on things that are above, not on things that are on earth.
Listening to the Holy Spirit:
Creation is as surface. As the flesh covers the greater interior workings of man, so this creation is of surface to the eternal. The spirit is unseen; the soul contained but ungrasped. These are of the eternal. The body corruptible is but a tabernacle, that the eternal may dwell in it. He who sees clearly the earth, sees only as he who sees the surface of the sea, but enters it not and knows not the life within. But he who sees what is past the physical, although not fully, is he who seeks the things of the Father. Look about you. The things of wood and sand, elements of color and texture, these are of only dust, held together for time, but condemned to decay, returning again to whence it came. Look even at the gold of the world and to its owners proud, for fleeting is its pleasure and valueless in death. He who claims Christ, claims far greater than the temporal. He who follows the Way, sets sites beyond the gold, and he who seeks the heart of God, lives in faith for what is immeasurable and unseen. This is the great test of man, that he would choose the eternal to the temporal, the unseen amidst the seen, and follow My voice among his doubts. It is he who believes and is saved. The depths of what is to come is as the sun to the spark, as life is to death. Deeper you are called than the lost. Do not be enticed by the shimmer of the shallow. It is the timeless, limitless God you must seek.
