Was Jesus a Space Cadet?...part 7
Writer Author Jerry Lee Kay Sr.
Christian Article
:
Jesus Christ
- Fiction No
There is no better way of keeping God's people together like giving them plenty of spiritual meat. My friend John Running Wolf raised sheep and He once said...." He tied his sheep by their teeth", I said, What in the world are you talking about? I never heard of such a thing!...He said, "I give them such good food that they cannot find better, and so they stay with me"...Somebody give me a witness!...Are you listening to me young preacher man?...Here is some meat for those willing to sup with me!
West Texas is the most fascinating place to be at night, many times I have seen blue skies at midnight, cloudless and serene. The nights there are amazing, stars dazzling and tantalizingly close to earth in all their silent glory.. the night there is for galaxies vast and mysterious, and they draw me away in time and space to worlds beyond the fringes of sense and imagination...Many times folks lose the appreciation for the sky's nighttime splendor so spectacular to dwellers in the arid Southwest. Or maybe many have never experienced it....From a very young child until now, the winter years of my life, I have been entranced by the splendid glory of the night sky....A mystery!
I always loved to be with my family and the Wolf family at night. It was a tradition that when we all came together, we built a campfire outside, summer and winter. More often than not many friends and neighbors would congregate and fellowship with us. There was never a set day or time for those gatherings, they were more spontaneous...Sometimes there would be as many as a couple hundred people, sometimes as few as thirty. My father and John Running Wolf were best friends when they first started out, but became soulmates and spiritmates. John worked for my father until my dad gave him half of his holdings. John's only obligation was that he would see after my mother and us younguns until we were grown or my mother re-married, if he were to be taken at an early age. John was Native American and so very gifted in the things of "Creator". He and my father would teach at these gatherings and, we sang gospel music. O' dear friends what a good time we had and Poppa has such precious memories. The theme was most always the same, but it never was boring because of all the angles they touched upon, always linking communication with God to our everyday walk while on this "Journey called Life".."Living In the Now"... "Living Until Then."..."Living In Peace While In Adversity"
They taught us "The Ways of The Master".
While never solemn, it wasn't a bunch of crazy wild ignorant stuff either. Never guitar amplifiers and such. It is best described as a Sacred time...And through the years the wonder for me has never diminished, and has grown even more as these days we read of galaxies and stars in the making as viewed through the Hubble telescope. These galaxies, vast beyond description, distant beyond imagination, lure my mind and soul toward the edges of the infinite and beyond....A Mystery!
You can trust me when I tell you, as the last light of the sun dies on the horizon of that western sky, the desert will come alive. The stars begin to appear and the great mystery cries for another song.....one more song.
In my memory I can hear the call from a Coyote's breast far away and the music of the desert will begin....Almost like a call to come into the dark and lament with him. As if he is calling one to the edge of the darkness to sing the song of the unknown, And I remember well, John Running Wolf would gently raise his hands into space and say, "Not tonight brother Coyote, tonight we fellowship with the stars of our inner space for it is a galaxy of its own...an ever growing universe within."...
The words He spoke...of the inward skies of man has accompanied me throughout my life, in the ministry, in my testimony and in my experience as a child of God. And shall be with me to the end of time...A Mystery!
Yes, the night sky teases me and is seductive, almost haunting to me, it draws me out and sings its inviting song to me. Up and out toward the vast, the infinite, the external and immeasurable wonder of it all, I love to gaze at the stars. But dear friends I must admit, it seems even more, that it draws me inward toward the spiritual...toward the internal and eternal me....
Space Cadet?..maybe, but I invite you to come join me, sit with me on my front porch, come and go with me to my Fathers House and let the outer galaxies dazzle us, and the inner galaxies intrigue us...for If outer galaxies humble us...Then as we explore our inner galaxies, they will lift us up, they will affirm our self-worth and give us strength for our journey...Can I get a witness?...
Beloved, Listen to this old Christian that has been there done that...If outer galaxies are about eons and eons of time and trillions and trillions of light years of unconscious space, then inner galaxies have to do with yours and my personal journey in the now. Human beings are born with a restless inner eye, a Spirit, a capacity to transcend even our darkest selves, to give wings to our vision, form to our dreams, and structure to our reason for existing....That was and is the message and the method of the Master!
Solomon wrote Proverbs, and although he himself eventually failed and didn't follow his own advice, the advice he gave is sound. In addition to displaying practical wisdom, the wise king increased his might by developing pondered wisdom. Proverbs 20:27 says, "The spirit of man is the candle of the Lord, searching all the inward parts of the belly." The word translated "candle" here can also be rendered "lamp." This verse is one of the most revealing definitions of the human spirit in the Bible. "The spirit of man is his governing law."
When God created animals, He gave each kind a governing principle we call "instinct" to control their behavior. An animal does what it does because it is what it is. A bee, for instance, always behaves like a bee. It does what a bee does because it is a bee. It has a built-in code that governs all its functions. It can behave no other way.
Emerging from its incubation cell, a bee is fully equipped to perform its function in the hive. Nobody has to teach a bee how to make a honeycomb with perfectly flat surfaces set in straight rows of elegant hexagons. Nobody has to teach a bee how to sense the earth's magnetic field and how to turn the honeycomb to the proper angle in relationship to that field. Nobody has to teach a bee to make each honeycomb cell a hexagonal prism, the best possible shape to hold a given volume of any particular
substance while using as little building material as possible. They build cells in various sizes, depending on their purpose. There are cells for hatching new workers, cells for storing pollen and honey, cells for rearing drones, and cells for raising new queens. Starting at the top of the comb, the bees begin in two or three places simultaneously. They work with such accuracy and join the various sections with such precision that it is impossible to tell that they were begun separately.....All this is done by instinct.
A mule acts like a mule because he is a mule, a chicken acts like a chicken because he is a chicken. And need I tell you a hog acts like a hog because he is a hog, and I never saw a mule that acted like a chicken, nor a chicken that acted like a hog! They are what they are because that's what they are! You see, they all act like they do by God given instinct. And Instinct governs the behavior of each species....all except man.
When God created Adam, He gave him a different governing principle. True, He gave Adam a body with senses and a soul with faculties of intellect, emotion, and will..gifts that are shared to a lesser extent by many animals. But God did not lock the human race into a behavioral pattern as He did the animal creation. He could have created us so that we would always do what we were supposed to do, but He did not want merely a superior animal. He did not want puppets; He wanted people. So He gave Adam a spirit.
God's intention was that the human spirit control the faculties of man's soul and the senses and functions of his body. More, the human spirit was to be indwelt by the Holy Spirit. The human spirit was to work cooperatively with the Holy Spirit in governing the whole man. Thus controlled, man would willingly, knowingly, and joyfully do those things that please the Father. So Solomon wrote, "The spirit of man is the candle [lamp] of the Lord," the lamp being the human spirit and the light of the lamp being the Holy Spirit. Adam, indwelt by God, was to be a perfect expression of God manifested in flesh. And so he was—until the fall.
When disobedience came in, the Holy Spirit left the human spirit and the light went out. When man has no divine governing principle. He is in the dark..lost, spiritually dead, and in desperate need of regeneration. Then man may be controlled by his intellect, emotions, will, conscience, or senses..or by a combination of these things. His human spirit is restless..unsatisfied..ever looking for peace..a prey to false religion..and estranged from God...You see, without the Holy Spirit, man is still lost, still searching, and in the dark.
That is why Jesus said to Nicodemus (a religious and moral man) "That which is born of the flesh is flesh; and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit. Marvel not that I said unto thee, Ye must be born again" (John 3). When a person accepts Christ, the blood of Christ cleanses him, the Holy Spirit comes back into his human spirit....and the lamp is relit.
When we look into that inner galaxy my friend John Wolf spoke so easily of, into the world of dreams, into the visions of things yet to be, we have hope...because we have seen in Jesus more than we have ever yet been able to express. When we look into this sacred inner sky we are to be reminded that Jesus said, "He will give to us the keys to that kingdom...He said that He dwells within us...He talks about those that come to Him must worship Him in Spirit and truth.....A Mystery?...Maybe..to some!
With man is born the impulse to seek and climb above and beyond from where we started. And it is no different in the spirit world. That has been the experience of the prophets, and poets over the centuries, they were and still are, seekers, people that wanted to go beyond the norm. People that were able to see both the outer and the inner galaxies. Sometimes they are astonished by the meeting of the mystery. Whether it is Moses and the voice of God from the burning bush, or Isaiah caught up in a religious trance in the incense-filled Temple, or Jeremiah trembling with the inner Word of God, "Then I said, I will not make mention of him, nor speak any more in his name. But his word was in mine heart as a burning fire shut up in my bones, and I was weary with forbearing, and I could not stay. Jeremiah 20:9.
Now make no mistake about this one thing beloved, even though we are always preaching and talking about those ancients and their experience.. you can be sure people throughout the ages have been awakened by that same mystery of the inner galaxy and how it transforms those that seek to explore it. How they seem to gain strength that many only dream of. As we stand at the edge of the unknown, let us hear the far voices...but never fear them. We can't tell what they will bear, but we can be ready for them when they come, if we walk in the Spirit...that was the "Way of the Master"...and was and is, His true message to us.
His brother James was dead. Peter, the leading apostle to the Jews, was dead. Paul, the intrepid apostle to the gentile world, was dead. Thomas, Andrew, Philip, Nathanael, all the apostles, were dead..all except one...There lived in Ephesus a lonely old man, the first and the last of the apostles, the great apostle to the church....His name was John.
The moment we pick up John's gospel we are aware that it is different from the others. There is no genealogy, no manger scene, no boyhood, no baptism, no temptation, no mount or transfiguration, no Gethsemane. There are only a few special miracles chosen by John as "signs." We have the famous I AM sayings of Jesus and many discourses found nowhere else. There are no scribes, no lepers, no publicans, and no demoniacs. There are no parables. It would almost seem, as others have pointed out, that John sits with a copy of Luke's gospel open before him, deliberately leaving out things Luke puts in and putting in things Luke leaves out. Luke had written to show that Jesus was the Son of man; John is writing to show that Jesus is the Son of God.
John's language is Greek but his thoughts are Hebrew. His language is simple, his vocabulary small. There are about six hundred words in John's vocabulary. It is the vocabulary of a seven year old child (a child adds about a hundred words to his or her vocabulary every year). But if John's "coins" are few, their denomination is large; they are golden coins, royal sovereigns, the kind one would find in a rich man's purse. Immediately John whirls us away into the eternal ages to confront one who was from everlasting to everlasting, eternal, immortal, invisible, our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ....John's gospel begins with an introduction, runs through a threefold view of the Lord Jesus...the signs...the secrets...and the sorrows of God's Son, and ends with his closing statements. The basic structure is simple, but John surprises us. He says the simplest things, uses the simplest words, puts together the simplest phrases and sentences, and at once plunges us into mysterious, mystical, mind-staggering concepts revolving around three of John's favorite words. The divine life in essence...the divine light in evidence...and the divine love in experience.. All the books of the New Testament were written except his own gospel, three short epistles, and a remarkable apocalypse. Three gospels, the book of Acts, Paul's epistles, and the general Hebrew epistles were all in circulation. Doubtless John was at home in them all. So why write another gospel? His friend and colleague Matthew had written such a masterpiece...John Mark, he knew him well, had given a precise account of Peter's preaching. Luke had written a Christian classic. So why was the Holy Spirit urging him to write?...The answer is, because so much was still unsaid. The other gospels dealt primarily with Galilee. But what about the work of Christ in Judea?
The other gospels prepared their hearers for the kingdom of heaven, but what about the deeper mysteries Christ had taught?
Many of those mysteries, indeed, had been revealed to Paul. But what about their beginnings from Christ Himself. Matthew had written primarily for Jews, Mark for Romans, and Luke for Greeks. There was a desperate need for one more gospel record. Someone needed to write for the church!..And John could clearly see a declension. It was evident on every hand. All kinds of false teachings were either flourishing already or soon would flourish. Soon they would have names attached to them and they would be written into denominational church history books as doctrine or theology.
As we make this journey of life, we need a light beyond what we ourselves can generate... Isaiah chapter 50:11...Says it best... "You who kindle a fire and encircle yourselves with sparks, and walk in the light of your own fire and of the sparks which you have kindled, you shall lie down in sorrow"....
Dear friend the message our Lord preached while here with us is so much more than the 'Gospel of Salvation'...that is to say, more than just a fire escape...What about the salvation of my 'Now'...and...'Living until Then'
I fear the Gospel message, 'Jesus Saves' is where far to many of us have stopped, and it makes me ask, what about the whole message He preached?.....It is as much a mystery to many people as it was to Nicodemus and even many Christians.
"And he taught in their synagogues, being glorified of all. And he came to Nazareth, where he had been brought up: and, as his custom was, he went into the synagogue on the Sabbath day, and stood up for to read. And there was delivered unto him the book of the prophet Esaias. And when he had opened the book, he found the place where it was written, The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he hath anointed me to preach the gospel to the poor; he hath sent me to heal the brokenhearted, to preach deliverance to the captives, and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty them that are bruised, To preach the acceptable year of the Lord. And he closed the book, and he gave it again to the minister, and sat down. And the eyes of all them that were in the synagogue were fastened on him. And he began to say unto them, This day is this scripture fulfilled in your ears. Luke 4..
The Full Gospel is saying that in Christ we have a light available already within us. He who is joined to the Lord is one spirit with Him.1 Corinthians 6 ..The very nature of our relationship with Him must be spiritual...it must be a joining of our spirit to His spirit....."He that is joined to the Lord is one spirit."..."They that worship Him must worship Him in spirit"... because "God is Spirit."...That means that our fellowship with Him can only be by the joining of our spirit to His Spirit. That goes deeper than any other kind of relationship we can have. We cannot go deeper than that. When we are totally joined to Him in spirit is when we will have the "Mind of Christ" and only then...That defines the nature of man in the deepest sense, the real part of our being, our spirit man that is what we are in the sight of God. We are spirit and He doesn't fellowship with us in the flesh. Now let me stop and say here, that doesn't mean He is unconcerned with our needs...that is another message!
So then, the basis for Life is what John brings out so clearly, by way of illustration in his Gospel, and by way of direct statement in his epistles"...God gave unto us eternal life, and this life is in His Son." "He that hath the Son hath the life." That is a statement imposed upon the basic declaration that our fellowship is with the Father and with the Son. The fellowship is explained as being that of possessing His very Life. The basis of union with God is that God's own Life is given to us in new birth, and upon that God builds everything, on that He counts for everything. Where that is not, God can do nothing so far as union is concerned. In order to reach and realize all God's thought, God must put Himself into man in the very essence of His being, His very Life. God cannot realize spiritual, eternal, universal intentions on the basis of natural life. The Scriptures make it very clear that man's own natural life can never be the basis of the realization of any of God's purposes, that God's own Life alone can be that. Thus for all His hopes God first of all provides His own basis. God's hope is in His own Life, not in ours, and He puts the basis of His hope within at new birth, and on that basis He proceeds to the development of all His thought, and the realization of all His intention for us.
Yes, the far voices are forever calling, and life's adventures are gracefully and heartily answering their call, day by day, page by page, as the leaves are turned. So Poppa, did Jesus fail on His Mission?...the answer is no...but men fail everyday when we don't pursue that which has been given us as tools for the journey....Poppa can't you push a magic button and give us some of that good stuff? Or impart it to us by the laying on of hands...The answer is no...It is your journey.
Most people admire Christopher Columbus, his courage and venture. We admire him not because he sat by the seaside with his chin in his hand; we admire him because he unfurled the sails of three small ships and pointed them toward the unknown west. On that voyage to the new world, across waters where no man had ever been, there were no charted islands to say they had passed, no landfalls to enter on the log, no odometer to tell them how far they had gone, no map to suggest how far they would have to go; and so each day in the logbook Columbus wrote one simple line: This day we sailed on.
How excellent is thy lovingkindness, O God! therefore the children of men put their trust under the shadow of thy wings. They shall be abundantly satisfied with the fatness of thy house; and thou shalt make them drink of the river of thy pleasures. For with thee is the fountain of life: in thy light shall we see light. Psalm 36:7-9 (KJV)
Eternal God, who calls the stars into being and who makes sport with galaxies and who expresses yourself in universes beyond our comprehending, it was your pleasure at the beginning of time to brood over the primeval waters and to bring forth light and life upon the earth. You visited our planet with your presence to shape us in your image and to bring your very being to self-expression in us as your people. We praise and adore you for the fathomless mysteries of the universe, and thank you that you have brought us into the adventure of living, loving, and thinking, as a part of your grand scheme of things entire toward which the whole creation moves.
Visit us again with an awakened sense of your holiness and power, and quicken our minds toward the new realities you have in store for us. The world is very much with us, late and soon. The burdens of life often oppress. The pressures and stress tax our resources and nearly exhaust our inner reserve. So be pleased to refresh us, O God, for the living of these days. Abba Father, I pray you will cause us to be refreshed and revived from within. Some of us have had seeds of creative thoughts needing germination. Some have had new inventions brooding within their minds for a better world. Some have had dreams for economic justice and greater equity for the poor and oppressed.
Others of us have had glimmers of ideas for love better expressed in our families and we have received hints of ways of forgiving grudges so long and firmly held. In others of us there is the book or poem to be written, the music to be composed, the business to be formed, the kindly word to be said, the generous gift to be given, the friendly deed to be done. O God, bring to birth all the latent creativity within and the residual potential buried beneath our fears.
And hear us, loving Father, as we make our supplication for peace on earth, good will toward men. Remove the strife within our families. Cause us to bridge the generation gap and other gaps.. the gaps of race and language, culture and religion. Bring contentment to ravaged souls. Heal those torn by hatred and violence. Comfort those who mourn, and grant your healing power to all those who do battle with the powers of disease in body, mind, and soul.
Thank you, God, for Jesus the Christ, your Word became flesh among us, full of grace and truth. Through Jesus Christ our Lord.
Amen.
And this is life.. we know where we are only in relation to where we have been, and we never know how far it is to what...But we don't have to know. If we make our voyage with this Faith as our guide, let our logbook show that "This day we sailed on" and that every sunset finds us looking forward to another dawn.
God Bless You
Poppa
jk@poppak.org
Editor's Comment:
About the Writer Author
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United States
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jerryleekay@suddenlink.net
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