"Do not let your hearts be
troubled. Trust in God; trust also in me. John 14:1
At the root of the
Christian life lies belief in the invisible. The object of the Christian's
faith is unseen reality.
Our uncorrected
thinking, influenced by the blindness of our natural hearts and the intrusive
ubiquity of visible things, tends to draw a contrast between the spiritual and
the real; but actually no such contrast exists. The antithesis lies elsewhere:
between the real and the imaginary, between the spiritual and the material,
between the temporal and the eternal; but between the spiritual and the real,
never. The spiritual is real.
If we would rise into
that region of light and power plainly beckoning us through the Scriptures of
truth we must break the evil habit of ignoring the spiritual. We must shift our
interest from the seen to the unseen. For the great unseen Reality is God.
"He that cometh to God must believe that he is, and that he is a rewarder
of them that diligently seek him." This is basic in the life of faith.
From there we can rise to unlimited heights. "Ye believe in God,"
said our Lord Jesus Christ, "believe also in me." Without the first
there can be no second.
If we truly want to
follow God we must seek to be otherworldly. This I say knowing well that that
word has been used with scorn by the sons of this world and applied to the
Christian as a badge of reproach. So be it. Every man must choose his world. If
we who follow Christ, with all the facts before us and knowing what we are
about, deliberately choose the Kingdom of God as our sphere of interest I see
no reason why anyone should object. If we lose by it, the loss is our own; if
we gain, we rob no one by so doing. The "Other world," which is the
object of this world's disdain and the subject of the drunkard's mocking song,
is our carefully chosen goal and the object of our holiest longing.
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