| Crashing through |
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Recently, I spent most of a day in airports. I had not intended to spend the day in airports, but one delayed flight, one missed flight and no computer added up to several unexpected hours with a fascinating book by Robert Kurson, titled Crashing Through. This book tells the true story of Mike May, blinded at the age of 3 by a chemical explosion. Forty-three years later, Mike dared to undergo a risky new procedure in order to see.
As the bandages came off, Mike May did see. But to his great frustration, he did not see everything a normally sighted person sees. He saw colors and motion clearly, but even after several months, he remained "terrible at understanding faces, seeing in depth (except if something was moving), and recognizing objects" (p. 228). Strangely, repeated eye exams showed nothing amiss.
Desperate to know why he couldn't see correctly, Mike allowed a researcher, Dr. Ione Fine, to run extensive tests. Those tests proved what some scientists insisted as early as 1850: Human beings depend to a great extent on knowledge in order to see - not "a knowledge of facts and figures of the kind found in encyclopedias" (p. 230), but experiential knowledge accumulated in the early years of life.
"There is only one way for the very young child" to gain this knowledge, writes Kurson. "He must interact with the things he sees" (p. 238).
Reading Mike May's story, I saw a man heroically meeting and conquering a lifetime of challenges. I also saw a parable.
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| Seeing eye parable |
Take a moment to look up from the page. What do you see?
Seeing requires open, unblinded eyes. But there's more. You understand what you're seeing because, early in life, you interacted with the world, using all your senses to investigate the barrage of jumbled visual data bombarding you. Just now, when you looked up, your eyes focused on a scene with many elements. Your brain instantly downloaded pertinent information about every aspect of that scene from a vast store of experiential knowledge. Thank God! You are fearfully and wonderfully made!
In a different dimension entirely, you have a barrage of jumbled data bombarding you. In the midst of the jumble, God is speaking, he is revealing, his Spirit bringing order from chaos. What determines how clearly you see, how accurately you hear?
Mike May gained physical eyesight in an instant, through an operation. You gain spiritual eyes and ears the instant you announce by faith, "Jesus Christ is Lord." But that doesn't mean you can instantly make sense of the spiritual world God has opened up to you.
No longer blind, Mike May could not grasp much of what he saw because his brain had a limited store of experiential knowledge on which to draw. So, Christian, you cannot see what God is revealing, nor recognize what he is saying without experiential knowledge of realities based, not in the physical world, but in the spiritual one. You gain this knowledge only one way: interact with God himself.
Many Christians have prayed to know God, have tried to hear him, have sought to experience him, with varying degrees of success. Often, we've frustrated and sabotaged our own efforts because we haven't understood: Interaction with God takes place Spirit to spirit.
How often do we minimize, distrust or dismiss the Spirit of God? In so doing, we minimize, distrust and dismiss God himself.
Even more often, we minimize, distrust and dismiss our own spirit. We repeatedly confuse spirit and soul. Yet, what connects and communes with God, what brings his voice and his revelation into focus, is that innermost part of us - the human spirit. |
| Spirit, soul and body |
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"May God himself, the God of peace, sanctify you through and through," says 1 Thessalonians 5:23. "May your whole spirit, soul and body be kept blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ."
The Lord, who is himself three-in-one, created people with three complex dimensions: spirit, soul and body. We know all too well where our bodies begin and end. But things start to get fuzzy when we consider the spirit and the soul. Often, we think of the two as different terms for the same thing.
But though soul and spirit alike are intangible and invisible, though they were designed to function together, like partners in a dance, they are not the same. Hebrews 4:12 says, "The word of God is alive and active. Sharper than any double-edged sword, it penetrates even to dividing soul and spirit . . ."
In her new book, You Are Blessed, Sylvia Gunter writes, "Our spirit is the essence of who we are. We are a spirit being. God made us a living spirit. We are a living essence from God (spirit), that he gave an expression (soul) in a tangible physical package (the body)" (p. 2).
Most of us have spent a lifetime trying to connect with God primarily through our soul. Our soul communicates via intellect and emotions. We strain to hear God by thinking, by feeling. To complicate matters, our spirit has capacity to think and feel, as well.
Sylvia Gunter writes, "How can we tell which is trying to exert itself? The spirit seeks God's highest and greatest and best. The soul usually seeks self's greatest satisfaction, unless the spirit is leading it" (p. 7).
You might assume that any thinking person could tell whether a given action or thought, behavior or word is godly or fleshly. But you cannot mentally figure out where soul or spirit begin and end. You can learn by experience to recognize when your spirit is resonating with the sound God is making.
You can call your human spirit out of passive inaction, to lead soul and body. You can open yourself fully to God's Spirit, confessing, "Jesus, you are Lord"; asking, "Spirit of Christ, fill me." You can begin this minute to learn to interact, spirit to Spirit, with everything God says, everything he reveals. |
| Choosing to reorganize |
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When God establishes a certain order, and we choose to reorganize, things quickly go haywire. God's order, according to 1 Thessalonians 5:23, is "spirit, soul and body." Yet, in our Western church culture, we typically function in the opposite order: body, soul, spirit.
That often looks like this: You depend first on the physical (body), ever alert to what your five senses, as well as your bodily needs and desires, report to your brain. You process this input through your soul (mind, emotions), and come out with beliefs that drive your behavior. Your spirit gets little or no say-so. In fact, when your spirit tries to speak up, soul and body overrule it.
This approach invites train wrecks. For one thing, your intellect and your emotions interpret sensory input differently. Your mind says, "She was just making conversation." Your emotions insist, "She was putting me down." The result? Constant inner confusion and conflict. On any given matter, your mind may stifle your emotions, or your emotions may out-scream your mind - but each will continue to insist that it is right, and neither will convince the other.
What's more, left to themselves, both your mind and your emotions will jump to wrong conclusions. As a result, you build your life on lies. Yes, Christian, even you. |
| Spirit resonance |
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According to Zechariah 12:1, "the LORD . . . formed the human spirit within" (NRSV).
According to Jesus, our "innermost being" - our human spirit - is the place from which his Spirit bubbles up to fill our whole person. "He who believes in Me, as the Scripture said, 'From his innermost being will flow rivers of living water,'" Jesus cried in John 7:38-39. "But this He spoke of the Spirit, . . ." (NASU).
God's Spirit communes with our human spirit. In the words of Psalm 42:7, "Deep calls to deep."
Last year, I heard a man demonstrate an amazing thing. He sang a tone. As he did, his guitar sitting in a stand began vibrating with the same frequency. It picked up the same tone. The man sang another tone. The guitar picked up the new tone. Whatever note the man sang, his guitar echoed. In a similar way, your spirit is designed to respond to the Spirit of God.
In Psalm 51:6, David says to God, "Behold, You desire truth in the innermost being, and in the hidden part You will make me know wisdom" (NASU).
Proverbs 20:27 speaks of this resonance in terms of light: "The human spirit is the lamp of the LORD that sheds light on one's inmost being."
Romans 8:16 says, "The Spirit himself testifies with our spirit that we are God's children."
And in Ephesians 3:16, Paul prays, "May He grant you out of the rich treasury of His glory to be strengthened and reinforced with mighty power in the inner man by the [Holy] Spirit [Himself indwelling your innermost being and personality]" (AMP).
When you're functioning according to God's order, soul and body defer to spirit. Your spirit hears and reverberates with the Holy Spirit - echoing his wisdom, his light, his testimony, his power. Your spirit does not reject information bombarding you from the physical realm, but rather sifts and rightly processes that input, in light of what it sees in the spiritual world. Your spirit informs and instructs soul and body, guiding mind and emotions, beliefs and behavior, into line with what is true. |
| Mary |
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Consider Mary Magdalene at the tomb on resurrection morning. Looking with her physical eyes, she saw the tomb, open; the body of Jesus, gone.
Accurate information? Yes. The starting point for understanding what had happened? No.
Jesus had told the men and women who followed him that he would die and rise again (see Luke 24:1-8). He had spoken the truth into Mary's spirit. But Mary's soul had shushed her spirit and dismissed a truth it could not comprehend.
Now, her mind formed the only explanation it could find for the empty tomb. Her body cooperated in spreading the misinformation: "So she came running to Simon Peter and the other disciple, the one Jesus loved, and said, 'They have taken the Lord out of the tomb, and we don't know where they have put him!'" (John 20:2).
By the time Mary returned to the empty tomb, her emotions were going full throttle. Standing outside the tomb, crying, she was so convinced of the lie her soul was shouting that she saw and talked with two angels - without any clue that she was witnessing something supernatural and illogical and real. Even when Jesus stood before her, even when he spoke, Mary did not understand what she was seeing and hearing. With her soul in the lead, Mary mistook the risen Lord for the gardener.
Jesus didn't scold Mary. He didn't grab her and shake her. He didn't rely on reason or shame or an emotional appeal to awaken her to the truth. He simply spoke her name.
"Mary."
In that instant, Mary heard with her spirit. The truth spoken by her Lord shot past the lies her soul and body were screaming and struck a chord in her inmost being. Quickened, her spirit picked up the frequency, announcing the news to the rest of her. She turned; she saw. She "cried out in Aramaic, 'Rabboni!' (which means Teacher)."
Jesus said, "Do not hold on to me, for I have not yet ascended to the Father. Go instead to my brothers and tell them, 'I am ascending to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God.'"
Mary Magdalene "went to the disciples with the news: 'I have seen the Lord!' And she told them that he had said these things to her" (John 20:16-18).
As Mary's spirit responded to the voice of God, her soul and body joined the refrain. She saw what she was seeing. Her mind abandoned its erroneous interpretation of the situation and embraced the truth it had previously rejected. Her emotions, still going full throttle, made a 180-degree turn, from deep sorrow to great joy. She ran back to the disciples to deliver the best news they would ever hear. |
| Risking seeing |
Once Jesus asked a blind man, "What do you want me to do for you?" The man replied, "Lord, I want to see" (Luke 18:41). We might think, "Of course! Every blind person wants to see."
Yet, when a doctor approached Mike May about the possibility of regaining his sight, Mike said, "I ask myself if vision would really change my life. And every time the answer is the same: I don't think it would. Life is already so full. I don't need it. I don't feel like I'm missing a thing" (p. 16).
Later, as he explored further, Mike found that undergoing the needed procedure required taking huge risks - physically, emotionally, relationally.
Ultimately, Mike decided to take the risks. The resulting life-change involved frustrations and challenges, setbacks and scares. Some days were glorious; some, excruciating. But from the moment light burst in on him, Mike realized: If he had opted not to risk seeing, he would have missed more than he could ever have imagined.
You may think there's not much more to see, spiritually. You may feel your current experience full enough.
Besides, pursuing interaction with God, Spirit to spirit, means taking significant risks. Learning to live day by day with your spirit fully yielded to God's Spirit and confidently leading soul and body involves frustrations and challenges, setbacks and scares. You'll sometimes ricochet between glorious and excruciating. But it's the only way to know God deeply, experientially. It's the only way to have your eyes opened to a breathtaking world you otherwise cannot see.
Living Spirit to spirit, you experience time and again what Mary did on resurrection morning. When God speaks, the deepest part of you echoes what he is saying. Astonished, you see him face to face. You see this world in light of his. You see his world invading ours. You stay and worship as long as he allows. Then, knowing what he's telling you to do, you run with joy to do it.
The Spirit of Christ aches to show you things you haven't been able to see, to tell you things you haven't been able to hear.
Listen. He's speaking your name.
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Unless otherwise noted, all Scripture quotations are from The Holy Bible, Today's New International Version™ TNIV®. Copyright © 2001, 2005 by International Bible Society®. All rights reserved worldwide.Also quoted: New American Standard Updated (NASU), New Revised Standard Version (NRSV) and The Amplified Bible (AMP).
Robert Kurson, Crashing Through (New York: Random House Trade Paperbacks, © 2007, 2008).
Sylvia Gunter, You Are Blessed: In The Names of God (Birmingham, AL: The Father's Business, © 2008). To order, visit www.TheFathersBusiness.com or email fathersbiz@cs.com. | |
Deborah P. Brunt
