Un-Explored ...

Destiny; in this section we have been discussing various aspects of what humanity, and more specifically you and I, were destined for past our embrace of evil.  The short answer is more, the more precise answer is limitless.  But the hardest concept to come to grips with is that discovery is infinite and therefore our destiny will always include the unexplored.  We will never be done.  We will never be done learning, loving, creating, experiencing, or expanding.  Given how many things already exist beyond our current understanding, the idea of just catching up seems incomprehensible.  In point of fact, we could spend as much time looking backwards as we will looking forwards and still never reach an end point.  But as history is more informational, it is our future that demands our priority.  In this, our future begins in this moment as I yield all that is me, to my re-creating God who immediately begins to refashion the whole of me from the inside out.  My future, my destiny, is not a far off concept reserved only for the halls of the city we call heaven.  It is a present reality.  It begins here and now.  Heaven is only a milestone on a journey without end.  It is this journey we seek to better understand.

A mentor once told me … “you don’t know, what you don’t know.”  It is a simple idea that has stuck with me.  But the process of discovering what you don’t know can be life altering.  Our destiny is not simply to acquire knowledge for the sake of knowledge.  Instead, the knowledge we are destined to acquire will be of practical use, and of profound impact, not only on us, but on the objects of our love.  It is an amazing phenomenon what the study of scripture can reveal.  A cursory read of the Bible, may reveal basic concepts and ideas.  But a surrendered heart, mind, and will to Christ, leads to a new discovery in the same passages.  The depth of understanding is increased by His miraculous ability to deepen our insight, and reveal that which was always there, but never fully understood.  The more miraculous phenomenon is that this same process can be seen again and again on the same Biblical passages.  Each time the revelation is astounding.  Each time the level of understanding seems deeper and with even more profound truth.  This may be because the words are not the source of truth; the source is a person, a God, our God, Jesus Christ.  The words are a mere inspired mortal’s attempt at a revelation of truth from Christ.  And so when we study the word again, under the direct control of the one source of truth who stood behind these words; we discover the person behind the words, the God to whom the scriptures point, Jesus Christ.  On this topic, we can never know enough.  In getting to know Christ, there is always more to discover, and so more truth found in the same familiar words.

Heaven will not be the end of the Bible, just the end of the barrier of evil that separates us from the face of God.  The words of truth will ever ring true, but they will not need the medium of print for us to receive or remember.  In heaven, our minds will retain everything they encounter as we were created to do.  In heaven, each precious word that comes from the mouth of God will ever echo in our ears, in our hearts, and in our minds.  Our brains were not created with such a vast capacity to store information for no reason.  Each brain cell will finally be fully utilized without the disease of self to restrain our abilities.  With our minds intact, and a full end to the self-inflicted barriers of evil, our ability to understand will be an order of magnitude more than it is today.  We can scarcely guess at what we do not know, but the process to this end starts now.  As we open the word with surrendered hearts today, we begin to know truth and start a real walk with God, as Enoch of old did.  We must learn to surrender in order to learn what is possible.  We must learn to surrender in order to restore hope that the experience Enoch had is one that IS possible for you and I.  Enoch lived in no better days than we do.  Through the process of surrender and re-creation, we begin a walk that comes closer and closer to Christ, until the barrier of evil is finally removed by His grace and we are ready to see Him as He is.  We will then understand truth better, as we will then see it with our eyes as well as our hearts; a process of un-ending discovery.

It stretches the limits of our imaginations to even consider how many other worlds in the universe there are to discover and explore.  The sheer size of how large our universe is, how wide the expanses within a galaxy let alone between them, boggles the mind.  Yet no matter where we find ourselves throughout space and time, we will ever be in the direct presence of our God.  Never alone.  This is not a new condition.  Though veiled from our eyes, and restricted from full contact by our embrace of evil, our same Lord is with us even now.  As He once walked among us in person, even now His Spirit still strives to find one who is willing to let Him in, and let Him begin to remake us.  The apostles of old knew it was not the sacred scrolls, or organized religion, or wise priests and scribes, who saved them from themselves.  It was Christ.  It was the God behind the scrolls, behind the religion, who should have been behind the message of the priests of the day – it was that Christ who actually did the work of saving them and us.  It was not just His perfect life, and sacrificial death, that would make us whole.  It was our own surrender to Him that would begin the process of our healing and restoration to God.  In the process of our salvation, there is Christ.  He is in us now, as we permit Him to do His wonderful work of transformation and redemption.  We do not walk this earth in isolation from our God at His instigation.  We only walk alone when we push Him away, make Him leave, beg Him not to bother us, in order that we may continue to embrace the pain that comes with our sins.  And He longs only to free us from them and see our pain ended.  Indeed being with us has always been the goal of our God.  He does it now as much as we let Him.  It is our destiny to see it even more fully realized throughout eternity, no matter where we find ourselves for all time.

Perhaps the most unexplored region of our world today is love.  We scratch the surface, and pick around the edges of it.  But we do not really know what it means to love.  The love of Christ demonstrated in His life, demonstrated in His expression and service to us, stands even today in stark contrast to how we apply the words “I love you.”  To know love to the point to give everything away even your very life itself, for the sake of an enemy; this is the love our God has for us.  In the process of re-creation we begin to see love better, and begin to know more about what it means to truly love.  But this process of discovery will have no end as well.  As our God finds new ways to express His love to us, so we will ever be searching for an even better way to share love with others.  This journey on its own will make life worth living.  It is the fuel of the economy of heaven.  It is the motive for existence.  Love is what God is, and our aspiration to be more like our creator will lead us ever onward in a journey of what it means to truly love.  Again, this is a journey that needs no delay to begin.  We start it as quickly as we let go of our own ideas, of our illusions of control, and allow God to do what He must do within to re-create us.

In the existence that is to come, when evil is fully and finally made extinct within the universe and within us, what is unexplored can be discovered without fear.  An entire universe that is absent malice; an entire universe where love and joy are the norm; this is our destiny.  As we explore the limits of physics and begin to understand how the laws of science were made to be employed, there will be no risk of inadvertent destruction.  There will be no commerce based in greed.  There will be none who seek power and control over others.  There will be no concepts of possession that would not gladly give way to philanthropy in an instant.  A discovery of splitting the atom for example would never result in a weapon.  That usage simply would not even enter the mind.  If we ever do need the energy released from an atomic reaction it will be for the purposes of construction, not destruction.  There will be no fear of the development of a super-virus that could end life as we know it.  The things that make our lives so fragile now, will come to an end.  The power and wisdom of our God will find itself paramount in our thinking.  And our discoveries will be based on a premise of love, instead of on self-aggrandizement.  We will not seek to bend or break the laws of nature for the purposes of malice.  We will have no need to do so.  Instead we can focus our reinvigorated minds on building and learning new things that will make the expression of love even more joyful for everyone.  Heaven is not merely a utopia based on its location and architecture; it is also the representation of utopian ideals, in short a reflection of the character of Christ.  Our God so loves us that He … (the list is too long enumerate) …  And so heaven will be a place where discovery is founded in love and its expression to others.

Fitting in to our destiny requires a re-work of who we are today.  How heaven operates today is still too foreign a concept to our natural carnal state.  Our embrace of evil has so warped our minds that it is difficult to appreciate just how happy we will one day be.  The enemy of unselfish love constantly tries to suggest that eternity without evil and selfish pursuits will be an eternity of boredom.  Nothing could be farther from the truth.  One does not need sin and risk in order to feel alive, rather one can only experience true life when sin and risk are no more.  To appreciate heaven for what it is, we need to think differently, to want different things, to value something else.  We cannot achieve this transformation through any action we control, or could undertake on our own behalf.  We must find ourselves re-created by the only God who has the power to create in the first place.  It is for this reason that the story of our Genesis recorded in the books of Moses brings us hope.  A God who can call things into existence from the force of His will, can end the disease of evil I have chosen to embrace.  Our God is strong enough to end the evil in me, if I will but let Him. 

Our God can remake my mind so that I think differently, want differently, love differently.  He is able.  My part is only to let Him.  Only then do I even begin to understand what it means to live.  Only then do I begin to understand what is truly important, and how eternity will never get old to me.  We must shed our carnal selves, be rid of the “me” we were, and embrace the servant Christ would make of us.  Only in our submission and surrender will this be achieved.  This is where destiny calls us.  This is the sound of our God calling us home.  This is where re-creation will lead once and for all time.  We are called to the perfection our God intended for us, and by His power and grace is achievable within us even here and now.  Whether we wake from the sleep of death to greet Him as He comes, or are simply caught up in the air to meet Him on that great day, our transformation will be reaching its zenith, not its beginning.  The beginning starts here and now.  This is the true gift of Christ.  We are re-created and freed from the chains of disease of evil and self.  In this we are finally made free.  Re-creation is His greatest gift to each of us.