Learning to use our spiritual faculties and senses

"You don't have a soul. You are a soul. You have a body."-CS Lewis

Before I heard this quote today, I had titled this entry "learning to use our spiritual faculties and senses" because I wanted to talk about how we are so familiar and trusting of our physical senses, while we are often untrained and unaware of how to use our spiritual faculties to interact with God and the spiritual realm. I love this quote because it shows how backwards we think from reality. We live and act and think as if we are primarily physical bodies with a soul and that this physical reality is the ultimate, pre-eminent reality while the spiritual reality is less real and less important. We understand and use our bodies a lot more than our souls.

But the reality is that the heavenly, spiritual realm is way more REAL than this physical reality. Paul says to the Corinthians: "What I mean, brothers, is that the time is short. From now on those who have wives should live as if they had none; those who mourn, as if they did not; those who are happy, as if they were not; those who buy something, as if it were not theirs to keep; those who use the things of the world, as if not engrossed in them. For this world in its present form is passing away," (1 Corinthians 7:29-31).



And later on in 1 Corinthians 15, Paul talks about the resurrection bodies we will inherit. He says,

"So will it be with the resurrection of the dead. The body that is sown is perishable, it is raised imperishable; it is sown in dishonor, it is raised in glory; it is sown in weakness, it is raised in power; it is sown a natural body, it is raised a spiritual body. If there is a natural body, there is also a spiritual body. So it is written: "The first man Adam became a living being"; the last Adam, a life-giving spirit. The spiritual did not come first, but the natural, and after that the spiritual. The first man was of the dust of the earth, the second man from heaven...And just as we have borne the likeness of the earthly man, so shall we bear the likeness of the man from heaven." (1 Corinthians 15:42-49).

These passages and these thoughts give me great hope today because we just found out last night that one of our dear friends dad does not have too much longer to live. While I have been very heavy hearted last night and today, I am so comforted by the fact that death is not the end. It is the beginning of true life and joy according to ultimate reality and truth. It does not make death any easier, because we were not meant to die. Death is horrible! But Jesus will redeem and restore all things, and put an end to death, and in this we find the only hope possible in the face of death. Paul says at the end of 1 Corinthians 15:

"Listen, I tell you a mystery: We will not all sleep, but we will all be changed--in a flash, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet. For the trumpet will sound, the dead will be raised imperishable, and we will be changed. For the perishable must clothe itself with the imperishable, and the mortal with immortality. When the perishable has been clothed with the imperishable, and the mortal with immortality, then the saying that is written will come true: "Death has been swallowed up in victory."
"Where, O death, is your victory?
Where, O death, is your sting?"

And also in Philippians 3:20-21: "Our citizenship is in heaven. And we eagerly await a Savior from there, the Lord Jesus Christ, who, by the power that enables him to bring everything under his control, will transform our lowly bodies so that they will be like his glorious body."

Now the following quotes are from AW Tozer's book The Pursuit of God are what I had in mind when I titled this entry. They are from Chapter 4 called Aprehending God, which you can access online here: http://www.theboc.com/freestuff/awtozer/books/the_pursuit_of_god/index.html

"We have in our hearts organs by means of which we can know God as certainly as we know material things through our familiar five senses? We apprehend the physical world by exercising the faculties given us for the purpose, and we possess spiritual faculties by means of which we can know God and the spiritual world if we will obey the Spirit's urge and begin to use them..."

"But the very ransomed children of God themselves: why do they know so little of that habitual conscious communion with God which the Scriptures seem to offer? The answer is our chronic unbelief. Faith enables our spiritual sense to function. Where faith is defective the result will be inward insensibility and numbness toward spiritual things..."

"A spiritual kingdom lies all about us, enclosing us, embracing us, altogether within reach of our inner selves, waiting for us to recognize it. God Himself is here waiting our response to His Presence. This eternal world will come alive to us the moment we begin to reckon upon its reality..."

"God is real. He is real in the absolute and final sense that nothing else is. All other reality is contingent upon His. The great Reality is God who is the Author of that lower and dependent reality which makes up the sum of created things, including ourselves. God has objective existence independent of and apart from any notions which we may have concerning Him.The worshipping heart does not create its Object. It finds Him here when it wakes from its moral slumber in the morning of its regeneration..."

"As we begin to focus upon God the things of the spirit will take shape before our inner eyes. Obedience to the word of Christ will bring an inward revelation of the Godhead (John 14:21-23). It will give acute perception enabling us to see God even as is promised to the pure in heart. A new God-consciousness will seize upon us and we shall begin to taste and hear and inwardly feel the God who is our life and our all. There will be seen the constant shining of the light that lighteth every man that cometh into the world. (John 1:9) More and more, as our faculties grow sharper and more sure, God will become to us the great All, and His Presence the glory and wonder of our lives."

Prayer at the end of the chapter: O God, quicken to life every power within me, that I may lay hold on eternal things. Open my eyes that I may see; give me acute spiritual perception; enable me to taste Thee and know that Thou art good. Make heaven more real to me than any earthly thing has ever been. Amen.