The Perfecting Church

Interiority is the very real terrain within us that can’t readily be seen – our thoughts, our feelings, our inner struggles, our dreams, our hopes, our self-knowledge. We often have a hard time living in touch with our interior-selves because the world around us is consumed with surface living. Many believe what we gain on the outside, will somehow address what we leave unaddressed on the inside. But what is addressed on the inside empowers us to address the surfacy world around us.

Too often the pace of our days is dictated by external demands that cause us to strive for success, but Jesus offers us a different rhythm in His divine invitation to selah. This is not a mere suggestion, but a prescription for the abundant life He ordained for us as we cease our grind and embrace the grace of the Father.

Mankind wasn’t created to work for God or apart from God. It has always been God’s intent that we would work with Him. When we ignore God’s sovereign position in creation and our lives by His mercy He works to remind us. As we enter chapter 40 of Isaiah, the prophet is prophesying of a time to come when Israel will find themselves in captivity due to their rebellion against their design and call to work with God. Like those who proceeded us we are designed to work with God, not for God and not apart from God.

In the new heaven and new earth believers will come to the end of human striving and experience creation as God intended – the ultimate place of rest. But God doesn’t want us to wait. He’s calling us to rest and cease from our works and ways now. Selah and rest are related. Selah is the practice of stopping, listening, being introspective, retrospective, and experiencing time in God’s presence as sacred – it is the pathway to ceasing from our works and entering into God’s rest. There are promises and a power in rest that can not be accessed by any other means.

We live in a hyper-paced, world filled with people striving to exchange time for value. The world in which we live doesn’t assign value to human beings; it assigns value to human doings. But the reality is, our human efforts and accomplishments can’t provide a lasting sense of worth and value. Jesus, the creator and architect of life, comes to deliver us out of the futility and vanity of this temporary world by bringing us into the rest of His eternal Kingdom – teaching us the power of selah. Jesus teaches us to live with just one concern.

Embracing an eternal perspective of success is one of the most transformative changes we make in our deliverance from a temporary view of life. We can’t consistently see life from an eternal perspective, if we’re entangled in temporary pursuits. Self-manufactured success gives us a fleeting sense of security and worth. It causes us to live pursuing the next thing and the next thing, over and over again like an addict trying to find lasting significance in a temporary world.

To live life as a follower of Jesus is to live beyond the seen realm. It’s to live in this world from the vantage point of another world. Our call is to live in this temporary world that’s passing with our eyes and hearts fixed on the eternal world and Kingdom to come. Living with an eternal perspective or for another world is to willingly lose our lives in this world that we might find the lives He created us for now and forever.

Death is one thing we can all be sure of. It is an inescapable truth we all must face. We will either embrace human speculation that when you’re dead you’re done or divine revelation that Jesus died and rose again -- so we believe that God will bring with Jesus those who have fallen asleep in Him.

There are few things more important for us in this life than developing the character to see eternally, while hurting presently. Anybody can respond well and look good when things are going well, but pain and adversity expose us. True Christian character and deeply formed dependence comes from time spent with God and trust forged in adversity. To live as an overcomer in this world, we will have to learn to see eternally, even when we are hurting presently.

Although we live in a temporary world, our call is to live life from an eternal perspective. Life from a temporal, earthly perspective is lived clinging to this decaying world, believing we can find identity, worth and value pursuing what can be seen, owned and controlled. Living from an eternal perspective means living with our eyes fixed on the unseen realities and truths of God’s word and Kingdom. Living from an eternal perspective means living life from the inside out.

An eternal perspective is fixed on the unseen realities and truths of God’s Kingdom. It’s a view of life free from the limitations of the temporary, earthly pursuits that consume the lives of so many of us. An eternal perspective is a heart captivated by the reigning King of Kings who’s ushering His Kingdom into the earth. It’s a life lived longing for and pursuing the restoration of all things in the new heaven and the new earth.

In a day and age where our pace is driven by doing and achievement, how does one find space to discover or simply… be? Not only is rest vital for the health of our souls, it’s crucial to our identity and the sanctity of community. Could it be that our fruitfulness, multiplying and replenishing is not found in doing, but in rest? In other words, our doing should not be mutually exclusive from sabbath—a place of rest where the divine resides and we’ve been created to abide.

We are constantly bombarded with images, songs and media which strive to shape our hearts and minds to the world’s standards. They present to us what should be perceived as beautiful, desired, pursued and successful. But God’s standards are different! And as followers of Christ, we must aim to measure up to heaven’s standards for our lives and not the world’s.

The fall of mankind not only separated our lives from God and corrupted them with sin, it also corrupted the earth and everything in it. The earth is no longer a permanent place. We live between two eternal destinations – an eternity with God in the new heaven and the new earth and an eternity apart from God in the eternal torment of hell. This earth literally sits at an eternal crossroad and God calls us to seek those things which are above.

If our greatest hope in this life is something earthly, natural or temporary we haven’t embraced the greatest hope God has for us. He has prepared a place for us, a new heaven and a new earth where there will be no more sin, no more death, no more sorrow and no more pain. God will dwell with us there, we will be His people and there will be no end. When our greatest hope becomes this prepared place – the new heaven and the new earth – our lives in this temporary place is forever changed.