When Anxiety Attacks
7 years ago
Thursday, August 28, 2008
So, I’m reading in Second Corinthians yesterday morning and one of the verses… actually two of them… stuck in my mind. I’ve been letting them tumble around in my mind all throughout the day yesterday and today. It’s kind of cool but kind of not because I had several meetings yesterday morning and early afternoon. And in the midst of those meetings a couple of times, I found these two verses coming back to me, and I had a hard time redirecting my focus back to the meeting. I wanted to just run with them and spend a sizable chunk of time meditating on them and exploring the different facets involved. I haven’t had much chance to mull it over yet, but I want to just get down some of my initial thoughts, so here we go.
In case you couldn’t tell, I’ve not been great at journaling consistently in the past, and I’m using this blog as a form of accountability to write and process through some of the things about which God is working me over.
“For every one of God’s promises is ‘Yes’ in Him [Christ]. He has also sealed us and given us the Spirit as a down payment in our hearts.” -2Cor. 1:20, 22
Jesus is the “Yes,” the fulfillment of every single promise God has ever made. As I allow that to sink in more and more, it is starting to overwhelm my capacity to understand and perceive the immensity of what is before me. It’s like going into those stinkin’ cool caves that are National Parks like Jewel Cave, Carlsbad Caverns, and, I’m guessing, Mammoth Cave. (I’ve only been in the first two of those three.) You go way underground into what feels like the heart of the Earth, never mind the fact that you’re just barely scratching the surface of the Earth’s mantle. As you go through the cave you easily lose a sense of perspective. You can walk into a room of the cave and think, “Oh, this isn’t so big,” until you start descending the stairs to the cave floor and find that you started out several stories up. And as you advance further into this room you see that it is far more expansive than you even realized at first sight. And then, you start thinking about the map of the cave complex you saw at the visitor’s center. And you realize that this is just one of thousands of rooms in this whole complex. And there’s hundreds of miles of cavern already mapped with an unknown amount that is yet to be explored because they are still charting out where it all even goes. Maybe this is just the little boy in me, but at this point I get this almost irresistible urge to run away from the group and just start exploring! I tell you …one dream I have in life is to take one of the serious spelunking tours that leave you nasty dirty and take you through some crazy passageways that are no bigger around than a carry-on suitcase and into stalagmite forests only ever seen by a few dozen people! I’d love it! But, I digress.
That’s where I’m at with this verse. Jesus is the “Yes,” the affirmation, of every promise the Father has ever made! In the Garden, when God first promises that He will send the woman’s Seed to crush the serpent and make all things right, Jesus was the fulfillment of that Promise! God promises that all the nations of the earth will be blessed through the line of Abraham… Jesus was and is that blessing! God desires a relationship with us… that was seen from the beginning when He came to walk with Adam and Eve in the cool of the evening each day… and it was further affirmed by Jesus diving into the storm tossed, sinful sea of fallen creation in order to reestablish contact between God and Man… making it possible for us to be hoisted up from where we were floating face down in our own sin and instead have new life breathed into our souls! Jesus is God’s answer to all that enslaves us. Jesus is God’s “Yes” to our cry for help! Christ took on the Father’s greatest rescue mission! He, the Word, is the one who created the heavens and the earth and will someday return on the clouds of heaven to usher in a new reign of peace and to see justice done! Jesus is God’s affirmation when the hurting, broken, downtrodden, abused, neglected, poor, and oppressed cry out and scream, “God! If You are really there, how could You turn Your head?! Don’t You see?! Don’t You care?!” Jesus, Christ, Messiah, Immanuel, God with us is the Father’s answer to our every question in the uncertainty of life. We can look to Christ and that is the ultimate evidence and fulfillment of every one of God’s promises. It is all made possible through Christ.
And the Spirit is the down payment toward our full realization of these promises. God gave us the Spirit as an initial payment prior to our full realization of God’s promises in Christ. The Spirit is God’s good faith payment, reminding us of Christ and confirming that God will remain faithful to the promises that He made and that were fulfilled in Christ. The Spirit lives within us, and works to complete the good work begun in us, and will continue to work in us until the day when Christ returns or we see Him face to face. That’s why Jesus said in John 16:7 that it was better for Him to leave and have the Spirit come than for Him to stay and speak to us face to face. Jesus’ presence in our physical world and His death and resurrection made the fulfillment of God’s promises possible. But the Spirit is the initial payment and proof of God’s overall intent to have complete, unhindered communion with us. As long as Jesus was here in the flesh we would not receive the down payment of the Spirit indwelling within us. God reestablished physical communion with Christ, then spiritual communion with the Spirit, and there will be a day when we finally realize full communion with God in both body and soul!
These are the things rattling around in my head. And now… at this point... I hope you don’t mind if I run away from our little group and start exploring this cavern!
In case you couldn’t tell, I’ve not been great at journaling consistently in the past, and I’m using this blog as a form of accountability to write and process through some of the things about which God is working me over.
“For every one of God’s promises is ‘Yes’ in Him [Christ]. He has also sealed us and given us the Spirit as a down payment in our hearts.” -2Cor. 1:20, 22
Jesus is the “Yes,” the fulfillment of every single promise God has ever made. As I allow that to sink in more and more, it is starting to overwhelm my capacity to understand and perceive the immensity of what is before me. It’s like going into those stinkin’ cool caves that are National Parks like Jewel Cave, Carlsbad Caverns, and, I’m guessing, Mammoth Cave. (I’ve only been in the first two of those three.) You go way underground into what feels like the heart of the Earth, never mind the fact that you’re just barely scratching the surface of the Earth’s mantle. As you go through the cave you easily lose a sense of perspective. You can walk into a room of the cave and think, “Oh, this isn’t so big,” until you start descending the stairs to the cave floor and find that you started out several stories up. And as you advance further into this room you see that it is far more expansive than you even realized at first sight. And then, you start thinking about the map of the cave complex you saw at the visitor’s center. And you realize that this is just one of thousands of rooms in this whole complex. And there’s hundreds of miles of cavern already mapped with an unknown amount that is yet to be explored because they are still charting out where it all even goes. Maybe this is just the little boy in me, but at this point I get this almost irresistible urge to run away from the group and just start exploring! I tell you …one dream I have in life is to take one of the serious spelunking tours that leave you nasty dirty and take you through some crazy passageways that are no bigger around than a carry-on suitcase and into stalagmite forests only ever seen by a few dozen people! I’d love it! But, I digress.
That’s where I’m at with this verse. Jesus is the “Yes,” the affirmation, of every promise the Father has ever made! In the Garden, when God first promises that He will send the woman’s Seed to crush the serpent and make all things right, Jesus was the fulfillment of that Promise! God promises that all the nations of the earth will be blessed through the line of Abraham… Jesus was and is that blessing! God desires a relationship with us… that was seen from the beginning when He came to walk with Adam and Eve in the cool of the evening each day… and it was further affirmed by Jesus diving into the storm tossed, sinful sea of fallen creation in order to reestablish contact between God and Man… making it possible for us to be hoisted up from where we were floating face down in our own sin and instead have new life breathed into our souls! Jesus is God’s answer to all that enslaves us. Jesus is God’s “Yes” to our cry for help! Christ took on the Father’s greatest rescue mission! He, the Word, is the one who created the heavens and the earth and will someday return on the clouds of heaven to usher in a new reign of peace and to see justice done! Jesus is God’s affirmation when the hurting, broken, downtrodden, abused, neglected, poor, and oppressed cry out and scream, “God! If You are really there, how could You turn Your head?! Don’t You see?! Don’t You care?!” Jesus, Christ, Messiah, Immanuel, God with us is the Father’s answer to our every question in the uncertainty of life. We can look to Christ and that is the ultimate evidence and fulfillment of every one of God’s promises. It is all made possible through Christ.
And the Spirit is the down payment toward our full realization of these promises. God gave us the Spirit as an initial payment prior to our full realization of God’s promises in Christ. The Spirit is God’s good faith payment, reminding us of Christ and confirming that God will remain faithful to the promises that He made and that were fulfilled in Christ. The Spirit lives within us, and works to complete the good work begun in us, and will continue to work in us until the day when Christ returns or we see Him face to face. That’s why Jesus said in John 16:7 that it was better for Him to leave and have the Spirit come than for Him to stay and speak to us face to face. Jesus’ presence in our physical world and His death and resurrection made the fulfillment of God’s promises possible. But the Spirit is the initial payment and proof of God’s overall intent to have complete, unhindered communion with us. As long as Jesus was here in the flesh we would not receive the down payment of the Spirit indwelling within us. God reestablished physical communion with Christ, then spiritual communion with the Spirit, and there will be a day when we finally realize full communion with God in both body and soul!
These are the things rattling around in my head. And now… at this point... I hope you don’t mind if I run away from our little group and start exploring this cavern!
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