I am still dealing with the topic of the sovereignty
of God and the problem it presents to us in our thinking. God has got quite a
bad press from the common belief that he personally controls everything, or at
least allows everything that happens to happen. That is not true and the bible
does not teach that. I’ve dealt with this in my previous two posts. Today I
want to specifically deal with the personal and trans-personal aspect of God’s
dealings with us. Understanding the difference has helped me a lot in my
relationship with God, especially in the realm of prayer and how to receive
from God.
The trans-personal dimension of God’s dealings with us
When I say trans-personal, I mean that it is always
the same and it is the same for everybody, it transcends the personal dimension
of human beings. God has created the physical universe to run according to very
stable, trans-personal laws. They never change, and they are totally equal for
everybody. They act like a framework within which we have to learn to lead our
personal lives. They are commonly referred to as natural laws – because they are consistent and they never change.
As humans we find ourselves in this universe, and we can’t change anything
about these laws. We can only discover them and use them, live within them. But
we are not able to alter them in any way. If we learn to cooperate with them,
we can use them to our advantage. If we violate them, we suffer damage or loss.
And it doesn’t matter if we are good people or bad people, rich or poor,
beautiful or ugly – they always work in the same way for absolutely everybody.
For example: electricity will always work the way God has created it to work.
If you touch a live wire, you will get a shock or be electrocuted, no matter
what kind of person you are, good or bad… You know what I mean. If somebody
accidentally dies from electrocution, we don’t say: “I wonder why the electric
company let this happen to this man. He must have been a bad person…” No, it
has nothing to do with the electric company. The man just violated the law of
electricity and he had to bear the consequences. It is not personal, it is
trans-personal.
I recently read about a young boy in India who was a
child of Christian parents. He got electrocuted accidentally by a live wire
that he had touched. Although he was a child of Christian parents and loved and
cherished by God, he died a premature death. The law of electricity killed him.
It wasn’t personal. It just happened the way it always happens if a human being
is earthed and touches a live wire. It always kills. It is trans-personal. This
was not the end of the story, though. Because there are spiritual laws that can
help undo the damage. In this case the parents of this boy knew that God has
the power to bring people back to life as an answer to prayer. So they called
their pastor, he sent a woman of faith over to the house. This woman prayed
over the dead body of the boy for several hours, until God brought him back to
life. The boy is now alive and a living and walking testimony to the power of
God. (James Rutz: Mega Shift, Empowerment Press, Colorado Springs)
The personal dimension of God’s dealings with us
God’s personal dealings with us happen within the
framework of the trans-personal dimension. As we learn how to live in the
universe that he created, we learn how these trans-personal laws of God work
and we learn how to use them. As babies, we learn how to crawl, then walk and then
run and jump and do flip-flops. We learn how to live within the trans-personal
law of gravity. Now the natural laws are so consistent and so stable that they
actually leave us with the impression that they kind of are running by themselves.
We take them for granted and think that the universe could not be any other way.
That’s just how things are. – Well, the bible says that God - or to be more
specific - Jesus upholds everything by the power of his word. Hebrews 1:3 says “He (Jesus) is the radiance of the
glory of God and the exact imprint of his nature, and he upholds the
universe by the word of his power.”The laws of nature reflect the
faithfulness and absolute dependability of God – he never breaks his word. He
cannot lie (Numbers 23:19 : God is not man, that he should lie,
or a son of man, that he should change his mind. Has he said, and will he not
do it? Or has he spoken, and will he not fulfill it?). He is always faithful.
That’s why we live in a universe that is so precise and predictable and
ordered. God is keeping it that way through the power of his word. And he does
that in a trans-personal way. These laws work for everybody, for the good
people and for the bad ones. Adolf Hitler used the same natural laws to perform
his atrocities and evils as Mother Theresa did to perform her acts of kindness,
love and mercy. And God didn’t suspend the laws of nature, in order to stop
Hitler. He couldn’t do that, because he has limited himself to work within the
framework of these laws. And he cannot (= will not) break his word.
Now within this trans-personal framework of reality
God calls us into a personal relationship with himself through faith in
Jesus Christ. He has put an innate knowledge of himself into our system that
works like a homing device, directing us to seek him and to ask about him.
Ecclesiastes 3:11 says “He
has also set eternity in the human heart.” Every human being is born with
eternity in their hearts, a spiritual hunger for God. We instinctively feel
that the physical universe is not all of reality, that there is more. The good
news of the Gospel is that God, the creator of the universe, has made a way
through Jesus Christ for us to have a personal relationship with him that will
go on forever. This is mind-blowing and awesome. As we read the revelation of
God in His word, we discover that at the root of the trans-personal, orderly
universe that runs like a clockwork, is a personal creator, who created all of
reality and who calls us into a relationship with himself. – This is the
nearly-too-good-to-be-true message of the Gospel. You can get to know the
maker, creator and sustainer of this vast universe in person. You can become a
son or daughter of the living God and live in a close, intimate, personal
relationship with him. – But does that mean that we can just walk into such a
relationship as we desire, in any way we want? – No, definitely not. We can
only come to God on His terms. We have to get to know how this spiritual
relationship works.
Trans-personal laws in the spiritual realm
As I have
already mentioned in one of my previous posts, most people have no problem
accepting the trans-personal dimension of how things function in the physical
realm. But when it comes to the spiritual realm, we tend to think that God can
do whatever he likes, in whatever way he likes and at whatever time he likes.
We think of God as having no restrictions and limitations whatsoever in how He
acts and what He does. So whenever something bad happens, we wonder: Why did
God allow this to happen? Or if our prayers are not being answered we wonder:
why did God decide not to answer our prayers? We tend to totally disregard the
trans-personal dimension within the spiritual realm and think of God in only
personal terms. But this is not accurate thinking and it leads to all kinds of
wrong conclusions. Remember, the sovereignty of God means that He is like a
king, ruling over a kingdom – not a dictator, or “big Brother” who controls everything
and is personally involved in everything.
If we
realize that the spiritual world functions according to very stable, reliable
and unchangeable laws that God has put into place by His word, similar to the
way the physical world functions, many things start to make sense that did not
make sense before. God is almighty, but he has put laws into place. And He
himself abides by those laws.
Examples for
the trans-personal dimension in the bible
The personal
will of God is, that not one single human being would perish and go to hell. He
has made hell for Satan and his angels. God does not want that any man should
perish. This is the explicit will of God. 2 Peter 3:9 says “The Lord is not
slow to fulfill his promise as some count slowness, but is patient toward you, not
wishing that any should perish, but that all should reach repentance.” - if God was only dealing with us in the
personal dimension, then we could say: “Well, God, if you want that nobody
should perish, just save everybody. Just let us all into heaven. You are almighty;
you can do whatever you want to…” But this is not so. There are trans-personal
laws that govern the way we can get into right standing with God. If we ignore
them, we will miss the salvation and go to hell. God has established in His
word that salvation is only possible by faith in Jesus Christ. So I can be a
very good and decent person, doing a lot of good works and have very high moral
standards. But if I refuse to believe in Jesus and accept his atoning sacrifice
for my sins, I still will perish and go to hell. Why? Because God has
established this law in his word. 1 John 5:12: “Whoever has the Son has life;
whoever does not have the Son of God does not have life.”
Laws that govern how we receive from God
When it
comes to prayer and receiving from God, the same principle applies. There are
many things that God wants to give us in prayer. The New Testament alone is brimming with
promises of good things that God wants to bless us with. They are really
amazing. And God personally really wants us all to have them and walk in total
victory, abundance, peace, blessings and prosperity. So why does He not just
shower us with all this good stuff, if He wants to and He is so good? – Because
He has bound himself by his word to act in a certain way. There are
trans-personal spiritual laws that govern how we receive from God. And we can
be really good persons, love God with all our hearts and have a really intimate
love-relationship with him. But if we don’t know these laws and don’t know how
to operate in them, we will still miss out and not receive a lot of what God
wanted to bless us with.
Not having
this clear in my thinking was the primary reason for my frustration that caused
my spiral into midlife-crisis. (see one of my earlier posts for details) I thought that God was dealing with me only on
a personal level. And because of that I was thinking that He didn’t treat me
very well, because I felt that He didn’t answer my prayers, and that I just
wasn’t able to walk in the degree of victory, power and authority that I so
clearly saw in the bible. That is also the reason, why Jesus got frustrated
with his disciples, when they couldn’t heal the boy with the seizures. (Matthew
17). They were not able to do that, not because God decided not to answer their
prayer this time, or because he had something different in mind. No, they were
violating a spiritual law. When they asked Jesus, why they couldn’t heal the boy,
His answer was very revealing: Matthew 17:19-20 “Then came the disciples to Jesus
apart, and said, Why could not we cast him out? And Jesus said unto them, Because
of your unbelief: for verily I say unto you, If ye have faith as a grain of
mustard seed, ye shall say unto this mountain, Remove hence to yonder place;
and it shall remove; and nothing shall be impossible unto you.”
God's goal for us - the personal and trans-personal
God’s goal
for our lives is a two-fold one: he wants us to have a deep, real and loving
personal relationship with himself. (John 3:16/John 17:3) That is the primary
goal of Salvation. He loves us and he wants to be loved back by us. The second
goal for us is simply this: that we grow up into Christ (Ephesians 4:15) – that
we learn how the trans-personal faith-laws of the spiritual world function, so
that we can walk as Christ walked and do what He did; the same works that he
did and greater works that these (John 14:12).
Satan has
managed to steal the knowledge of these two goals from the body of Christ by
introducing a lot of false teachings into Christianity. The first Christians
clearly knew them and walked in them and saw very powerful results. Then the
church deteriorated into the dark ages where very few people knew about these
things. The protestant Reformation, and the subsequent Moravian, Methodist etc.
revivals brought back the knowledge about the personal relationship with God.
That’s great. But the second one was still largely forgotten. Only with the
rise of the Pentecostal and Charismatic revivals the body of Christ started
again to wake up to this second goal: That we can actually grow up to walk as
Christ walked, in the same degree of holiness, power and authority. And now
this is beginning to sweep the body of Christ. Individuals everywhere are starting
to discover these truths and putting them into practice. A huge revival is on
the way. We live in exciting times. As the darkness is deepening and increasing
around us, the body of Christ is awakening to its full potential. Praise be to
our wonderful God! Until next week! Be encouraged and blessed everybody!
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