Life without boundaries!
Insights into living eternal life now
Years ago we heard of a missionary to an African country who was translating the Bible into the local language, with the help of several local people. They came across one really difficult problem. Nobody could think of how to translate the word and concept of eternity.
There seemed to be nothing similar to it at all in the local language. This was pondered over several months until one morning a key local helper burst into the missionary’s tent exclaiming gleefully, “I’ve found it, I’ve found it!” His idea was to translate eternity into “life without boundaries.” What an inspired thought!
Over the past weekend I have felt that a particular comment and question from a visitor tied in with two emails I received the following day and linked with some things that have been stirring within me for a while. This is an attempt to weave the somewhat diverse threads into something that I trust will be seen as helpful, meaningful and important.
BLINDING BOUNDARIES
The comment I refer to came from a couple with whom our visiting friends were sharing Jesus. However, the couple were staunch followers of a so-called Christian ‘thing’ [that is, group, sect or denomination] and wanted nothing of the Good News of Christ’s saving grace. However our friends commented that since these folk read their bible regularly – right through once a year, I believe – they were praying that the Lord would open their eyes to gospel truth through their Scripture reading.
The question was whether regular bible reading ‘must’ lead to a response to the claims of Christ. I hadn’t thought about this matter in quite the same way before, but immediately named quite a number of groups and even recognized and widely acceptable denominations where members regularly read their bibles and yet only very rarely discover anything in the sacred Book that takes them beyond the beliefs of the group they are in. They haven’t discovered the eternity of life without boundaries – life without man made restrictions, limitations and the smallness of human reason and understanding.
REALLY BIBLE BELIEVING?
One time I chatted with a man who had belonged to a denomination I had been a minister in. At his workplace there was a man who seemed to be a keen Christian. One day he asked the fellow Christian if he would go out to lunch with him.
The reply was an apology saying, “I would really love to, but I am fasting this week.” To this he commented, “We are Baptists and live Bible based lives.” He said he knew that fasting wasn’t in the Scriptures since they had never been taught it.
The fellow Christian asked if he would be willing to be shown a couple of verses. He was quite astounded at what was read and pondered whether there was anything else in the Book they hadn’t been taught. The fellow believer showed him verses relating to being baptized in the Holy Spirit and living a Spirit filled life. It’s easy to see that man made boundaries had been depriving him of much that God wanted him to experience.
GOD SPEAKS IN THE LANGUAGE OF THE DAY
One of the emails we received was from a brother in the Lord in England who had read something of what I had shared in Ireland last year and has now written an article about Spirit led living. He was kind enough to share it with me. I like what he wrote, but one aspect caused my mind to race. In his paper he quotes at some length from the King James translation of the Bible.
You may note that I refer to the KJV but never use the title ‘The Authorised Bible.’ The only authority it bore, and bears, is that of an unbelieving monarch who authorised it to be read in churches.
Since I believe that God always speaks in the language of the day, I respect the KJV for much good that it has been instrumental in over the centuries, but prefer to use a more modern translation. No translation is perfect and all, of necessity, include some measure of interpretation. Why do I write about this? Any one translation can be turned into a finite boundary, whereas God is so much greater than them all. My heart is for life without boundaries.
A HEART FOR THE NEXT GENERATION
Here are excerpts from the second email that I mentioned:
“I have just re-read “He’s Here!” and thought back towards the changes and responses many believers have made on this journey and in so doing have paid a price. In the book you write, “My heart is for the next generation!” I have to echo this, although there are many challenges in this for my wife and I in walking whole-heartedly in response to whatever Jesus wants of us.”
“Young people need to face the cross – and so do we all,” you say. My question is HOW do we ensure that the following generation takes the baton from us without “going back” to the familiar and safe places of church form and function?”
Surely a part of the answer to these questions involves each one of us personally living a life without boundaries, which can only be accomplished by being continually filled, controlled and led by the Holy Spirit, honouring Jesus as total Lord of every aspect of our lives.
I firmly believe that there is the very real danger for every one of us of listening and responding to the inner ‘voice’ of God the Spirit only when He speaks and leads within the boundaries of our present experience, understanding and life style. Do we allow the norm of whatever fellow Christians we associate with, and what we’ve learned in the past, to be a hidden yet real and dangerous boundary to our sensitivity to Father’s desires for us? Do these things restrict, hinder and limit the flow of eternity within and through us?
May I plead with you to carefully ponder the above paragraph.
SWEEPING AND VITAL QUESTIONS
All of the above leads into my sharing things that have been stirring within me for some time. . . .
Hear are some sweeping questions: What is the main purpose for which the Scriptures were given by inspiration from God? Why has God deposited eternity within us, provided for our redemption, equipped us for triumphant godly living through the power of the indwelling Holy Spirit and made possible a foretaste of heaven now as well as an assured entrance there when we leave this life?
I doubt if anyone can fully or even adequately answer these questions which cover the breadth of eternity and the scope of life without boundaries. I simply want to ’paint with a broad brush’ things I have been pondering, trusting that they may be a means by which the Lord graciously blesses each reader.
I am convinced that the main purpose of the Scriptures and also of God speaking within our individual hearts is first of all to reveal Himself to us. Who is He? What is his nature? We could make a list: His divine attributes include perfect love, radiant holiness, absolute wisdom, ultimate power and abundant, eternal life. You may well want to add other attributes to these.
God’s love involves His goodness, kindness, mercy and grace, and also His hatred of all that is of a contrary nature. His holiness involves His total purity and abhorrence of all that is nasty, evil and sinful.
God’s absolute wisdom spans eternity and is expressed in all that He has desired, created and formed. That includes you and me! There is no limit whatever to God’s power, except the limits that He Himself may place upon it, in harmony with all that He unchangingly is. God’s life is radiating light, able to reach beyond any boundaries and to dispel and banish darkness and death.
God always acts in accord with what He is. In this He never changes. When one contemplates the breadth and depth of God’s wisdom, love and power – and His desire to exercise all that He is towards and within each and every one of us, one can but bow in awe, admiration and love before such an amazing, glorious God. He desires to be all that He is towards all mankind, even the least, the last and the lost. That certainly includes you and me.
DO POSSIBILITIES DWARF PRESENT REALITIES?
Even as I write like this I marvel with a tinge of disgust and shame at the puny and needless issues and boundaries over which fellow believers contend with one other, manifesting attitudes that are carnal and un Christ-like. Even some who boast of ‘being free’ are far from living a ‘life without boundaries’.
We are not truly free of anti-eternity boundaries simply because we abandon some of our old [religious] ways, hypocritical attitudes and sometimes deadly routines. We only enter into that when we die to self, take up our cross daily, yield our all to the Lord Jesus and discover the full reality of life in the Spirit – understanding and entering into a true walk of vital faith in God.
Limits that God sets for us are for our ultimate good and for His glory. Man made boundaries restrict, hinder and deprive us of heaven’s best.
HIGHEST PRIORITY AND AMAZING PROVISION
Shouldn’t we all give utmost priority to discovering all that God is, so that we may begin to understand God’s desire and purpose for our lives? Both the Scriptures and the indwelling Holy Spirit are given to us in sacred trust so that we may understand what God is like and, following that, see that He desires to establish what He is in each one of us.
Just as God is love, so He makes full provision not only that we should do kind and loving things, but that love becomes an integral part of our own nature. He intends that we reflect His goodness, kindness, mercy and grace, and that all we do comes from what we are – by His grace.
A holy God makes possible a cleansing from past sin, and a purifying of inward motivation, desire and thought. He freely provides us with a capacity to walk day by day in a continuing cleanness.
By His grace we can know experientially a humble, pure and joyful walk in the light that keeps us clean from worldly contamination. He would have us loathe all that is nasty, evil and sinful, not with a ‘holier than thou’ attitude, but realising that ‘there but for the grace of God go I.’ We need to walk with a humility of godly desire, being very aware of our own weakness and fallibility.
WE NEED GOD’S BEST
Surely you, like me, cannot be content with man’s best effort in personal living or in the wider spheres of Christ’s building His church . . . preparing His bride. Over many years I have observed believers as individuals and as local churches of one kind or another, making choices and decisions on the basis of human reason, logic, understanding and past experience. In other words, restrictive boundaries that grieve and limit God are seen as right and acceptable. I could go on, but just want to think with you briefly about God’s absolute wisdom.
I grew up believing this way to be the norm for us all. We were not taught about the inner guidance, inspiration and revelation the Holy Spirit desires to make known to each of us. Far too many of us worship at the altar of teaching, learning and knowledge rather than adoring a God of unimaginable insight and stupendous wisdom which He wants to exercise on our behalf.
In far too many Christian lives there is a huge discrepancy between God’s nature and His provision for His people on one hand, and their standard of living on the other. This ought not so to be! It is an appalling situation that sorely grieves the Holy Spirit and robs God of the glory He deserves. It also deprives unbelievers of the vibrant testimony of godly lives which would clearly point them to our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ.
Let’s make no mistake about it, [1] God gives priority to revealing His heart, character and nature to us. [2] Following that, He deeply desires that we know and understand that in His matchless grace He has provided, and does provide for all that is necessary for triumphant godly living. [3] The third thing to understand is that all that God is and all that God does is vitally linked with His desire that we live in such a manner that He is central, and truly reigns in every aspect of our lives.
Man made and accepted boundaries set up a barrier against God’s highest plans for each one of us. They actually block us from fully experiencing what Paul shared in Ephesians 1:3, “Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ who has blessed us in the heavenly realms with every spiritual blessing in Christ.” When we accept boundaries that hinder us from knowing the wonder of eternal blessing flooding our hearts and lives for Christ’s sake, we actually tend to break down boundaries which God has established for his glory and our safety and good.
Here’s something else Paul wrote which you may wish to check out in your favourite translation: “Christ lives in me. The life you see me living is not ‘mine,’ but it is lived by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself for me. I am not going back to that. Is it not clear to you that to go back to that old rule-keeping, peer-pleasing religion would be an abandonment of everything personal and free in my relationship with God? I refuse to do that, to repudiate God’s grace.” This is from Galatians 2:20-21 in ‘The Message.’
It is a very precious privilege to simply be a God-filled nobody, experiencing continuing intimate fellowship with our wonderful Lord Jesus.
DANGEROUS REQUESTS!
After I had begun writing this paper a dear South African friend sent me his reply to a recent questionnaire we’d sent him. He wrote: “Two very dangerous requests I made of Christ were, “Give me everything you have got for me and don’t hold anything back” and, “Please sift through all the church teaching (knowledge) I have accumulated and remove that which is of man and leave only that which is of You”. Dangerous because He took me at my word and has done exactly that, which has led to a life of great exhilaration. This is a life I wouldn’t change for anything!”
Over the years we have observed the freshness and fullness of this brother’s fragrant Christian life. Even though the path he and his wife have walked has not always been understood or appreciated, other believers have responded to the challenge that their lives present, and they have been privileged to point sinners to their Lord and Saviour.
WILL YOU FACE UP TO THESE QUESTIONS?
Are these the kinds of prayer that you, my reader, should be earnestly uttering? Does your reading of this article stir you to cry out to the Lord for the fullness of His life to be manifest in you? Isn’t God deserving of our heartfelt love and adoration?
Can you see that living out what I have endeavoured to share with you may provide the very best hope for the next generation, which is among us even now? Can you respond to God with determination to discover experientially the very best that He has for you? His love, which is so very amazing, ‘demands my life, my soul, my all.’
To be satisfied with being much the same as other believers we know is totally unacceptable, isn’t it? The Lord Jesus Himself is the standard. God’s plan is for us to be conformed to the likeness of His Son! [see Romans 8:28,29]
A God of glory, a church in disarray and a world in darkness all deserve, and must have, nothing less than our all, fully yielded to Christ. To Him alone be praise and glory for evermore!
[by John Beaumont]
In Christ – because of Calvary. Joy of joys!
