For a number of reasons we’ve shifted Men’s Ministry to this Saturday, Jan. 25. This month is a unique opportunity: Helen Hofman, a local, biblically-minded counselor will speak to us on how pornography usage affects wives with “betrayal trauma.” Most of you know Men’s Ministry doesn’t really draw younger men, but I’d like to urge you to come this time. This issue tends to affect your generation more than mine and presents a problem that will dog the Church throughout your lives. Helen is a specialist in sex-addiction and brings decades of experience. Please take an hour (9-10a, breakfast at 8a) to hear her unique perspective. Thank you. Officers: prayer for our shepherding groups at 7a.
Spiritual-mindedness is the ability, or determination, to see supernatural reality in what presents itself to us as a natural world. It’s a kind of “second sight.” That phrase usually implies clairvoyance, but I’m stealing it to mean what Jesus means in Matt. 13, “For this people’s heart has grown dull…and their eyes they have closed, lest they should see with their eyes…and understand with their heart and turn, and I would heal them. But blessed are your eyes, for they see, and your ears, for they hear.” Reality is not what it seems; it’s not even reality. Spiritual-mindedness is the ability to look at the ordinary day and see the hand of God. Jesus longs for his children to have that ability.
I’m reading Tom Holland’s book Dominion. Holland is not a Christian, but he is arguing how the West remains (for the better) saturated by Christian assumptions. Early on, Holland makes the point that, as a historian, his work is to account for Christianity’s effect on the West through understanding the “affairs of humanity” and the “mortal origins” of Christian influences. He then adds that accounting for supernatural origins of the faith is to “engage in apologetics.” There’s the divide: things that mortals do separated from things that God does. What is natural is real; what is supernatural is speculation.
My problem relative to this—and a battle I mean to fight from now to the end of my ministry—is that I know many Christians, and many pastors, who have given in to the same dichotomy. When they strategize and plan and create vision, they think almost exclusively in terms of the “affairs of humanity.” Yes, there are token prayers at the beginning and end of the meeting. But often those prayers are the same as sprinkling holy water on rocket launchers: merely symbolic. Everybody “knows” the real power is in the rocket. To be spiritually-minded would mean that, at least from time to time, we had meetings that were mostly prayer, and we talked a little at the beginning and a little at the end.
The greatest illustration of true sight will always and forever be 2 Kings 6, where Elisha and his servant are surrounded in the night by a hostile army. “When the servant of the man of God rose early in the morning and went out, behold, an army with horses and chariots was all around the city. And the servant said, “Alas, my master! What shall we do?” [Elisha] said, “Do not be afraid, for those who are with us are more than those who are with them.” Then Elisha prayed and said, “O Lord, please open his eyes that he may see.” So the Lord opened the eyes of the young man, and he saw, and behold, the mountain was full of horses and chariots of fire all around Elisha. And when the Syrians came down against him, Elisha prayed to the Lord and said, “Please strike this people with blindness.” So he struck them with blindness in accordance with the prayer of Elisha.”
Seeing is not believing; believing is seeing.