"WHERE THERE IS NO VISION THE PEOPLE PERISH!"

What do you see?

The Mat 6:33 Imperative is an exploration in which the prophetic question, “What do you see” is continually asked.  Nothing much happens in the life of a person who sees nothing.  A person with no vision is like the archer who shoots an arrow with no target—his target is wherever the arrow lands.  A vision is an obsession you see in your mind, and feel in your spirit, until it hits the ground.

When we revise old mental models, we must replace them with empowering new images of the future.  What do you see happening in the future, visualise it, dream it, sketch it, pray about it, develop an attitude, just find a way of keeping it alive!  The emotions that ensue from the tensions and contradictions of that process provide the crucial momentum towards your passion.

Biblical scripture is abundantly rich with powerful imagery that can help us in the process of rebuilding new mental models.  The prophets and psalmists portrayed God in various positive and empowering images; it invoked in them a sense of understanding the attributes of God on a level they could relate with. 

Any vision built on flawed and negative mental models will not survive the test of time.  There are many tensions along the way, and every one of them is intended to derail the vision.  Nehemiah had a vision to rebuild the walls of Jerusalem, and that vision had tensions from its very inception, but the people around him had an ATTITUDE to work.

Think pictures!

God has given us an amazing mind to work with, to be sure, ^{1Co 2:16} “We have the mind of Christ.”  If we hold out the picture of a suffering Christ before us, then we will also uphold his unconquerable spirit, and victory over adversity and death.  Jesus did not give up on his mission for life; he saw it through till the end.

Peter Senge says, “An effective way to focus the subconscious is through imagery and visualization.”  The mind thinks in pictures!  The Bible is full of vivid images that create a clear picture of our relationship to God.  The prophets conveyed and received their messages in imagery, and Christ taught in parables.

Visualization is common practice in the various disciplines of psychology; meditation is its closest counterpart in the various religions that practice it.  Meditation as a form of visualization was an integral part of David’s prayer life, and he wrote, ^{Ps 119:148} “My eyes stay open through the watches of the night that I may meditate on your promises.”

Meditation is turning an image of a desired state over in your mind repeatedly, until it sinks into your spirit.  You don’t only churn an image of a desired state in the mind, but you practically become it.  The practice of meditation does not yield results overnight, but if one stays with the process as a matter of habit, the outcome is nothing short of awe-inspiring and phenomenal.

In biblical scripture, God is the object of our meditation; otherwise the whole thing is mental rehearsal in a vacuum.  Meditation without an object of faith is not sustainable.  A sustainable and meaningful vision is born within purpose.  Purpose defines our reason for being, and vision is what we want to achieve within the perimeters of that purpose.  If we do not define purpose, we run the risk of hopping all over the place achieving what we may not even be passionate about.

The Mat 6:33 Imperative is the vibrant atmosphere and environment in which our capacity to achieve vision is stretched; in it, we are invited to begin to dream with God God’s inexhaustible dream for our future.  The prophet’s words bear this out, ^{Jer 29:11} “For I know the plans I have for you,” declares the LORD, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.”

To be sure, seeking the kingdom of God is setting out on a life long journey of understanding, and trying to understand again what God’s plan is for our lives.  The Kingdom is given to us one acre at a time in an unfolding process, Israel was promised, ^{Dt 7:22} “The LORD your God will drive out those nations before you, little by little.  You will not be allowed to eliminate them all at once, or the wild animals will multiply around you.” 

The challenge is not in reaching the destination, but in staying with the process.  More often than not, that journey is crowded by what Christ called, ^{Mat 13:22 (NLT)}“…the worries of this life, and the lure of wealth.”   The Mat 6:33 Imperative is to pursue what we have not been given (spiritual), and the rest will be given to us as well (physical).  For many, that distinction is written with invisible ink.

Meaningful purpose must be located squarely in God’s overall purpose for the creation of the universe; otherwise, it runs the risk of being exhausted or misdirected.  When we are the focus of our own purpose, our environment limits our dreams, and yet in God we are released to explore the constant beckon of never-ending possibilities at the peripheries of an ever-shifting horison.

 

There is no maximum to what we can accomplish in God through Christ, because beyond every level of triumph there is a higher possibility.  Paul wrote, ^{Phil 4:13} “I can do everything through him who gives me strength.”

IT'S NOT ABOUT MONEY!

^{Mt 5:3} “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the Kingdom of heaven.”

Let’s face it, who wants to be poor?  For the most part, we all want to accumulate wealth; our reasons may differ, but we still want it.  In most societies, it is a symbol of power or social status.  You may be the dumbest person on earth, but if you have money, nobody really cares how stupid you are.  Even in agrarian societies, a person is as important as the number of animals he owns.  It is an environmental thing.

Poverty is a sign of being desperate; one would rather be dead than poor.  A wise king once wrote, ^{Pr 19:4} “Wealth brings many friends, but a poor man’s friend deserts him.”  In times of desperate economic turmoil many billionaires around the world take their own lives because for them life is measured in terms of a bank balance.  Some cheat their way to the top of millions money worth because the thought of not having money can be terrifying.  For them the maxim is true, “Better a rich devil than a poor saint.”  Spouses are known to underwrite their partners for large sums of insurance money and then plot to murder them.  People can do unimaginable things for money.

Long before Adam Smith people have been on the rush to the “gold fields” just in case king mammon is smiling; perhaps they too could receive financial healing by pushing through the crowds and touching the edge of his garment.

Jesus and his non-sense.

The disciples were often tempted to resort to their five senses, Christ told them many times that he will be crucified, and that he will rise on the third day.  When the women came to report that he had risen, ^{Lk 24:11} “they did not believe the women, because their words seemed to them like nonsense.”  That confrontation of the spiritual and the sensual is presented many times over in our lives—we struggle and juggle between natural sense and spiritual non-sense.

So what did Jesus mean?  In a world turning on wheels of wealth, what does poverty have to do with anything?  As in everything else, the Master had a different perspective on the subject of poverty or wealth for that matter. In his usual paradoxical way of teaching he said a person is blessed not in his/her wealth but in spiritual poverty.  That is why he refused Satan’s kingdoms of the earth.  He was tempted where many of us would have loved falling on our knees at first call.  After all, it happened in the mountains where nobody would know about it.  The bigger question is, “What did Jesus know about poverty and wealth that has eluded us?”

 In the parable of the rich fool, we see a competent farmer who is preoccupied with his own small picture and gets ready to recline and enjoy the fruits of his ingenuity and hard work.  Life is measured in the abundance of his wealth.  In the meantime he ignored that his real life was what he could not control.  Then a question was asked, ^{Lk 12:20} ‘You fool! This very night your life will be demanded from you.  Then who will get what you have prepared for yourself?’  He prepared for the future and forgot about eternity.  In the irony of paradox; if he prepared for eternity, his future would have been taken care of.

 

There is a principle buried deep in what Christ said to the rich fool, “The core of material abundance is squarely situated in one’s spiritual abundance.”  All things must proceed from the richness of one’s knowledge of God.  When we embrace eternity, we embrace life in all its abundance, including the smaller picture of life on earth.

Jesus was not talking about money as in hard cents and dollars; he was talking about the person.  If you are poor in God, you are poor even with your coffers full.  Money is a blessing from God, but many curse themselves with it when it defines who they are outside of God.  ^{1Ti 6:10} “For the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil.  Some people, eager for money, have wandered from the faith and pierced themselves with many griefs.” 

  

His whole ministry focused on changing and turning natural perspectives right side up, trying to get people to see that reality is not sensual but spiritual, that if you focus on what you see you miss out on what you don’t see, and that what you don’t see is more powerful than what you see.

 

That was not a rejection of the need for money, but a correction of a perspective.  We all need money for one reason or another, and anyone can be rich if they put their mind to it—but we can’t deny that some have indeed pierced themselves with many griefs.  It is not money, but the love of it that sends people spinning in a whirlwind of greed.  The same fire we use to cook a meal can bring a house down.

Christ taught that the ultimate measure of a person is not in how much the person owns but in how rich the person is in his/her relationship with God.  Right here we are caught with our backs against the wall.  The twist is not so much in the contest of economic ideologies as it is in our hearts.  We are chasing sensual vanities in real terms and spiritual realities in vain terms.

 

Christ refused to be caught up in those silly earthly games; he was here to point humanity to something greater beyond the seen and the measurable, to a place where the seen is discovered in the unseen, and every time he succeeded he would say, “Your faith has healed you.”  Where people could not see his point, He said "Oh you of little faith.”

EVERY DREAM HAS ITS DETRACTORS!

Every dream has its detractors.

An enemy sleeps when you work and works against you when you sleep, his/her compass bearings are always pointing in the wrong direction.  Our anxiety is caused by our expectation of good from evil.  We expect sweetness from bitter sources, and in the end we are disappointed not by the enemy but by our own expectations.

Enemies disrupt your good work because you threaten to expose their laziness by succeeding where they fail.  They never operate from a foundation of strength but always from a position of weakness.  Saul was afraid of David"s successes that is why he became his enemy, ^{1Sa 18:29} “Saul became still more afraid of him, and he remained his enemy the rest of his days.”

If you lose sleep over your enemy your focus is misdirected, your energy wasted and your success delayed.  You ignore the essentials and concentrate on non-essentials.  You spend more time building high fences for your security instead of exploring opportunities for expansion and growth. 

One of the best ways to deal with enemies’ is not to lavish them with the attention they expect but to ignore them and pursue your dream as competently and as completely as you can: that in fact is more piercing than a confrontation.  Just go about with your business as if they don’t exist, if they disrupt it, pick up the pieces and try again.  Many years ago, Rudyard Kipling wrote in a poem called “IF,”

If you can dream—and not make dreams your master

If you can think—and not make thoughts your aim;

If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster

And treat those two impostors the same;

If you can bear to hear the truth you’ve spoken

Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,

Or watch the things you gave your life to broken,

And stoop and build’em up with worn out tools

Yours is the earth and everything in it,

And—which is more—you’ll be a man my son

The enemy’s best weapon is to instil panic and panic always leads to discouragement, discouragement to abandonment.  His/her highest objective is to see you throw out your dream.  Enemies enjoy sowing weed where others sow seed.  The challenge is how you respond.  When enemies’ disrupt your good work you need to be sober enough to make a good decision for the next step, you need to be calm because sometimes it is a matter of life and death.  Remember the Farmer's advice in the parable of Christ, when the farm workers wanted to rush into the fields and uproot the weeds, the farmer decided against it, “While you are pulling the weeds, you may root up the wheat with them.  Let both grow together until the harvest.”  If your decision is based on your emotions, you must prepare for commotion not promotion.

Enemies’ are usually faceless; if you remove the weed they may return to root out the seed, letting the seed and the weed grow together increases your chances of a good harvest.  It may look chaotic at first but when the blades shoot up and the ears begin to grow, a trained eye can separate the wheat from the weeds.  If you rush in, you may play right into the hands of the enemy.

Sometimes we destroy our good work because we want to rush in and fight the fires, but some things are best defended by the test of time.  For a while, everything may appear green and we can’t tell the seed from the weed, but in the end the seed is not the weed, and the difference in the blades will be obvious and crystal clear for all to see.

Good and evil may exist side by side but eventually truth triumphs.  Pharaoh called his magicians to turn their sticks into snakes like Moses did, but eventually the snake with God swallowed the rest.  Truth does not need to be defended because it can defend itself.  It may take a while for the aura of a lie to die down, but eventually it must give way to the sterner character of a truth that never gives in to the popular demands of time, because truth is vindicated in the unfolding processes of time.

WHAT IS TRUTH?

Unravelling the crisis of the belly.

Biblical scripture summarises the problem of human existence in one word—SIN.  Our first temptation was a temptation of the belly, and the first judgement, was a judgement on the belly.  We are driven by the demands of our bellies, long before Maslow, Paul wrote about the crisis of the belly, ^{Phil 3:19} “Their destiny is destruction, their god is their stomach, and their glory is in their shame.  Their mind is on earthly things.”  Our sin may be expressed in many other forms, but every idol we carve is fundamentally related to our hunger spasms.

The challenge of the Mat 6:33 Imperative is to discover God in the old way.  In the Garden of Eden, our priority was not food, but a relationship with God—we were created, not for providence, but for relationship.  The question of providence had been taken care of long before the serpent disrupted our relationship with God.  The charge in the Garden did not forbid eating, but not to eat from a particular tree, ^{Ge 2:17} “but you must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, for when you eat of it you will surely die.”   The tree promised more than what God had given, at least according to the serpent.  God provided for need, and the serpent created the path for greed; and we’ve been hell bent ever since.  The prophecy has turned out to be true, because many who turn the belly into a god pay exorbitantly, and often with their own lives.

Greed is undermining what you have because you envy what you don’t have.  It is never content, because when you have what you didn’t have, your eyes stretch out for more.  This is the point where idolatry is introduced; when we become obsessed with the environment to the degree that our relationship with God is disrupted, and eventually detached.

Is there more to life than what it already offers?  That question is a corollary to a more important question, “What is life?”  How meaningful life becomes for each person, depends on how each one responds to that question; and every answer calls forth another question. 

According to Christ, ^{Lk 12:23} “Life is more than food, and the body more than clothes.”  Christ is not saying that food and clothes are not important; he is saying there is more; and that more is beyond tangibles such as food and clothing.  What could be more important than food and clothes?  Christ sums up the answer in one word; “Life.”  There’s more to life than fine food, human achievement, breathing in and out, or being preoccupied with fashion and design.

It is clear that Christ understood Life on a different level than we do.  For us, it is this confusing and anxious thing we do between birth and death; and to him it is who we are becoming between birth and beyond physical death.  Life on our terms and in our understanding is often squashed by existential pressures, and limited by the grave.  In Christ, Life is unlimited; it marches triumphantly through the constraints of human existence, into a purpose with ever stretching possibilities.

Our natural tendency is to let it go if it doesn’t make sense, and that is where we are caught with our backs against the wall.  Like a dog given a long rope, we end up coiled in the intricate web of our own creation.  The question we ought to ask is, “What did the Christ know about life that we are missing?”

The word “Life” appears in the Gospel of John more often than it does in the Synoptic Gospels.  For Jesus, life was more than this temporal, lifelong thing interrupted by the death.  It was something permanent, eternal, and enabled in us by the Spirit of God.  He didn’t only speak about life, he was Life.  One level is physical and limited in time; the other is spiritual and liberated in time without end, and he called it eternal life.

The pomp of physical life on earth is an aberration of truth, but eventually we are ushered into a rude awakening, ^{Isa 14:11} “All your pomp has been brought down to the grave, along with the noise of your harps, maggots are spread out beneath you and worms cover you.”  When death stares you in the face, that’s when you want nothing but the naked truth; you push and probe for lasting and permanent things.  John 3:16 is all about eternal life, read it and LIVE!

YOU MUST BE BORN AGAIN! INSIDE OUT UPSIDE DOWN.

You must be “Born Again.”

Effective personal transformation is not a product of the mind, but of the human spirit.  When the human spirit opens up to the Spirit of God, a new life is born.  The Mat 6:33 Imperative is the atmosphere in which this new life takes a lungful of oxygen, and develops towards its God given destiny.

The human spirit, and the human mind are not same; the spirit is the being in us created in the image of God, and the mind is the rational seat of that being.  Christ taught that, ^{Jn 4:24} “God is spirit, and his worshipers must worship in spirit and in truth.”  We are created in the image of God, as scripture says, ^{Ge 1:27(TNIV)} “So God created human beings in his own image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them.”   Our connection with God is Spirit to spirit.  When we reduce God to the limitations of our environment, we end up with religion, as Paul wrote, ^{2Ti 3:5} “having a form of godliness but denying its power.”  Only spirit can understand Spirit.

It is common knowledge that every living species will give birth to its own kind, and even more that the physical body we focus on so much, Christ came to restore the original “Being” in which we were created.  Paul said, ^{Ac 17:28} ‘For in him we live and move and have our being.’  As some of your own poets have said, ‘We are his offspring.’  To be born of the Spirit is to be born of God.

That recognition is essentially a restoration of the human being’s authority over nature and environment.  We were created to reign—to act upon, and not to be acted upon.  Scripture says, ^{Ge 1:26(TNIV)} Then God said, “Let us make the human being in our image, in our likeness, and let them rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air, over the livestock, over all the earth, and over all the creatures that move along the ground.”

In the Genesis creation narrative, Adam and Eve had a spiritual relationship with God, and the serpent reduced that to an environmental relationship.  This is the precise point where our anxiety was introduced, ^{Ge 3:19} “By the sweat of your brow you will eat your food until you return to the ground, since from it you were taken; for dust you are and to dust you will return.”  Since then, success is measured in terms of pleasure, power, possession, and achievement. 

When we are “born again,” our spiritual relationship with God is restored, and our relationship with the environment changes.  We are defined—not by the environment and its success indicators—but by a rich and dynamic relationship with Christ in God.

That truth is what Nicodemus could not walk away from; to be “born again” meant giving up known idols for the Truth.  His idols were not so conspicuous because they were disguised in religion.  As a veteran Pharisee, he was used to a sense of power covered and flowered with god-talk. 

Pharisees adhered more to their interpretations, than to the God they were interpreting.  To be sure, whatever they did was more about them than it was about God.  Nicodemus’ idol was exposed because his constituency had discovered a sterner truth.  It is better to discover the truth about you, before your lie is exposed.  The worn-out cliché is true, “You can lie to some people some of the time, but you can’t lie to all the people all of the time.”  Your sin will find you out.

Traditionally, Nicodemus worked his way backwards to his ancestors, which was more rational than spiritual, but this new challenge was about working forward and spiritual.  The challenge of the Mat 6:33 Imperative is about the future, not the past—and the future needs a new attitude.  Paul reminded the Ephesians that they needed, ^{Eph 4:23}”… to be made new in the attitude of your minds…” in accordance with the truth that is in Jesus Christ (V.21).

The Mat 6:33 Imperative is an invitation to return to the depth of our innermost, and to search and constantly probe our reason for being.  To search for one’s life-long aspiration; one’s deepest and best hope of what one’s life might be.  Nelson Mandela and his comrades were kept alive in prison by nothing less than the “Ideal” of a just and democratic South Africa.  Martin Luther King was motivated by his “Dream” of human equality in the United States of America.  WHAT IS THE PURPOSE OF YOUR LIFE?