Dear Friends of "Dial Daily Bread,"
When we can emerge from our spiritual childhood and begin to grasp what Jesus accomplished for us, a change takes place within us. It's not a "works trip"; it's not our trying harder. It's seeing something. It's what Paul called being "able to comprehend" a wider view. It's not a secret technique; it's looking, which is why the Bible so often urges us to "behold."
What we begin to comprehend is the four grand dimensions of the love (agape) that drove the Son of God to go to hell to save us (Eph. 3:16-19). It's mind-stretching; what David calls "heart-enlarging" (Psalm 119:32). Yes, there are growing-up pains. We choose to "no longer be children, tossed to and fro and carried about with every wind of doctrine, by the trickery of men" (Eph. 4:14).
It's probably the biggest problem God has had to deal with in the thousands of years of earth's history: a people standing on the very verge of eternity, soon to meet the Son of God whose eyes are flames of fire, a no-nonsense look there, who demands that we "may grow up in all things into Him who is the head--Christ" (vs. 15). And yet, here we are, content to remain infants in understanding. There's no way that TV, for example, could be a snare to us if we could "behold the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world"! We would cast off our obsessions like so many filthy rags if we had an adult idea of what Christ endured on our behalf.
But someone asks, "Is spiritual imbecility really a sin? I know I'm saved (the preacher told me so!), so can't I wait until I get to heaven and then join a class on beholding?" In the judgment now in the Most Holy Apartment of the heavenly sanctuary, a choice to remain a spiritual imbecile may be written in the Book of Life as avoiding Christ. What the heart says is what gets written.
--Robert J. Wieland
From the "Dial Daily Bread" Archive: November 6, 2001.
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