JESUS-FOLLOWERS are always called to stand at the place where heaven and earth meet. Sometimes, it is the place where the crippled hand of the sinner reaches for the healing hand of the Savior. Sometimes, it is the fractured place where a man and a woman have looked into the eternity of each other’s eyes, and vow to spend their earthly lives together until eternity comes. Sometimes, it is the trembling place where spiritual destiny collides with our established patterns of life, and with fear and wonder we see a different universe beckoning us across a great chasm. Every day, it is the place where the Spirit calls for our spirit to separate from the flesh. How can mere men experience God in this way and not be utterly consumed?
The world we earlier so casually inhabited is most often a place of routine for us. We have had an occasional brush with an epiphany of joy, or some dark moments of suffering. Each has found us at the edge of either a life peak or crevasse. We know what it’s like to have our world stretched. But the first time we encounter the upper realm is a life-altering eternal moment in which we sense the reality of the spiritual force bridging the two realms. This is when we unexpectedly meet Jesus in a personal, revelatory, and powerfully altering experiential encounter.
Why unexpectedly? Because we weren’t looking for him, but he was looking for us. Jesus’ father, and ours, sent him on a mission. “The Son of Man came to seek and to save the lost.” (Luke 19:10) We may have felt lost, but we didn’t know of the depths that loomed beneath us. Then, actually hear him as he says, “Here I am! I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears my voice, I will come in.” (Rev. 3:20) The knocking is like nothing we’ve ever heard before; it is not just a sound reverberating through our spirit, but instead also a vibration. The knocking makes our spirit shudder. In fear and trembling (cf. Paul), we timidly reach out to open the door, and when we do, it swings open easily and smoothly, and heaven and earth are joined.
This happens within us, but it affects everything about our internal and external life in the lower realm. Our perception of ourself changes, and our attitudes towards others follows. Perhaps we’ve been stuck in our friendships, where bad company has corrupted our good character. (cf. 1 Cor. 15:33) Our friendships begin to change, with long-time friends disappearing because we no longer share core values. Maybe our job circumstances and finances change as we exercise new-found spiritual disciplines. (cf. Philemon 11) Or, far closer to our center of being, our long-term relationship with our spouse is revitalized, and we remember the beginnings, and now fuse this previously cherished intimacy into yet a new and more mutually wholesome beginning. As Jesus says, “Everything is possible for one who believes.” (Mark 9:23)
However, after heaven and earth begin the process of being fused in us, and we find healing and joy in our transformed lives (cf. Rom. 12:2), we come inevitably to a time of great trial. The Lord has not saved us and sanctified us to simply give us a new life. “We have been bought with a price” (1 Cor. 6:20), and that price has been great: “For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.” (John 3:16) God has a purpose for our new life, and we uneasily begin to suspect that there is an earthly responsibility and accounting for such a gift. We are not on an equal footing with God merely because we understand that we’ve been invited into the upper realm, in which he is ever-and-omnipresent. Jesus warns, “From everyone who has been given much, much will be demanded; and from the one who has been entrusted with much, much more will be asked.” (Luke 12:48b)
And another great chasm opens before us, one where the tension in the spiritual bridge between us and our heavenly father is kept in uneasy stasis by the quivering equilibrium where faith must meet and overcome doubt so that obedience can complete hope. Such trials are not only permitted by God, they are purposed by him. There is no resting place in this life. If we seek a “peace that passes understanding” (Phil. 4:7), we seek something only attainable by resting in faith in Jesus, who says “Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light.” (Matt. 11:28-30) Only in Jesus is there a way to harness the potentially destructive forces that conjoin the earth and heaven so strangely in the center of our souls. Such things are not beyond our ken, for we have been given “the knowledge of the secrets of the kingdom of heaven has been given to you.” (Matt. 13:11) But they are beyond our earthly powers, for knowledge and force of will are not enough to join heaven and earth.
We have, however, been given the Spirit from above, “The Spirit of wisdom and of understanding, the Spirit of counsel and of might, the Spirit of the knowledge and fear of the Lord.” (Isa. 11:2) It is because of this that we “can do all this through him who gives us strength.” (Phil. 4:13)
Q. Am I standing with full assurance on the bridge between heaven and earth?
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