Breaking The Plastic Mold

I'm not really sure what made me think of it after all of these years. It was such a small thing that's been lost in decades worth of days and completely obscured from my thoughts. It was small and plastic and something long forgotten from my childhood that keyed me to reflect on something that I think might be representative of a perspective that some people cling to.

It was a white plastic figurine that stood on a little brown plastic pedestal. The flat, cast figurine was someones' representation of Jesus that glowed in the dark after the lights were turned out at night. When everything else turned into shadowy shapes void of detail in the murky darkness, the only thing that could be clearly made out was that little glow in the dark plastic Jesus that sat on my dresser. In some respects, I think that may be how some people still see Him, even in the light of day ...

In a world full of things that appeal to the senses of our flesh, it's sometimes easy to set aside less physically tangible things or to treat them as less real. In the case of a Christian who does this in regard to Christ it's very easy for life to become a tragic and purpose defying ceremonial walk.

I was afraid of the dark at times as a child. I couldn't begin to tell you how many sleepless hours I spent wide awake in terror - straining constantly to see or to hear anything that seemed out of place after having been awakened by something I couldn't readily identify. My imagination would go into overdrive at those times to produce reasons for my unreasonable fear and that solitary little glowing figure on the dresser was the only thing there to remind me that Jesus was watching over me. I had been taught that He was always watching over me, but in the inky darkness that little plastic figurine didn't provide anywhere near the comfort that it should have. It should have reminded me of the reality of an experienced relationship with Him, one grounded in the living truth of every word that He'd ever spoken. But at that point in life, it was only a little plastic figure glowing in the hollow void of darkness.

My perception of my Savior at that time lacked the reality of life experience with Him and the comfort of understanding the fullness of who He really is. Back then, He was a figure on a felt board in Sunday school, someone that people talked about in church and a little plastic glow in the dark figure on my dresser. He was comforting to think about and in my heart I longed to believe that He was real, but in the terror of the night I didn't see Him as real as I wanted to - how ever much I may have wanted to. I didn't truly "know Him".

Trying to view and live the "Christian" life outside of truly having an intimate and interactive relationship with Him becomes nothing more than plastic religion. The perspective and the action are without real life. My view of Him didn't really begin to change until later in my teen years. I had hung on to what I had been taught about Him because it was taught by people that I trusted. It was a hollow knowledge because I lacked the personal exploration and experience with Him that I needed to turn what I had been taught into a true understanding and knowing reality. My perspective was more figurative and plastic like that little glowing form on my dresser - it lacked real life and any true representation of my Lord.

It wasn't until a number of seemingly negative things had taken place in my life that I was forced, out of desperation to venture out of my plastic perception in the hope that He was indeed real. I've come to know since that what may seem negative to the perspective of our flesh at times, might well be a divine set up for the delivery of some eternal work and education by our Heavenly Father. If you don't think that He works this way, consider Lazarus' seemingly tragic death and what the Lord intended to accomplish through it all along by allowing it to take place.

John 11:1-15

1 A man named Lazarus was sick. He lived in Bethany with his sisters, Mary and Martha. 2 This is the Mary who poured the expensive perfume on the Lord's feet and wiped them with her hair. Her brother, Lazarus, was sick. 3 So the two sisters sent a message to Jesus telling him, "Lord, the one you love is very sick." 4 But when Jesus heard about it he said, "Lazarus's sickness will not end in death. No, it is for the glory of God. I, the Son of God, will receive glory from this." 5 Although Jesus loved Martha, Mary, and Lazarus, 6 he stayed where he was for the next two days and did not go to them. 7 Finally after two days, he said to his disciples, "Let's go to Judea again." 8 But his disciples objected. "Teacher," they said, "only a few days ago the Jewish leaders in Judea were trying to kill you. Are you going there again?" 9 Jesus replied, "There are twelve hours of daylight every day. As long as it is light, people can walk safely. They can see because they have the light of this world. 10 Only at night is there danger of stumbling because there is no light." 11 Then he said, "Our friend Lazarus has fallen asleep, but now I will go and wake him up." 12 The disciples said, "Lord, if he is sleeping, that means he is getting better!" 13 They thought Jesus meant Lazarus was having a good night's rest, but Jesus meant Lazarus had died. 14 Then he told them plainly, "Lazarus is dead.15 And for your sake, I am glad I wasn't there, because this will give you another opportunity to believe in me. Come, let's go see him." (NIV)

and after Jesus raised Lazarus from the dead...
John 11:45 "Many of the people who were with Mary believed in Jesus when they saw this happen"

Not everything that seems bad now or freaks our flesh out is actually bad. Nor is it allowed with negative intention by the eternal and sovereign God who truly has only good intention toward us. It's our tendency to have a limited carnal perspective that's bad. The perspective and life of our bodies of flesh may be limited, but we are eternal and that's how our heavenly Father views us and treats us - that's reality!!! We should have the eternal perspective of our Father unless we truly don't believe Him! He knows that in reality, the suffering and even the death of our flesh are not the end of us or among the worst things that could happen to us. It's far better that we suffer in the flesh for this moment or even that our flesh should die than to suffer for the length of the eternity He created us for! 

Ok, passionate, loving rant over ... back to my story ...

I was a tender hearted and endlessly curious and creative young man. But during my preteen and early teen years I had suffered a number of things that were deeply painful that eventually led me to a very passionate anger. I would not serve any positive purpose to point out the aggressors that existed in my life then - they and their actions have been forgiven. Suffice it to say that there was a fair amount of physical and mental abuse absorbed in that period of life for me. My resultant anger was most often deeply hidden because of what I knew it would cost me if it were discovered. In one part of my world then, the revelation of my anger would have likely provoked harsh physical punishment just by the knowledge of its presence. It would have represented an offense by itself. In other areas of life it would have no doubt come out in offensive ways which were not at all a part of  the good person, that in my heart I really wanted to be. Between that unresolved anger and unforgiveness on one side and my real desire to be the loving person that I was taught that I should be  - I was trapped.

When my anger was reaching the boiling point and the Lord determined that the time was right, He began to introduce Himself to me in grace filled ways that eventually changed everything about the radical young man I was. Without much warning, if any, I found myself dropped into an environment that created a much more terrible tension between my growing anger and the person that in my heart I desperately wanted to be. Seemingly out of the blue, my parents removed me from public school and placed me in a private Christian school. For a young man who was finally beginning to rise in the social ranks and was coming into his own by public high school societal standards after years of struggle - this was a merciless ego killer!

There were two things that existed that helped to set the stage perfectly for the direction that I would begin to take from there. The Lord knew it and knowingly worked it lovingly to my advantage. First, the spirit of our Lord existed so heavily on that school that at times it made the hair on my arms and the back of my neck stand up. Second, at the age of eight years old I had asked Jesus to come into my heart and be my Savior. I'm convinced that His presence created the struggle against my anger that helped keep it in check until He knew that I was ready to move beyond it with His help - the clay was now ready to yield to the Master's hand ...

Over the next years, the Lord continued to assert Himself in my life - continually showing me that He was there in ways that to me, undeniably left His finger prints (as I look back now, I'm still awestruck and amazed at His deep love for the humbled and unworthy creature that I am). I learned over time, that the more I invested in actively participating in my relationship with Him by faith, the more I was releasing Him by my faith to participate with me in life. Over the decades since, He has shown me His faithful and fatherly involvement in my life and revealed His character in very intimate ways. In everything, He is as His word declares Him to be which gives me certain and sure confidence in both Him and everything that He's said. I say these things knowing that there have been hard and seemingly uncertain times since, but also knowing that in every circumstance He's made opportunity for me to know Him better and to prove time and time again His unerring commitment to me through His faithfulness.

If you haven't experienced this, please, please hear me! - This can't happen just by reading about Him or hearing about Him. It requires that we step out and actively engage with Him in faith in a one on one relationship and faithfully watch to see Him respond to us. This doesn't ever mean that we should expect Him to respond in the exact ways that we think He should, nor should we ever hope that He does. His ability to know the future, His knowledge of us and His wisdom that is so unfathomably greater than our own make His responses unpredictable to us, but are always in perfect keeping with His awesome character and what He's said. So if we step out in faith we're rewarded as we are patient and watchful - looking for Him to respond in His perfect way and His perfect time according to His perfect wisdom.

Stepping out in faith to live out what we've been told is possible through Jesus in today's world is a bold and courageous thing to do in the eyes of worldly minds. These things don't always make sense by worldly standards and may not even seem practical when viewed by carnal eyes. But our unseen God is not bound by worldly practicality or the intellectual capability of human minds and it's by faith alone that we are saved - it's also by faith that we allow Him to be all that He desires to be to us. Time and experience create the opportunity for depth in relational bonds. If we're not willing to make the investment in those things, we cannot  expect to experience the reward of the relationship. The greater the investment in the intimacy of that relationship, the greater the reward in intimate fellowship. In all of the universe, there is no greater investment to be made than in the God who is truly the center of our universe! - it all revolves around and is about Him!

In the world today there are so many reasons for human flesh to be concerned for itself. There are wars and conflicts rising up in so many places and so many other degrading and concerning things all around us. But the need to be concerned only exists if we're only flesh. If we're eternal as God created us to be and reconciled to Him through Christ's atonement on our behalf, then this is only a temporal condition and the death of our flesh provides no cause for us to fear. To know these things certainly and be completely without fear is to have made the investment to certainly know Him and the beginning of having realized all that our hearts were truly created to long for ...

Many years have gone by since I last remember seeing that plastic glow in the dark Jesus figurine. I have no idea where it went, but I do know with unerring certainty where the real Jesus is. It's my sincere hope that you too have made the move in an effort to fulfill His purpose for your life by stepping out in faith to experience true and intimate  relationship with the real Jesus. If you haven't, you can't know with any certainty what you're giving up. Make it real! "Come and see ..."