Estonians

We celebrated my birthday, and the birthday of an Estonian lady whom we have known since the autumn of 1991, together. On my birthday in a Dolphin hotel Signature restaurant in Southampton, and then visiting their place at the weekend.

And that's it. I became older, and so did she. But unlike me, she is well-preserved, while I have been suffering from the ailing past three years, or a little less, for I have been on an upward spiral for nearly half a year now. And yes, sometimes the outlook appears the same, like it has been in my case when considering the exterior, but the inside direction has changed, and that is all what matters.

With God it is similar. We may not see the change on the outside, but He is busy and at work behind the scenes, in the invisible realm where the change is happening. When sowing a seed, change happens even if there seems to be no change above the surface. But a farmer has learned patience. And after an incubation period in the invisible realm, change becomes visible, first a blade, then the ear, then the full grain in the ear.

Mark 4:28 ► English Standard Version
The earth produces by itself, first the blade, then the ear, then the full grain in the ear.

They were very spiritual people. We prayed, blessed the food, and then we continued to talk about the things of God until late.
The husband has been writing a book. It is something God has put into his heart, and he has been taking it seriously. And our talks revolved around his trail of thought, and the matters of concern which he has been trying to incorporate into his book.

We discussed grace, and salvation.
And then Romans 12:2 the transformation of our mind, and how for some reason it has not been too fashionable to teach certain things anymore at church which has been greatly money-oriented, and certain topics are considered as offensive, for it may dispel the people, and the offerings may not be so big.

Now, they are blessed. And money is not an issue.
But a desire to see the church living a higher walk was something that had been burning in their mind and bothering them in the inside.

But we must understand one. Salvation is of God, and Christ. And we can't undo it. Not at least that easily.
For if there is any objective reason to our negative reaction, or drawing back, then God who is just and knows it all, He reckons with it.
We have to get the essentials right. For that is the foundation upholding our faith, and journey of life with God.

If we think that we have to keep constantly hopping through the loops in order to hang on till our last breath, then our life journey with God is performance based, and eventually we become our own saviours. And that does not work. Since Christ alone could save the man - no other could. We were all born with the original fault, inherited from our foreparents, Adam and Eve, who were originally made into spiritual creatures, but who chose to follow the lies of the enemy, and fell into flesh, and became natural men. Their spirit died.

And so, we all have been born into their likeness, as natural humans.

Christ came, being born via natural flesh, and living like a human, yet birthed from above, not from the seed of a man which gives natural life, but of a seed of God who is Spirit.
Today we can be born from above just the same. While living in our natural body, we too, can be born from above - from the Spirit of God.

And that was God's solution.
He made us into new creation.

A spirit man, instead of just a fleshly being of body and soul.

And today the question has shifted, and is not whether we fail, and lose our salvation over it, but whether we are led by our spirit, or flesh - our body and soul.

We are faced by this question several times a day, and we can choose this or that way.

When our spirit is strong, it happens naturally that our spirit leads.
When our spirit is not well-fed and developed strong, our fleshly nature takes over. We become rusty and are not well-oiled, and creak like unoiled engine, and if it were to last for longer, then we can puff and huff, and have a jumpy ride like unoiled engine, until we screech and come to a sudden halt, blowing up. This is how the natural engine works, and a natural human operates just the same.

But God's solution via Christ was to change us, from inside.
Everything looked the same outside when we were saved, or born from above. Yet, everything was different.

A new life was birthed.

And similar to a natural seed, everything seems the same for the one who sees the outside.
And yet, everything has changed in the inside.

Life is hidden from the external view. But then it is expected to burst forth, through the surface separating the invisible from the visible.


And this is how our Christian life is expected to go.

Salvation is a deep inside work. A seed sown from the invisible spirit realm, into the invisible place inside.

But then life is expected to come forward.

We in the New Covenant era have received more. But more is expected of us, similarly.

In the Old Testament era only the external mattered. Today, in the New Testament era, our inside attitudes and motives matter as well. And hence, killing in the eyes of God is not seen only as an outward act which went under the Old Covenant, but today we can kill with our anger, and despising another, and loveless attitude, ignoring the plight of another the way the priest and the Levite did in the Good Samaritan case, while Jesus was the embodiment of the Good Samaritan who did not care of the potential "Trojan horse" situation, or lurking danger due to mountaneous terrain where the potential attackers who could have used a bait, might have hid themselves. Jesus went as Good Samaritan and helped the one down and in need.

And we as church have not been so very good at it, since we have been more concerned with our self-preservation when it comes to refugees and asylum seekers. It is easy to see them as less humans when we call them migrants. We have not put on the corrective glasses and seen them as our fellow humans, the way Jesus does. Instead we have seen them as potential hazards to our job markets and security situation, and culture. We have even gone as far as to become engaged in what we call "culture war" while doing it at the expense of neglecting the words and heart of Jesus, and overwriting His gospel, by replacing it with the one written by us, with our attitudes and preconceived notions when it comes to people of different background, compared to ours.

But by the end, only one opinion matters. And that is the opinion of Jesus. Who is God. But as long as we hold our own ideas and opinions dear, we risk overshadowing His with our own, writing a new gospel, where we turn from winning the lost to pointing out the mistakes of the world while forgetting and neglecting that we - the people of God - have been called to be the salt and the light of the earth. And if the salt is not salty enough, it does not do its job of preserving the flesh around. It does not take much salt to add the taste. But if the salt does not retain its saltiness and has become diluted and downright bad, the flesh goes bad. And the problem is not that the flesh is bad, but the salt does not do its job of preserving it. For it has lost its taste and effectiveness.

Matthew 5:13-16 New King James Version (NKJV)
Believers Are Salt and Light
13 “You are the salt of the earth; but if the salt loses its flavor, how shall it be seasoned? It is then good for nothing but to be thrown out and trampled underfoot by men.

14 “You are the light of the world. A city that is set on a hill cannot be hidden. 15 Nor do they light a lamp and put it under a basket, but on a lampstand, and it gives light to all who are in the house. 16 Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works and glorify your Father in heaven.