My Grandfather loved his land. He bought it from his Dad and had worked it for the major part of his life. We used to walk the property lines every Sunday and he would tell me stories of things that had taken place on this sacred piece of earth.
He knew that bounty was not something that you kept in a bank, nor was it a job that you worked nine to five. Real bounty was the gifts and blessings that flowed into your life through the generosity of the ground under your feet.
The green hills provided a place of shelter, a place to belong and call home. The fertile soil with the smell of life gave fruits and vegetables. The thick forest offered retreat and comfort, while the wide open plains offered opportunity for adventure.
The land, as my Pa called it, has already provided us with all that we need to live a life of peace and joy. Our Creator, created the Heaven and the earth and they are perfect creations, doing everything that they are supposed to do. From the Heaven comes wind, rain and the bright sunlight of day. While the earth gives us a place to live, nourishment for our body, minerals for our growth, jewels for our decoration and somewhere to go and something to do.
Everything that we need is either just above our heads or right under our feet. Stop looking past the horizon, when what you need is within your grasp. Bend down, pick up some dirt and think about the significance of what you are holding. Now think about what you are walking on, claim what you have been blessed with and be careful not to miss what your Creator has given you!
It is natural to want to know our place in this world. Wisdom teaches us that knowing our purpose is not really the most important thing. The important thing is know that we have purpose. We search for answers that really will not make much of a difference in our lives.
Look up at the sky. Now, look around you at the earth. Isn’t that profound? You did not get it? Do it again! Look up at the sky, really look. Now, look around you at the earth. Did you see it? You are a spiritual being, existing in a human body. You are on the earth and Heaven is above you. In reality, you are right now living between heaven and earth.
When we look at the sky, we should contemplate heaven. The sky is above us and we are below it, what does that tell you? The sky is endless, vast, right before you and way beyond you. The sky/heaven is not some abstract philosophical concept, it is a daily reality that is ever-present in our lives.
The clouds come and go, but Heaven is always there. It is the air we breath and so much more. It is home to the sun which warms us and gives us life. We cannot live without the heaven and the earth.
Our spirit is in great need. It’s contentment comes from the unlimited vastness of the Heavenly domain. Our spirit never runs out of a new place to roam and call home. Don’t allow your view of this world and our heavenly home to become too small, because if you do, then you might just miss a very important part of your journey…
Do you ever have something the Spirit is teaching you and you get it, but you just can’t seem to communicate it? It’s in your heart and in your head, but you just can’t seem to find the words?
The Lord has been teaching me something pretty incredible lately. It’s one of those things that I have known what the Bible has to say for a long time. I could even quote the verse and I may have even gotten the gist of it, but now God is taking me deeper and I still don’t totally have it, but I am beginning to get it after a lot of lessons.
We often work so hard to try to make something obvious in the physical and the harder we work, the more hard work we have to do. It’s almost as if it is a never-ending battle. But in the spiritual, you don’t have to make anything obvious, because the Spirit does all the hard work for you. In the Spirit, the obvious is obvious to those in the Spirit!
When you are working hard in the physical to try to make something obvious, you often can’t see and have no understanding of the spiritual, because you are so focused on the physical. You don’t want to see and don’t want to understand the spiritual, because it would reveal how wrong and what a waste of time and energy your life has been in the physical.
I know this is all a little complex, but I believe it is a big part of what the Spirit has been trying to teach me over the past several months and what the Spirit was talking about when He said in 1 Corinthians 2:14 “14 But a natural man does not accept the things of the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him; and he cannot understand them, because they are spiritually appraised.”
Sometimes, I find myself trying to explain spiritual things to people and I think to myself, “this should be obvious to them”, but I am assuming they are spiritual, because they say they are spiritual, but if they are really as spiritual as they say they are, then I would not have to explain it, because the Spirit would and is making it clear and obvious. Many times in my own life, I have missed the spiritually obvious, because I was stuck in the physical.
So many of our conversations and discussions are a total waste of time and energy because we are wasting physical energy, while we should be living powerful spiritual lives or we are wasting spiritual energy on people who are stuck and not budging in the physical. Jesus said in Matthew 7:6 “Do not give dogs what is sacred; do not throw your pearls to pigs. If you do, they may trample them under their feet, and turn and tear you to pieces.”
Now does this mean that we become so heavenly minded that we don’t do any earthly good? Of course not. We will do earthly/physical good, if we are heavenly/spiritual minded, because it just comes natural in a spiritual kinda way. Galatians 5:16 puts it simply: “So I say, walk by the Spirit, and you will not gratify the desires of the flesh.”
I do not totally have all of this, but the Spirit is giving me new insight almost everyday and this is a very cool thing, because I have found that physically my arms and hands have come down by my side and I am experiencing a peace that words cannot explain, because I am finally beginning to understand what Jesus was saying when He told His disciples in Matthew 10:14 “Whoever does not receive you, nor heed your words, as you go out of that house or that city, shake the dust off your feet.” It’s not your job to convince, but if you are convinced then you will find that living in the Spirit is so much better than anything physical!
Michael Joe Harvell 