A Reflective Pause

Time In Between

May 25^th 2025

Dear Friends in Christ,

Blessed Sunday! We are at our first bend in the road to the far country, which is nearer than most of us might realize!

We started in Jan, and since that time have gone through a brief overview of a bunch of scripture teachings that are essential to strong Christian living in this life and for our transition into the Kingdom of God, which actually should begin in the here and now.

That is the way I am going. Those who wish to discover these elements and this experience for themselves are invited to walk with me for a bit and see for themselves. I have no method to share, no dazzling knowledge etc. I am just a pointer, like a retriever, but I know where I am going simply by following the Lord’s leading. It’s all I’ve ever done. Biblical research, bible study, fellowship activity, can only take you so far. It’s mostly all social and academic.

There is more, much more. And it is all spiritual ie of the spirit - between you and the Holy Spirit of God, in your life now. And that is what I invite you to discover. That’s what Jacob’s Ladder is about, and we don’t have to wait until I get the text done; just walk with me as I go. Those who follow the path into the Kingdom do not have to die the way that most of the world does, i.e. we fall sick and then lose the will to llive and then die. But we can prepare ourselves to die differently..

This is a good time to go over the stuff we’ve covered because it was quite a substantial overview. Everything is on the blog site, and because these are brief posts, you can read like a month’s worth in an hour or two. No need to make notes as much as seek to come to terms with stuff you might not have thought of before.

The Blog add is dreliatjacobsladder.blogspot.com

And if you would rather I not send posts to you on sunday mornings please let me know. No missionary effort, no church growth effort, no fund raising effort etc etc going on here. I can’t even tell you what it is. It is just the Lord’s leading. It’s all it will ever need to be - a lilke minded fellowship of the Christ consciousness.

2 scripture verses to consider at this point:

1.      1 Cor 15:31

2.      Romans 8:28

Paul’s teaching in 1 Cor has a very limited application in our tradition, mostly reflecting the tradition of  ‘deny thyself, take up thy cross, and follow me.’ Ok. But what does it mean?

When we deny the old self, it also means that we embrace our new being in Jesus!

There has been no persecution in this life for professing to be Christian for just about the longest time, though there are new interesting events happening in the US and other places that involve different degrees of spiritual warfare for what it means to be a Christian witness.

The cross is not just a symbol of public humiliation and torture and death – it is the symbol of the resurrected life! Here and now; old self dies, new self comes alive, spiritual power energizes body, mind and soul! Not for doing earthly things! Why would it? No place for the so-called gospel of prosperity here. But for doing every weird spiritual thing that is of God’s will, as the Bible shows again and again! It is how the spiritual intersects with all of God’s good earth that concerns us – life, family, community. That’s what it’s about!!  Not talk about this and that or mental or psychologizing beliefs, but making real time, life situation differences! Sure, we weaken some as we age, but cause and effect requires we take good care of the body that we are stewards of. The mind and especially the spirit will gain in strength as the flesh draws near to its earthly end. As I’ve said before, our Christian trad has been pretty useless when it comes to dying well and making that transition!

Remember Jesus’ words, ‘I go to prepare a place for you.’ That is not necessarily a ‘one day the flesh will rise again’ thing. The flesh will disintegrate and return from whence it came, into what it was made from, earth to earth, ashes to ashes, dust to dust. But the Spirit – returns to God who gave it at physical birth and goes home at the time of physical death.

But even before, there is interdimensional movement possible, for whomever is caught up in the Spirit has accessed dimensionality and moves between the plane of this physical existence and the spiritual plane of the far country beyond this one. Hence the miracles, from Moses and the sea of reeds aka the Red Sea to Joshua at Ai and David vs Goliath and all of the doings of Elijah and Elisha. And then Jesus comes along and caps it all, repeatedly appearing and disappearing into a place somewhere…a place for us. Just as a movie song called ‘Somewhere’ once prophetically sang,’ hold my hand and I’ll take you there’. 

Once you have gained access to the Kingdom of God in this life, there is a dynamic difference in your control of all things around you. You just have to be focused and work at it consistently; it is possible simply because you are in synch with the Maker of all things!  That is the key to strive for. I can’t tell you or show you how; you must just want this more than anything else in this life! That is the true goal of Christian living. The life changing power of the Kingdom manifest within our lives now.  

And the Roman’s 8:28 teaching is even simpler. That everything works together for good to them that love God – for when you love God, you have entered into relationshio, not a stated relationship that you confess or believe in, but a living ongoing relational reality that is part of your everyday life. You are in touch with the loving Creator Father, and you abide in him, as Jesus told us to. Everything cannot help but work out for the good. Don’t look for it to work out according to what the world says or wants or recommends. That is not the way God works. But God knows our limits and will take us beyond them as needed, in this life. This I have always found. That dynamic enabling of insight, strength, body, soul, and mind…will carry on.

It is the result of that which Israel called the Shema. The 1^st Commandment.  Faith, belief, hope, yes. But more than all of these – Love. For God IS love. And when the love of God fills you, there is always peace, and strength. And we can do this because God loves us! A matter of response. For me, it is how I continually grow through my interactions with others – those who will grow with me, and those who won’t, whom I must leave behind because such is their will to live as they will.

A friend once asked me about the notion that he could leave this earth together with his wife at the same time. And I said, why not? Makes sense to me. But we still have to work on it some, as individuals, as couples. We Christians have always been so powerless about this one, but it does not have to be that way. You just have to do your prep work on it. Not so much a foot in the grave as much as in the Kingdom! Seems like the next ten years or so for many of us is real prep work for this! Sounds weird? Yeah, but God is weird. Always had a sense about that weirdness. God’s weirdness truly =  an energizing love that will sustain you when all else fails! Walk in peace and strength with Jesus and have a blessed week. Much love, G.