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Wednesday, February 09, 2005
When trying to describe what that phrase might actually mean, the thing that jumps to my mind is that what we're really asking for is that we'd kinda like to switch places with what's going on in Heaven.
And many theologians and thinkers have tried to describe what that might be like. In my way of thinking no one has done it as well as A.W. Tozer in his book "The Knowledge of the Holy." In fact, in the very introduction, the author lets us in on one side of this phrase:
"True religion confronts earth with heaven and brings eternity to bear upon time...The message of this book does not grow out of these times but is appropriate to them. It is called forth by a condition which has existed in the Church for some years and is steadily growing worse. I refer to the loss of the concept of majesty from the popular religious mind. The Church has surrendered her once lofty concept of God and has substituted for it one so low, so ignoble, as to be utterly unworthy of thinking, worshiping men. The she has done not deliberately, but little by little and without her knowledge; and her very unawareness only makes her situation all the more tragic...
The low view of God entertaine almost universally among Christians is the cause of a hundred lesser evils everywhere among us...
The only way to recoup our spiritual losses is to go back to the cause of them and make such corrections as the truth warrants. The decline of the knowledge of the holy has brought on our troubles. A rediscovery of the majesty of God will go a long way to curing them."
I'd suggest that there's something to this line of thinking.
That we'd like for God to rule earth in a similar fashion as He does heaven. And, every time we look in Scripture at what is going on in heaven, well...it's pretty majestic.
Take Revelation 4 for example:
"After these things I looked and behold, a door standing open in heaven, and the first voice which I had heard, like the sound of a trumpet speaking with me, said, 'Come up here and I will show you what must take place after these things.' Immediately I was in the Spirit; and behold, a throne was standing in heaven, and One sitting on the throne. And He who was sitting was like a jasper stone and a sardius in appearance; adn there was a rainbow around the throne, like an emerald in appearance. And around the throne were twenty four thrones; and upon the thrones I saw twenty four elders sitting, clothed in white garments, and golden crowns on their heads. And from the throne proceed flashes of lightning and sounds and peals of thunder. Adn there were seven lamps of fire burning before the throne, which are the seven spirits of God; and before the throne there was, as it were, a sea of glass like crystal..." (verses 1--6a)
And we're supposed to ask that things be done on earth like they are in heaven...
My suspicion is that we're asking for a view of God's Majesty. The mystery, the wonder. If we can think of God and think rightly about Him that will affect us profoundly.
So, today, ask yourself if you experience the majesty on earth like it is in heaven, and maybe if you're not, think through how you might...
Brent 4:01 AM
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