Living Daily in Reality

Day 1: Living Daily in Reality
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Living daily in reality. That’s what we all want to do! But what is
reality? Is it just what we face in our jobs, getting enough money to
keep us working so that we can have children so that they can grow up
like us to get jobs so that they can repeat the whole thing all over
again until we all cease to exist? Is this the sum-total of reality? Or
is there some real reality behind this world that we see around us?

I will tell you the answer I’ve come to?but only if we can talk a
little more together so that I have the chance to explain why I think
this.

REALITY IS THAT YOU PERSONALLY HAVE A LOVING FATHER WHO CREATED THE
UNIVERSE – HE MADE YOU INSIDE HIS ONLY SON SO THAT HE COULD LIVE A UNIQUE
LIFE IN YOU HERE ON EARTH. That’s reality!

Why do I say that? Because about 2,000 years ago there lived a man who
was actually that son of the Creator of the universe. How do we know he
lived on earth? The British Museum in London has the details of his life
in two old manuscripts written just about 300 years after he lived in
Palestine! And there are over 4,000 other Greek manuscripts that have
the same details. Some of them are dated only 70 years after he died.
But besides these, many of the people who knew him wrote and talked about
him in their books and letters, and the actual garden in Jerusalem where
he prayed his last prayers before he died still exists in the very place
it was described almost 2000 years ago.

So even though religious people have tried to turn this man into a
mystical fairy-tale figure, the facts of his life and history are clearer
and more certain than those of any other man of that time. Reality is
that he existed with the Creator before the world was made – and that was
when your existence was planned! But now, remember I asked you to
think with me a little longer so that you can see I’m not some kind of
crazy fanatic. So – why do I say all this?

First, because he himself,the Son of our Creator, actually lived
here on earth in the first century of our era i.e. he was born about 6
B.C. when the Roman emperor, Caesar Augustus, decreed that a census of
the whole world should be taken. Quirinius was the governor of Syria, and
a man called Joseph, who was the human father of this only son of our
maker, had to go to the town, Bethlehem, where he had been born. These
facts are all recorded in government records and accepted as history by
dozens of contemporary writers, many of whom are not themselves religious
people.

Fifty years later (when many people were still alive who had been in
Bethlehem at that time) the account of this Joseph and his miraculous son

was circulating in written form throughout the first century world. So
the history of this unique human-being’s life is inextricably
intertwined with the local and national political and public figures of
the Mediterranean world of the first century. In the thousands of
historical records not one questions that this man actually lived on the
earth at that time.

Secondly, because the history of his actions and his words has been
preserved so precisely one is compelled to respect and examine closely
the authenticity of his explanation of reality. His death and return to
life are attested and recorded by ordinary people and by scholars who
died because of their eye-witness accounts. So the serious thinker has no
option but to delve deeply into the words this person spoke about the
Creator that he called Father.

If you and I were actually made as part of our Creator? only Son, then
our visit here on earth is only a small part of our real existence, and
our whole life opens up into something far more spacious and limitless
than we ever imagined. So, let’s think together about this again.

Day 2: Living Daily in Reality: Historicity of Christ
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We’re talking about living daily in reality – and we’ve been saying that
reality was explained to us by a unique human being who lived in
Palestine in the first century of our era. Although certain Western
religions have tried to turn him into a figurehead for their particular
beliefs, he himself was a well-known public figure to ordinary people and
political leaders of the first century.

Four different eye-witness accounts of his life were written and
circulating throughout the Mediterranean world just twenty years after
his execution by the Romans. The writers themselves were written about
and quoted by dozens of contemporaries while the opposition of the
authorities is part of the general literature and government records of
the period. Eventually his explanation of reality was accepted by the
Emperors of Rome and became the accepted explanation of reality for the
known world.

This Jesus of Nazareth said that His father created the universe and made
you and me inside him so that he could live in us here on earth the life
he had planned. These eyewitness accounts were collected as the first
four books in the New Testament part of the collection known in Greek as
TA BIBLIA – the Bible. The authors themselves are quoted at the end of
the first century by men like Clement, Ignatius, Polycarp and Papias,
while thousands who had seen the man himself and read the original
accounts were still alive.

The Roman historians Pliny and Tacitus in the second century communicated
with their Emperor about this man Christ and what they should do to stop
the spread of his teaching. But all the time, the personal chain of
witnesses increased the confirmation of the historical facts – men like
Irenaeus (born about 97 A.D.) talked about Polycarp (born in 70 A.D.) and
said: “I can tell the place in which Polycarp sat and related his
conversation with John and others who had seen Jesus.”

Similarly, the unbroken chain of personal transmission of historical
facts is attested by accounts of men like Papias, who was alive in the
first century and wrote: “Mark being the interpreter of Peter wrote
exactly whatever he remembered; but not in the order in which things were
spoken or done by Christ. For he was neither a hearer nor a follower of
the Lord; but, as I said, afterwards followed Peter, who made his
discourses for the profit of those that heard him, but not in the way of
a regular history of our Lord’s words. Mark however committed no mistake
in writing some things, as they occurred to his memory. For this one
thing he made his care – to omit nothing which he had heard, and to say
nothing false in what he related.”

So the existence of this unique human being is part and parcel of the

historical records of the Jewish nation, the Roman government, and
attested by thousands of manuscripts written in Greek, Latin and Syriac
and confirmed by international crowds who heard him and his disciples.
The significance of this man’s life and influence has been so universal
that our history is measured by the number of years preceding and
following his birth – B.C. and A.D.. The Old Testament prophets which he
respected and trusted and the New Testament writers who respected and
trusted Him have been the basis for the world’s laws and ethics for
centuries. And this man has said that he existed before the creation of
the universe and that you and I were made inside him and are part of him.
But how could this be if he is simply an ordinary human-being like us?

If this man was born of an ordinary woman and died the way we die, how
can we possibly believe that we were created inside him before we were
born here on earth? How can we believe that he is alive now if he was
executed by the Romans almost two thousand years ago? Let’s discuss this
again.

Day 3: Living Daily in Reality: Credibility of History
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Living daily in reality – not in the world of soap-opera on TV, not in
the disasters happening on the other side of the world – but living in
actual reality!!! But what is reality i.e. what reality really lies
behind this world that we see around us? To know that you’d have to get
off this world and look at it from the outside. And this is what a unique
human being was able to do! He lived in the first century and was known
and acknowledged by thousands of ordinary people who heard and saw him.
But – more than that – he was written about and talked about in
Greek, Latin, and Syriac books – and in the highest circles of
government.

Here’s what Tertullian, a Roman juris-consult, wrote in 145
A.D.. – about this man – “there was an old decree that no god
should be consecrated by the emperor till first approved by the senate.
Tiberius accordingly, in whose days the Christian name made its entry
into the world, having himself received intelligence from Palestine of
events which had clearly shown the truth of Christ’s divinity, brought
the matter before the senate with his own decision in favor of Christ.
The senate, because it had not given the approval itself, rejected his
proposal. Caesar held to his opinion, threatening wrath against all
accusers of the Christians. Consult your histories!â€(cid:157) says Tertullian.

This Jesus was born in Bethlehem in 6 B.C., talked about our Creator as
an only son would, demonstrated power to heal sickness and raise the
dead, was executed and came back from the dead for over thirty days, and
explained that he was returning to his Father, the Creator, with whom he
existed outside time and space. But above all of this, he made it plain
that he was not just a local figure to be used as an example by religions
– he explained that you – and I – were made by his Father, our
Creator, inside him so that he could live through us the life he had
planned before we were born! This is reality.

In fact, he explained what Einstein and modern physics teach us – that
time is relative – depending on where you are in the universe. If you
could get far enough away out in space and returned fifty years later,
you’d be younger than the rest of us on earth. This Jesus explained
“before Abraham was, I amâ€(cid:157) – and he said “I am in you and you in
meâ€(cid:157); one of his associates wrote that “all things were created though
him and for him; he is before all things, and in him all things hold
togetherâ€(cid:157). A milli-second after our God had his only Son he created
humanity – all of us individually inside that Son so that we would
share his life.

So we now have the opportunity to accept and enjoy our position or to
deny and miss our privileged relationship to our Maker! This obviously
changes the way we all think of our little lives. So, it is important for

us to study the historicity of this man’s life and especially his
resurrection! We need to realize that non-religious historians like
Tacitus acknowledged the existence and character of this Jesus of
Nazareth, that the facts and history of his actions and words are so
well-documented that expert British scholars have said there is no
question about any of the New Testament except about a thousandth part
– and that only concerning punctuation and spelling. It’s important
to know that the original accounts were written by men who were actual
eye-witnesses who suffered torture and death for what they knew was true.
It’s also significant that the transmission of those accounts down
through the centuries is established not simply by the twenty ancient
manuscripts on which we depend for Plato’s Republic BUT in more than
4,000 Greek manuscripts from as early as 100 to 1100 A.D. None of them
differ from one another on matters of fact.

Let’s look at some of this evidence again.

Day 4L:iving Daily in Reality: A Divine Man?
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If reality is that you and I were made by a fatherly Creator who actually
cares about us and made us inside his only son, it’s essential that we
know why we believe that is reality. First, it’s necessary to know that
such a person as this son actually exists. Many of us have read the Greek
and Roman myths that were written by the great poets and philosophers
about their gods but we don’t believe for a moment that those myths are
reality. When you see movies like “Jesus of Nazareth” or read fiction
like “The Davinci Code” you wonder if there is any truth at all believing
there was a human being called Jesus of Nazareth. What is the evidence
for his existence?

As we’ve discussed during the past few conversations, the evidence is
similar to but immensely more solid than the evidence we have for the
historical figures that form the basis of our laws and philosophy and
national histories. Most of our universities, for instance, regard any
evidence that is within 200 years of an event as an eye-witness account
— even though it is 200 years later than the eye-witnesses actually
lived. This is the way we treat the lives of men like Julius Caesar,
Plato, Aristotle, Genghis Khan, Alexander the Great and Nero.

This man Jesus lived in the first century and was executed in 29 A.D.
Four of his followers wrote their accounts of his words and actions and
circulated them throughout Palestine, Greece, and Rome during the next
sixty years while hundreds of people were alive who had seen what they
had seen. Many like Clement, Papias, Pliny, and Irenaeus referred to
these in their own writings and scores of people were executed during
those years because they talked about this Jesus of Nazareth, yet his
existence and life were never questioned by either the authorities or the
ordinary people. In fact, the opposite is true. There are many official
government documents and references to the trouble this Christ-talk was
causing.

Here’s an old Bible of my grandmother’s. She was in the Salvation Army,
was born in 1860 and died in 1945. I’ll read you the little presentation
page, “Presented to Lieutenant Jane Ann Duff for love and service. 21st
of June, 1887.” Now I knew her during the first 11 years of my life, and
she could remember what happened in Ireland from about 1870, so if
someone during that time had risen from the dead and the whole thing was
shown to be a hoax or a kind of Houdini illusion, she would have been
able to tell me about it. Moreover, if hundreds of books had been written
about the lie, she would certainly have protested.

But think about it – she therefore could guarantee the events during her
75 years of conscious life, but I’m still alive 60 years after she died,
so events that occurred 135 years ago can be corroborated by hundreds of
people who are still alive and had the kind of direct contact that I had

with an eye-witness. This Jesus died in 29 A.D. so people who had spoken
with eye-witnesses of his death and resurrection would still be alive in
165 A.D. There were thousands who are in this category – who were alive
during the period from 29 to 165 A.D. while hundreds of books and letters
were being read and circulated about these momentous events.

Of course, what makes the historical facts so certain in the minds of
historians is that the eye-witnesses themselves and those who believed
them gained nothing by their talk. They did not become famous or rich or
powerful through their speaking or their writing. In fact, the opposite
was true – they died in their hundreds in the mouths of lions, at the
hands of gladiators, for the pleasure of Nero and the Roman emperors.
They led their children into lion arenas because they knew this Jesus was
divine. They had no doubt that he had power to die and to live again.
Were they deceived? Let’s talk again about this.

Day 5: Living Daily in Reality: Resurrection?
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If reality is that we were made inside the only son of our Creator, then
the human being that we identify with him must have power over life and
death. But only Jesus of Nazareth has credibly demonstrated that ability
to die and come back to life. Many fakirs, spiritualists, and con men
have claimed to do this, but none has the kind of public and documented
testimony that surrounds this phenomenal event which split our history
into B.C. and A.D.. Mohammed was a prophet, Buddha was an inspired
teacher and example, but Christ was the only son of the Maker of the
universe and was the being inside whom you and I were created. But WAS he
the one human being who had power to overcome the power of death?

All the contemporary witnesses of his life attest to the facts that he
had power to die, to leave the earth, and to return and live here for
several weeks. The two vital facts are the empty tomb and the various
appearances. The usual imaginative alternatives have never stood the test
of simple logic. If the disciples had stolen the body, why would they
then have died for a lie and allowed their wives and children and friends
to be persecuted and executed for what they knew to be untrue? People
will die for what they think is true, but they will not die for what they
know to be a lie.

If the Romans or the Jewish leaders had stolen the body, why didn’t they
parade it through the streets in order to quell this troublesome
Christian insurgency that was destroying their society and their religion
? If Jesus had simply swooned and been unconscious, how could he revive
enough to roll back the heavy stone from the grave – and – more than that
– how could he, with open wounds in his side and his hands call up enough
energy and strength to appear in thirteen different places miles apart
over a period of more than a month and give an appearance of being more
alive than ever before?

It’s the same kind of logical impossibility in the argument about the
resurrection appearances. He was just a ghost, but he not only walked
through walls, but he ate fish and told sceptical Thomas to actually put
his fingers into the holes in his hands and said, “a ghost does not have
flesh and blood as you see I have.” Perhaps the women AND the men had
hallucinations. But hallucinations have well-known psychological
attributes – they occur in people who have a somewhat emotional and
tentative character – the big, practical fishermen don’t fit that
characterization.

Hallucinations occur normally among people who want and expect something
to happen – the disciples had given up any thought of Jesus rising from
the dead and expressed their disappointment. Hallucinations usually occur
over a long period of time at lengthy invervals; Jesus’ thirteen
appearances occurred over a relatively short compact period of about a

month and then ceased completely. Hallucinations are usually seen by one
person on their own, but Jesus appeared to groups of people – on one
occasion 500 people at one time. The truth is that the explanations for
the resurrection are more difficult to believe than the unprecedented
fact itself.

Because of this demonstrated power over death and because of his
ethically faultless life and profound grasp of truth, this man was
recognized by the leaders of the world as the divine son of God, and in
325 A.D. belief in him became the established religion of the Roman
Empire and our very dates and time came to be measured as before and
after his birth.

Day 5: Living Daily in Reality: Reality is in the Creator’s Son
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Living daily in reality – that’s what we’re talking about for five
minutes each day. Naturally the first question that we’ve been dealing
with is ‘what is reality?’ And we’ve answered so far that the only human
being that seems to have existed outside this earth – and been conscious
of his existence – and therefore of any reality behind what we all see
and touch here – is the man known as Jesus of Nazareth or Jesus Christ.

We’ve discussed the fact that he undoubtedly existed in the first century
and we’ve looked at some of the ancient manuscripts that contain the
accounts written and spoken by eye-witnesses. These old documents are
older and more numerous than those we have for any of the other
well-known classical histories of those days.

When, for instance, we think of Plato’s Republic (the basic text for most
university philosophy departments), we accept the text on the basis of
one manuscript which was written 1200 years after Plato wrote his
masterpiece, yet we do not question that we have what Plato wrote.
Similarly with Herodotus, Aristotle, and Lucretius whose works are based
on 2 to 8 manuscripts all of which were written about 1300 years after
the author died. The eye-witness accounts of this man Jesus, on the other
hand, are found in more than 4,000 Greek manuscripts some of which were
written as early as 125 a.d. – while contemporaries were still alive. So
we have no doubt that we are reading what actually happened: there just
wasn’t the time gap for a legend to develop.

But why do we think he was the only son of the Creator of the universe
and that you and I were made inside him? Why would you think he was the
only son of God?

Because he talked like God’s son! Even though his earthly father was an
ordinary carpenter, he said to his parents once when he was just twelve
and they found him in the temple, “Did you not know I would be about my
father’s business?” His mother, of course, knew her husband had no
business in the temple. In a very natural way, he identified himself with
God, saying things like, “If you knew me, you would know my Father also”
(John 14:7) and “He who has seen me has seen the Father also.”(John 14:9)

Indeed, where prophets like Mohamed avoided claiming a unique kinship
with God, this man made it the focal point of his followers with the
question, “Who do men say that I am…who do you say that I am?”(Matthew
16:15)

Well, probably all of us can think of people who make all kinds of wild
claims as long as they will benefit from them; but this man was pointed
and blunt about it even when he was on trial for his life about this very
question of his identity. He was being tried for his life and the

presiding official asked him, “Are you the Christ, the Son of the
Blessed?” He replied, “I am; and you will see the Son of man seated at
the right hand of Power, and coming with the clouds of heaven.”(Mark
14:62)

When I read that as a sceptic, I thought, “That explains it right there –
the man was a lunatic. The psyche wards are full of crazy people claiming
to be anything from Napoleon to God’s Son – that’s what he was – just
another mad demagogue!”

But this man Jesus didn’t act like a lunatic! The insane people in psyche
wards not only make insane claims for themselves, but they act insanely –
they produce other symptoms of their mental imbalance. But this man Jesus
does not behave as a deranged person; his character does not have the
abnormalities or extremes of a madman. Indeed, the opposite is true. When
anyone in the world – whatever their religious or non-religious
background – wishes to set forth an example of a perfectly balanced and
integrated personality, Jesus of Nazareth is the one who is presented as
the model to follow.

“His zeal never degenerated into passion, nor his
constancy into obstinacy, nor his benevolence into weakness, nor his
tenderness into sentimentality. His unworldliness was free from
indifference and unsociability or undue familiarity; his self-denial from
moroseness; his temperance from austerity.” Such are the opinions of most
of the behavioral experts of our time. If this man was a lunatic, then
all of us are hopelessly insane. As C. S. Lewis pointed out, “No one has
yet explained how such deep, moral teaching could come from the lips of a
megalomaniac!”
But perhaps Jesus was simply a con man, a simple liar! Maybe he knew he
wasn’t God but deliberately deceived his hearers about his true identity
in order to lend authority to his preaching.

But he is universally regarded as the teacher of the highest ethical
ideals the world has ever seen; moreover, his life is looked upon as the
outstanding example of a perfect, faultless example of his teaching. If
he is a liar, then the whole world of logic crumbles in our hands, and
our ability to make even the simplest observations with our five senses
becomes questionable.

It is nonsense to say that the greatest moral teacher and example the
world has ever seen — lied — about the focal point of all his teaching
— his own identity! If Jesus was a liar, then the world is a “tale told
by an idiot.” Or is reality that he is the only son of our Maker and that
you and I were created inside him?

Day 7:Living Daily in Reality: Made Inside His Son
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We’re talking about living daily in reality and we’ve spent the past six
videos sharing why we think the man known as Jesus of Nazareth is best
able to tell us what reality is. This doesn’t mean that we have to be
critical or disrespectful of other great prophets like Mohammed and
Buddha: it simply means that history seems to show that this man is the
one that died, had the ability to come back to life, and spoke about the
Creator as his own personal father.

If you question the historicity or superhuman nature of this Jesus
Christ, please do look at the first six videos which deal specifically
with this intellectual undergirding of what we’re about to talk about now.

The first startling fact we have to face is that this Jesus said that he
existed with the Creator before the universe was created. The Jews then
said to him,”You are not yet fifty years old, and have you seen Abraham
?” His reply is “before Abraham was, I am”. He makes his pre-existence
explicit when he says “Your father Abraham rejoiced that he was to see my
day; he saw it and was glad”. In this same conversation he says, “it is
my Father who glorifies me, of whom you say that he is your God. But you
have not known him: I know him.” This natural, unaffected consciousness
of his prior existence is expressed again in his prayer “now, Father,
glorify me in your presence with the glory I had with you before the
world began”. All of these statements were put in writing within 10 years
of a manuscript dated about 110 A.D. while some people were still alive
who had actually seen this man called Jesus.

Believing that this human being knew life before he ever came to the
earth would seem utterly impossible if his ability to come back to life
after crucifixion were not so widely and analytically documented. But,
given the sane and prudent influence that his followers and eye-witnesses
have exercised in our world, this person’s pre-existence with our Creator
seems a more credible explanation for his wisdom than anything else. It
is in keeping with his power over death and disease that his apostle Paul
wrote in a letter to the people in Colossae “He is the image of the
invisible God, the firstborn over all creation. For by him all things
were created: things in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible,
whether thrones or powers or rulers or authorities; all things were
created by him and for him. He is before all things, and in him all
things hold together.”

And it is these facts that make his own words believable when he says:
“Before long, the world will not see me any more, but you will see me.
Because I live, you also will live. On that day you will realise that I
am in my Father, and you are in me, and I am in you”. What then is
reality? Reality is that you are actually part of the only son of our
Creator! Far from being the chance accident of a blind evolutionary

process, you are a carefully and uniquely designed development of God’s
only Son. Evolved? Probably, but by a process consciously and lovingly
designed and cared for by a loving father’s concern for his only son.

Reality was stated simply by this man Jesus’ scholarly apostle when he
wrote to the people at Ephesus about 60 A.D. “we are God’s workmanship
created in Christ Jesus for good works that he has prepared beforehand
that we should walk in them”. Why would our creator make us inside his
only Son? Let’s talk again about this.

Day 8: Living Daily in Reality: Why make us in His Son?
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We’re talking about the one human being in the world who had the power to
die and come back to life for more than a month in the first century of
our present era. He is also the man that has been regarded as the wisest
and most ethical human being by both religious and non-religious
philosophers. He behaved and spoke as one would expect the son of the
creator to behave, and he said that you and I were made inside him before
the world was created.

Why would our maker make us inside his only son? This man’s
resurrection, you remember, is so reliably reported in history and fully
documented in thousands of manuscripts that our very history is divided
into B.C. and A.D.. He explained his final departure from the earth by
saying “I go to prepare a place for you that where I am there you may be
also”. It’s plain from his other statements that the creator is a loving
person who made us because he wanted other children like his only son. He
obviously made us in his son so that we would share his life and nature
and be as dear to him personally. But Jesus made it clear that his father
did not want little toy automatons but free-will people who could
actually be friends that he could love. This meant we could choose
non-existence if we wanted, so he would have to sustain us and bear the
consequences while we chose. He did this by making us inside his own son.
So our present world is the temporary effect of our current decision to
live in independent nothingness!

It also explains why so many of us have within us good and kindly
impulses along with selfish and cruel attitudes. The goodness comes from
this life of Christ within us while the hostile attitudes express our
choice of non-existence. But all of this is sustained by the only human
life that has been called “the first-born of all creation” – Jesus, the
only son of our maker. He carries us within himself along with every
consequence of our sin or independent living. As the most responsible
being in the whole universe he has committed himself to enduring whatever
we do with our free wills.

Although there is no ‘before’ and ‘after’ in eternity, let’s for a moment
talk in simple terms. A millisecond after God had his only Son he made
you and me inside his Son so that he could come to earth in the human
race. This is the meaning of those words we quoted before from the book
called ‘Ephesians’ – “we are God’s workmanship created in Christ Jesus
for good works which he has prepared beforehand that we should walk in
them”. In his son our creator works to complete his universe through us
— and bears all the negative consequences of our rejection of his life
in us. Thus this present world is a temporary picture of what life was
not meant to beLiving Daily in Reality the creator himself bears the fatal consequences of all
our autonomous actions so that we may be kept alive for a further
opportunity to accept his life within us. God is no distant, impassive

scientific experimenter observing us through a microscope — he has put
himself at risk and bears all the strains internally of his will and
nature being assaulted by children whom he loves as his only son. This is
the cost of making free-will beings and giving them every chance to make
the choice between life and nothingness.

Day 9: Living Daily in Reality: Does our Maker Know Everything?
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We’re talking about living each day in reality rather than the
dream-world of the media or the transitory world of each day’s
activities. Obviously this forces us to face the question ‘what is
reality’. We’ve answered on the basis of the only human life that seems
to have been directly related to the Maker of the world. We’ve been
saying that this (the actions and words of Jesus of Nazareth whose
historicity we’ve discussed in the first six videos) indicates that there
is no life outside him and his father. This is part of the reason we were
created actually inside him — so that we would share his existence and
could continue to exist even after initially choosing to reject his life.
In this way our creator made us with the same free will as he has,
allowed us to reject his life, see the consequences of our choice in this
world, and then choose finally life or nothingness.

Most parents know what an agony they’ve often had to bear to give their
children this privilege of free will; this is obviously multiplied and
intensified billions of times when one thinks of a good, loving father
bearing within himself the tortures of world-wars and domestic strife.
Did the maker of the universe know this would happen? Even we humans
with our finite minds are capable of foreseeing and foreknowing what
certain children and adults will probably do. But an infinite mind that
originates everything certainly knows what we humans will do: his love is
not in his ignorance but in his willingness to bear the consequences in
his own heart so that we will see plainly the effects of our choices.
Indeed, he foreknew because he foreordained, and he foreordained because
his love has to bear and transform its opposite. So our maker has to
conceive not only what he is but also what he is not – and he has to
endure that.

This endurance or patience is intensified by the reality of the eternity
that Einstein clarified in scientific terms when he posited the
relativity of time. Through illustrations with one clock at sea-level and
the other at the top of a mountain, he pointed out not only that time is
relative to space but that eternity includes and transcends time. So God
himself foresaw the long, agonizing history of the universe in a
millisecond, saw his son come to earth in his own physical body, then in
our billions of personal bodies, and bore the pain of it all
instantaneously. In so far as he shares all our moments in his son, he
bears the pain continuously in time until it ends “for we are God’s
workmanship created in Christ Jesus for good works which he has prepared
beforehand that we should walk in them”. Although his love requires that
he never force our wills yet it also requires that he work with our
waywardness to enable us to make a true choice between life and death,
his son within us and our empty selves.

If you imagine yourself as the absolute and ultimate maker and sustainer

of the universe, you know that your ensuring free will in your creatures
must stem from your own inner integrity and respect for free will. It
cannot come from your handing them over to some abstract force called
chance: otherwise that force would be the ultimate ruler. Thus you have
to know all that will happen in the universe that you have made!

Day 10: Living Daily in Reality: The Basis of our Life
======================================================

We’re talking about living each day in reality and in the first six
days of these five-minute presentations we talked about the human being
called Jesus and the intellectual evidence for regarding him as a
historical person. We then dealt with some of the reasons for believing
that he really is the only son of the creator of the universe; and on the
basis of that we leaped into his own explanation of reality – that his
father, the creator of the universe, had made you and me inside him. This
is why an eye-witness of his life wrote “he is the first-born of all
creation and in him all things were created and in him all things hold
togetherâ€(cid:157).

Obviously each of us first appeared on earth when we were born in our
mother but he himself said “before Abraham was, I amâ€(cid:157) and even he
appeared in his own body at the beginning of our era. However, the
implication of his own words and those of his followers is that “we are
God’s workmanship created in Christ Jesus for good works that he has
prepared beforehand that we should walk in themâ€(cid:157). In other words, our
maker planned for his only son to come to this earth and through his life
in us to complete it for his father, the creator. Since our maker’s
infinite mind conceives of everything in a moment in eternity, he has
already walked through the life he planned to lead in his son through us,
so all our works are prepared beforehand for us to walk in.

It’s plain to all of us that we have been given freedom to walk in
those works or not to walk in them, but in some profound way our creator
continues to work in us, through us, and despite us to bring about his
original design. The agony of his son’s death in Jerusalem is his
plainest expression to us of the strain our autonomy causes him
personally and of his readiness to put himself at risk to draw us towards
his will.

But the most obvious fact that his explanation of reality establishes is
that your life and mine have a significance far beyond our own little
abilities and talents. We are not what we thought we were – little bits
of flotsam and jetsam being buffeted from one place to another by forces
of economy and our own little desires and ambitions. We are far more than
that – actual beings that are known personally by the Creator of the
universe – created in his son even before the world began. Our lives
are not only already planned but have been already lived – in the sense
that the infinite being who originated everything sees it all in a moment
– far better than our most advanced computer will ever work out the
future economy of the world. The statement is startling and complex but
“every one of our days has been written in his book before there were
any of themâ€(cid:157). In other words, our maker has seen not only the plan he
has for us but also the choices we will make and the counter-moves that
he will also bring about. Our life is a planned adventure – created by

a father who loves us!

HOW CAN I KEEP FROM SINGING?
Â
My life flows on in endless song
Above earth’s lamentation;
I hear the real though distant hymn
That hails a new creation

No storm can shake my calm repose
While to this rock I’m clinging:
If Christ is Lord of heaven and earth
How can I keep from singing?

What though my joys and comforts die!
I know my Savior liveth;
What though the darkness round me lie!
Songs in the night he giveth

I lift my eyes – the cloud grows thin,
I see the blue above it;
And day by day this pathway smoothes
Since first I learned to love it.

The peace of Christ makes fresh my heart
A fountain ever springing
All things are mine since I am His
How can I keep from singing?

Day 11: Living Daily in Reality: Some Difficulties
==================================================

I try to think of the difficulty you might face as you think about this
challenge to live daily in reality. I myself had little trouble with the
question of the historicity of Jesus of Nazareth. In my early university
days I spent time in Latin and Greek and Hebrew and the world of
manuscripts and documenting of ancient history. It was just very obvious
to anyone with even a little knowledge of higher criticism that the
manuscript evidence for the historicity of Jesus was far better than that
for any of the other famous historical figures of that time. The writings
of Julius Caesar and Plato and Homer are accepted by all scholars of
repute on the basis of 10 to 20 ancient manuscripts most of which were
written a thousand years after they died. The manuscripts for Jesus’ life
can be traced to not only thousands of Greek and Latin manuscripts of
various ages which confirm the text we have today, but also thousands of
Syriac and Egyptian versions together with numberless quotations in
non-Biblical literature and letters. But all of this evidence can be
found in books by authors like Bruce and Kenyon – even the most liberal
critics reinforce the opinion of Westcott and Hort – “the words still
subject to doubt can hardly amount to more than a thousandth part of the
whole New Testament”.

What might be new to you is the wide difference that exists between the
other great and respected leaders of the world’s religions and this
person, Jesus. He not only rose from the dead and came alive again as a
real, human-being who could eat fish and talk with his followers about
what happened, but he spoke naturally about his life with his father, the
Creator, BEFORE the world was made. In other words he was not bound by
time and space like all other human-beings, but seemed equally at home in
time-space or outside time-space – and lived that way by passing easily
from one world to the other. Again, the historicity of his resurrection
is dealt with by many sceptics like the lawyer Morrison or the
philosopher, C.E.M. Joad.

Moreover, Jesus himself emphasizes his supra-temporal existence by saying
plainly “I am in my Father, and you are in me”. His disciple, John,
writes “he was in the beginning with God; all things were made through
him and without him was not anything made that was made”. Another of his
apostles affirms that “he was the express image of the invisible God, the
first-born of all creation; for in him all things were created, in heaven
and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or
principalities or authorities – all things were created through him and
for him. He is before all things, and in him all things hold together.”

The implication is that we all were first given life in him: indeed the
Greek phrase used by John is literally “all that is was life in him”.
Paul also writes to the Ephesians “for we are God’s workmanship created
in Christ Jesus” while our own poets and intuitions attest to some sense

of our being part of eternity. But certainly this is a claim that goes
far beyond that of being just a prophet – this is a claim that we are
part of him and have been made and sustained by him. This is far
different from its human imitation – reincarnation; for there is no
indication that we come back in some other form in some future life; the
clear indication is that Jesus “goes to prepare a place for us that where
he is there we may be also”.

The other difficulty I thought you might have is one that I had for years
– how can God foreknow what we will do or be? Indeed, how can he
foreordain what we will do or be without making us automatons who cannot
exercise our free wills? My only answer was that God cannot know what
I’m going to do so everything depends on what I will. I thought that he
must be like me and that he would undoubtedly work to subvert my will if
he saw me heading in the wrong direction. So he must not know and
certainly does not foreordain or predestine me since he gives me the
right to choose life or death.

But then I began to see that God makes everything so he makes us capable
of rejecting him and choosing nothingness or death. He can bear that or
let it destroy us; if he lets it destroy us, his will is defeated; if he
bears the rejection, we may be won by his love. Thus he puts himself at
risk and bears the unbearable as God even though he knows each move we
will make. Yet his steadfast love continues forever to work all things
according to the counsel of his will.

Day 12: Living Daily in Reality: A Known Future
===============================================

Living daily in reality means seeing that we are not just little nothings
that occur by chance from some huge explosion in space, but that we are
the intricate creation of a personal, loving Father who made us inside
his own son. Of course that changes the whole way we think of ourselves
and our origin. We see that our physical parents were a gracious way for
our Father to get us on the earth but that we are really “God’s
workmanship created in Christ Jesus for good works that he has prepared
beforehand that we should walk in them”.

This transforms our attitude to our futures – if our maker has some
things that he has prepared for us to do. This lifts a heavy burden off
our shoulders – we are not left to chance encounters with important
people or the best opinions of guidance-counselors or the driving fears
of our own ambitions. We are here to do something that we were made for –
something that only we can do in the way our maker wants. At last we know
what to do about that sense of uniqueness that we have: we don’t have to
be driven by the need for others to acknowledge our uniqueness by gaining
some little celebrity status. We see that it doesn’t matter if the whole
world ignores us as long as our maker esteems us as part of himself.

But this reality of our being part of the son of the Creator of the
universe also affects our attitude to the future. You can see that if you
look again at that statement by Paul (to whom Jesus appeared in
Palestine) – “we are God’s workmanship created in Christ Jesus for good
works which he has prepared beforehand that we should walk in them”. Even
we with our finite minds can see that our maker obviously knows
everything there is to be known about his creation. It is the job of
human manufacturers to know the potentials and limitations of their
product. How much more does the infinite being who made everything know
what will happen when millions of beings through thousands of years
interact with each other and their environment!

Indeed, when you think how many circumstances and contingent events must
occur repeatedly for you to get up each morning and get to work, the
being or power that enables all these to occur on time must know
everything in detail. So, obviously the creator knows all that will
happen and all the things we will do in our lifetime. The great
difference between the exercise of this power and that of a software
programmer is that our father is committed to guarding and preserving our
exercising free will. He put us here to give us that opportunity – to
come willingly to accept his plan for us – however long it takes and
however much he has to bear as we choose our own ways.

But the immeasurable benefit for us is that our future is a known way –
one that has been carefully planned and prepared and provided for by
someone who really loves and cares for us!

Day 13: Living Daily in Reality: A Planned Life
===============================================

If living daily in reality is living in the certainty that we have been
made by somebody who actually knows us and loves us, how does that affect
the way we think of our futures? The first thought that comes to us is
that this creator must know exactly why and for what purpose he made us
and put us here. It doesn’t take much intelligence to see the detailed
planning and supervision that he must exercise to get you to successfully
stand up, walk to the door and open it. Millions of actions in your body,
muscles, blood, and brain have to be carefully co-ordinated to enable you
to perform that simple act. And when you apply that thought to six
billion people throughout the world that avoid colliding with each other
and operate millions of personal and financial decisions every hour so
that payables and receivables, sales and purchases, imports and exports
operate efficiently time after time, it’s easy to see that our creator
knows exactly where everything is and will be every moment.

So your creator certainly knows what he’s planned for you! The idea that
he just makes the whole thing and then rolls it like a dice is something
that Einstein utterly rejected as inconsistent with the complicated
activities of human and physical nature. Even the growing development of
chaos theories by our scientists imply the same belief that nothing
happens by chance. Indeed, one could say that if chance ruled, then
chance would be the ultimate power in the universe and an intelligent
supreme being would be impossible.

The alternative to chance is a loving, infinite person who wants us to
choose freely to love him so badly that he uses his complete sovereignty
with such restraint that we actually are able to choose to acquiesce in
his plan for us. And this even if he himself has to bear the strain and
pain of our destructive behaviour. This seems to be the situation that is
described by Jesus when he expresses his Father’s attitude to Jerusalem
in the words “Jerusalem,, Jerusalem, how often would I have gathered you
as a hen gathers her chickens, but you would not”. It also represents the
paradox expressed by one of Jesus’ disciples when he says “work out your
own salvation with fear and trembling for it is God that works in you
both to will and to do his good pleasure”. In some profound way, Christ
in us acts yet it is we who do the actual deed.

So reality is that our lives are planned for us and the power of our
creator works in us to fulfil that plan, yet submission to the treatment
of his son, Jesus, here on earth makes it clear that he is no dominating
dictator or puppeteer. In some paradoxical way he acts and we act also.

Day 14: Living Daily in Reality: The Way We Live Now
====================================================

Living daily in reality means living lives that have been planned by the
infinite father-creator who knows how many times every fly in the world
beats its wings each minute. Although his love for us necessitates his
making us free to love him or not, each of us has been put here by him to
do something that he has planned for us alone. Obviously the state of our
personal and international lives shows that we have not made the best
choices or the choices that we would expect him to approve.

Generally, few of us have seriously accepted that we were made by a
creator who cared for us so much that he made us inside his own son so
that we could be like him. From we were born we’ve assumed that we were
on our own – after a few years of help from our parents. Normally we’ve
taken it for granted that it was up to us to decide how we were going to
survive. It’s simple to see there are six billion other people like
ourselves so it’s up to us to get enough food, shelter, and clothing to
maintain life. You quickly see that this means getting as good a job as
you can so education will help, but most of all you see that you have to
compete with thousands of other human beings who are thinking the same
thing as you are.

Moreover, even at school you feel inside that others
don’t seem to see how absolutely unique you are; that’s why the approval
and admiration of your peers becomes so important: Little League is not
just fun; sport is not just games; these things can bring you respect and
even promotion. But along with these concerns you yearn for that
combination of excitement and contentment that gives you a sense of
well-being and happiness. So pleasure of all kinds becomes an important
part of your life.

The result of this view of reality is that most of us find ourselves
pretty indifferent to what our maker may or may not want: through teen
years and into the twenties we are like little machines that live each
day to get enough things to give us some sense of security, enough
prestige to get some feeling of significance, and enough pleasures to
give us some happiness. And the only source of this security,
significance, and happiness is this world around us with its things, its
people, and its pleasant circumstances and surroundings. So we grow
utterly dependent not on the creator but on the creation. The result is
we have no idea why we were put here, and we have little time to think
about such things because life has just carried us along so fast that we
haven’t noticed the time going.

Needless to say, this chaotic, meaningless rat-race is far removed from
what your creator has in mind, but wouldn’t he have foreseen some of this?
If he made us, wouldn’t he have foreseen all of it? Of course, so
let’s talk together again about this.

Day 15: Living Daily in Reality: Why does God allow evil?
========================================================

Living daily in reality entails seeing clearly that you personally have a
loving father who made you inside his own son so that he could live the
life through you that he has planned. What we saw yesterday was that we
have had no time for that kind of thinking; we are utterly taken up with
getting enough food, clothing, and shelter to gain some sense of security
from these things; getting enough respect and recognition from other
people to give us some sense of significance; and arranging circumstances
and events so that we have a little pleasure and happiness to make life
bearable. All of this focuses us – not on some creator somewhere out
there – but solidly on this world around us; it is the source we look to
for our livelihood.

Why does our maker allow this to happen? Because of his own nature –
which is love – a real desire to give what he has and is – to others –
not because he has to but because he wants to. This means giving the free
will that he himself has – so that we are truly free to return that to
him; so he gives us the freedom to reject him and his love or to love him
in return. This was expressed by his son here on earth when he said
“Jerusalem, Jerusalem, how often would I have gathered you as a hen
gathers her chickens, but you would not”. It’s why throughout the years
in which the nation of Israel turned away from him to other gods, the
prophets said “the steadfast love of the Lord never ceases; his mercies
never come to an end”. Although God has planned that the rarest flower
has a bee or moth that is able to pollinate it and that the air pressure
of our atmosphere is precisely right for us to exist without exploding or
imploding – and although he has carefully planned your life in detail,
yet he bears all the independent selfishness and irritability you choose
to express.

The result is that this world is actually a picture of what life would be
like without a creator who is our loving Father. Just as permission to
eat of the tree of life and to reject the tree of the knowledge of good
and evil was given in the Genesis account of creation, so this present
world is a clear presentation to us of life or death – it is our
opportunity to acquiesce to our creator’s plan for us or to reject it.
However, there is no permanent life apart from our Maker’s, so our father
faces a devastating situation when He creates us. We can only be what he
is if we have his freedom, but if we use it to reject him, then we lose
any possibility of retaining life – because there is no life apart from
him!

This is why he made us in his son.

Day 16: Living Daily in Reality: God’s Forbearance
==================================================

We have been talking about what reality truly is, and we’ve said in these
first fifteen segments that the most cohesive and believable explanation
seems to come from a unique human being who lived in the first century of
our era – a man known in history as Jesus of Nazareth. Through his own
words and his life (that continued even after he was executed) he told us
that we were actually made by his Father in the eternity or infinity that
our scientists have glimpsed through Einstein’s theory of relativity. He
said that His Father made us inside him because he wanted us to share the
life and free will that he himself had.

We, of course, have had no interest in doing that and instead have tried
to get satisfaction from the planet on which he has placed us. However,
the Creator knows what he has made, and he foresaw the Catch 22 we would
get ourselves into – using the gift of free will to reject the only
source of life there is and thus putting ourselves in the kind of world
we have since created. The longer this world goes on, the more it becomes
a hell that utterly contradicts and destroys the heaven of love and peace
that Jesus and the Creator enjoy together.

Only now do we see why we were made inside this son of our Creator – He
is in each one of us and is the urge to goodness that even the worst of
us feel at times. He said ” you in me and I in you” – in other words this
creator of ours has resolved to stay with us – to continue to put up with
what we do and say even though it is a daily agony for him as we trample
on others and are trampled ourselves. Nevertheless our Maker has resolved
to continue inside us until we turn from our temporary sources of love
and at last believe that he is. All the time His Son endeavors to live in
us and through us the life that each of us were made for – this explains,
of course, why we all do good at times even in the midst of the
selfishness by which we try to destroy everything but ourselves. It also
explains why the world is an increasing hell lightened at times by its
original beauty and serenity.

But why does our creator allow even his own life to be imperilled by us?
Because he himself made us out of love for us and a desire that we would
experience the same love – freely because we chose it NOT because we
couldn’t do otherwise. That basic fact is how we know that even his
foreknowledge of what we will do is used by his providence in such a way
that the choice is ours. He will not force us against our wills –
otherwise his very love is limited. So – day by day – a loving father
knows every move you will make and does everything possible to guide you
through his son’s attitude within you BUT he will not force your will.
What is the result of this reality in your life? Let’s talk about that
tomorrow.

Day 17: Living Daily in Reality: Free Will
==========================================

When you talk about living in reality, you’re really talking about living
in two worlds – there’s the world around us with all its wrongs and
disasters and chaos; On the other hand there’s the world that we long for
and try to create.

And even these two worlds are found in our own personal experience,
because inside us we find an urge to do good and be kind and unselfish;
but inside us there is also another part of us that wants its own way
whatever the cost and is full of bad thoughts and desires.

We’ve been sharing that the son of the creator of the universe actually
lived here about 2000 years ago and explained to us the reason for these
two worlds. He said that his father made all of us – you yourself –
inside him so that we could choose to be like him and live with him in
love OR we could live alone ourselves and face the consequences. The
result is this world that we see around us AND the dichotomy or
double-mindedness that we see within us.

Our maker made it like this because he actually does care about you and
me and wanted us to choose with our own wills whether to live with him
and let him live in us or not. “Not” of course means nothingness because
there is no life apart from him – but he wanted us to have the right to
choose even that if we wanted to. This is why he also made us like
himself and put his son’s spirit within us – so that we could taste what
it’s like for him to live in us and for us to live with him.

He, of course, knows the life he has planned for himself in you – and he
knows what you will do, yet he stands back, takes his hands off the wheel
of your life, and bears in himself and in others the results of your
actions and attitudes. Yet, all the time he is bringing about
circumstances and nudging you in different ways towards his will for your
life. But if he ever forces your will his way, he loses the whole purpose
for creating you – your freely returned love!

So all our lives are mixtures of the things we do that our maker’s son is
doing through us with our acquiescence and things that we do independent
of him; these latter things are what Christ talked about when he said
that God “works all things according to the counsel of his will”. So our
lives are a complex combination of independent and co-operative decisions
designed to draw us patiently towards the great mind and heart that
designed our lives. They proceed by best and worse turns to the end that
our Creator has always had in mind for each of us.

Day 18: Living Daily in Reality: A New Kind of Life
===================================================

Reality is that God made you as part of his Son who lived here on the
earth as Jesus of Nazareth in the first century. He existed in eternity
outside our time-space world – and you were created inside him there. He
had his own physical body then, but now he exists in your body to do
certain things his Father has planned for you. This is what his apostle
Paul wrote to the people in Ephesus in 52 a.d. “we are God’s workmanship
created in Christ Jesus for good works that he has prepared beforehand
that we should walk in them”.

God wants us to follow his son’s directions within us; but his love for
you is real – so he has committed himself to bear whatever you choose or
whatever you reject! That’s why an old prophet wrote “the steadfast love
of the Lord never ceases, his mercies never come to an end; they are new
every morning”. But the creator has planned the life his Son wishes to
live in you, so he has kept you within himself so that (like a mother
with an unborn child) he bears all your sins – feels all your hatreds and
pains, resentments and embarrassments. And all the time he endeavors to
draw you into fulfilling his plan for you – creates circumstances and
opportunities wherever he can without coercing the human will.

This was the meaning of his Son’s crucifixion in Jerusalem – it was
really the physical expression in time-space of his own agony throughout
all the centuries – a declaration that he would bear what we inflicted –
up to death itself. Past that he could not go or all would cease to exist!

This then is who you are and who Jesus Christ is! He is not only a
prophet – not a mantra or magic word that gets you into some religious
club or church – not a mere historical figure to imitate or study. He is
the one in whom you exist – his breath is what keeps you alive – his
energy circulates your blood – by his continued good will, you continue
to exist! And every moment he stands quietly by your side – remaining in
the shadows until you acknowledge him.

Far from being a nobody – you are part of the Maker of the universe –
because he made you in his own son. Of course, because God made you, he
knew you would choose to depend on yourself and others, and would become
a pathetic, fearful or defiant parody of what he himself is; so we would
see this, he has allowed us to become that in our present life. But
because he is infinite and sees all the past and the future as one
present moment, he bore in his son the temporal, self-absorbed
personality of all of us and made us again as we were in the beginning –
part of himself and his son. Because of this action of his, we can live
in that reality here in the midst of time and space – the moment we
accept this reality mentally and volitionally, we are translated into the
eternal life of Christ.

How does this life in reality differ from the life most of us live day by
day? Let’s talk now about that.

Day 19: Living Daily in Reality: God’s Action
=============================================

How does the life we have been describing differ from the day to day life
most of us are living? If you want to refresh your memory on the
intellectual basis for what we are saying in these discussions, please do
view again (or read) Days 1 to 6: this will help you to see that Christ
is the being inside whom we all exist. When you do that, you’ll begin to
understand why Paul wrote in his letter to the Ephesians (2:4-10) “But
God, who is rich in mercy, out of the great love with which he loved us,
even when we were dead through our trespasses, made us alive together
with Christ (by grace you have been saved), and raised us up with him and
made us sit with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus (by grace you
have been saved) that in the coming ages he might show the immeasurable
riches of his grace in kindness towards us in Christ Jesus. For by grace
you have been saved through faith and this is not your own doing, it is
the gift of God – not because of works, lest any man should boast. For we
are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works which God
prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them”.

In other words, God created us in his Son so that he himself would bear
personally every affront and trespass that he foreknew would be inflicted
by the free will of every human-being that would ever exist. And despite
that infinite pain, he lifted us out of time-space and remade us in
eternity in his Son. This present world is our temporal, fallen state –
but our actual, eternal state exists now in Christ. If we live as if we
are dependent on the world for our needs, then we experience the
limitations of that; if we live in dependence on the life of the
Creator’s son, then we experience the limitlessness of that.

Our real choice, then, is between the deformed creature we have become
through our dependent attitude to the world or the original being we were
re-created in Christ. The deformed, perverted old self cannot free itself
from a slavish dependency on the temporal world and the original
re-created being can only take its place through our embracing of it in
Christ. Thus faith creates nothing – it simply accepts and treats as real
or it rejects and treats as unreal; in that sense, our attitude
determines everything in our lives.

Can we clearly distinguish which version of ourselves we are living in?
Let’s talk about this next time.

Day 20: Living Daily in Reality: Two Environments
=================================================

We’ve been talking about reality – and living in it every day. We’ve said
that reality is that you personally have a loving Father who made you in
his only son so that he could live the life that he has planned; so his
son is working to complete his creation through you and in you. So
obviously living daily in reality means depending on this son of our
creator inside us. How can we do that? Is there a great difference
between going to the world around us and going to the eternal world
beyond time-space? The difference is huge in our own attitudes and huge
in the two powers unleashed in our lives!

Early in your life, you begin to realize you will not always have your
parents with you. You realize you’ll have to provide your own clothes and
food and shelter if you are to have any security in this world. But there
are at least 6 billion other human beings who are trying to get their
share of the world’s food and shelter so you begin the long battle for a
good job and adequate salary. You soon get used to feelings of anxiety
about exams and bank accounts; you also get to know that unpleasant
feelings like envy and selfishness can rise up within you as you struggle
to get as many things as you need to live.

It’s the same when you come to understand that other people don’t think
as much of you as your parents. You seemed to them the most wonderful
person in the world and they often treated you like that, but suddenly
you see that other people often don’t even notice you. You begin to feel
you’re just a cipher – a number – a little nothing among the billions of
other people who are also feeling the same way. So begins your great
struggle for attention and recognition. You find yourself drawing
attention to your achievements in boastful conversation, and you start
the age-old game of criticizing others to make yourself look good. It’s
then that you discover the inner drive of pride and jealousy as you try
to beat others who are themselves struggling to establish their
significance. Everyone seems to be trying to be the most famous – and you
despair of your own nothingness.

When you were a child some of your happiest times were when you were out
with your parents for the day – you were carefree, utterly safe in their
keeping and just using your little abilities to play or read. Soon you
yearn for that little mixture of contentment and excitement that you used
to feel then. Then you start the search for that happiness in your adult
life, and soon you find that the desire to enjoy peace and excitement is
forcing you into living for the weekend break or the emotional thrill or
the nothingness of unconsciousness. You know that it’s a lie that
changing your circumstances will bring happiness, but somehow you can’t
see any other way to get relief from boredom or dissipation.

Most of us have experienced some or all of these feelings as we’re lived

like everyone else – depending on things for our security, people for our
sense of significance, and circumstances for our happiness. Let’s talk
next about the effects of this on our personalities.

HOW CAN I KEEP FROM SINGING?

My life flows on in endless song
Above earth’s lamentation;
I hear the real though distant hymn
That hails a new creation

No storm can shake my calm repose
While to this rock I’m clinging:
If Christ is Lord of heaven and earth
How can I keep from singing?

What though my joys and comforts die!
I know my Savior liveth;
What though the darkness round me lie!
Songs in the night he giveth

I lift my eyes – the cloud grows thin,
I see the blue above it;
And day by day this pathway smoothes
Since first I learned to love it.

The peace of Christ makes fresh my heart
A fountain ever springing
All things are mine since I am His
How can I keep from singing?

Day 21: Living Daily in Reality: The Effects of our Environment
===============================================================

Living in reality is totally different from the life that most of us live
each day. But living in unreality has deadly consequences and effects
that spoil and shorten your life. Your life is probably like everyone
else’s – at least eight hours each day is taken up by work – which you
need in order to get the money required to keep body and soul together.
If you don’t work you can’t get the food, shelter and clothing and you
need these things to stay alive. But somehow you never get enough of
these things to make you feel really secure. Even billionaires will often
say they’d be content if they had just another million! We find
ourselves thinking the same way about our home or our car or our job or
our food or our clothes. Moreover, even when we have all those just
right, we still find ourselves anxious about tomorrow or the market or
old age. Real security inside still seems impossible.

It’s the same with our self-esteem or – rather – others’ esteem of us. We
are never completely at ease with our place in society or the world. We
still have feelings of insignificance or inferiority that stir up those
old dragons of envy, jealousy, and pride. We are still driven in our
conversations and actions by a desire to look good in other people’s
eyes. At times we are driven almost to despair by the thought that we are
merely a little bit of nothing floating in the vast reaches of a
limitless eternity – a feeling that we mean nothing to anybody and will
be forgotten forever once we die!

The search for happiness becomes wearisome as the years go by. The old
excitements we used to find in adventure or sex or money seem to have
lost their thrill. And we think it’s harder to feel utter peace and
contentment than it was years ago. Besides — the sheer instability of
the world is constantly breaking in upon your own inner experience so
that it’s difficult to separate yourself from the outside noise and chaos.

All of these disappointing experiences affect our own selves. We find the
drive to acquire enough things verges on greed and anxious fear that keep
us awake at night; the drive for some sense of significance fills us with
a restless desire for more success, more approval, more recognition, more
envy of others and their success; and our hunger for happiness drives
many of us to excess in alcohol, drugs, or sexual experience so that
we’re no longer in charge of our own bodies.

But the most unbearable part for many is the overwhelming sense of
loneliness and futility when we face the question – is this all there is?
What’s this wild race for, anyway? What’s the point of it all? As Housman
wrote:

Yonder see the morning blink,
The sun is up and up must I,

To wash and dress and eat and drink,
To look at things and talk and think,
And work – and God knows why!

Let’s talk about this again.

Day 22: Living Daily in Reality: Our Real Environment
=====================================================

Living daily in reality means living in things as they really are.
Yesterday we talked about the futility of life when it’s lived in a
closed universe, i.e. when you think that reality is this little earth
spinning through limitless space with no comprehensible origin or
purpose. It seems impossible to get from the things, people, and
circumstances around us the security, significance, and happiness that we
seem to need. What is our real environment?

The reality is that you personally have a loving Father who made you in
his only son so that he could live the life in you that he planned. His
only son explained this all to us when he lived on this earth in the
first century – you remember we talked about the historicity of this in
Days 1-6 of our early conversations. He said “therefore I tell you, do
not be anxious about your life, what you shall eat or what you shall
drink, nor about your body, what you shall put on. Is not life more than
food, and the body more than clothing? Look at the birds of the air;
they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly
Father feeds them. Are you not of more value than they? And which of you
by being anxious can add one cubit to his span of life? And why are you
anxious about clothing? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow;
they neither toil nor spin; yet I tell you, even Solomon in all his glory
was not arrayed like one of these. But if God so clothes the grass of the
field, which today is alive and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, will he
not much more clothe you, O men of little faith?
Therefore do not be anxious, saying, “What shall we eat?” or “What shall
we drink?” or “What shall we wear?” For the Gentiles seek all these
things; and your heavenly Father knows that you need them all. But seek
first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things shall be
yours as well. Therefore do not be anxious about tomorrow, for tomorrow
will be anxious for itself. Let the day’s own trouble be sufficient for
the day.”

But most of us have rejected this reality and ignored any attempt of the
creator’s Son to live in us. We are full of ourselves and our needs and
desires, and have become little willful egotists who regard God as a
myth. Because our creator knows there is no one except him and because he
loves us and has given us free will, he has allowed us to spoil the world
if we wish and to despise and hurt him and ourselves in his son. But in
his great mercy he has limited that by creating time while in eternity he
has forgiven and put his son within us. The result is that each of us may
choose unreality or reality, life on our own or Christ’s life in us, this
transient life or eternal life, life as it seems to be or life as it
really is.

Day 23: Living Daily in Reality: The Reconciliation
===================================================

Living daily in reality is letting the son of our creator live through us
the life his father has planned for you and for me. But we despise that
whole reality and shift for ourselves – we never think of God living in
us and wouldn’t put up with it if we got the chance. So we have all lived
a life of unreality – regarding ourselves as somehow self-made and
independent of any visible support. Thus we have become little egotistic
automatons doing our own thing – using whomever or whatever we need to
make ourselves successful. The result is a world that is strained and
stressed – swaying between a half-hearted happiness and absolute despair.
We bounce from war to war through the centuries – relieved only by the
unusual good actions of some power that seems to work in odd people like
Churchill or Roosevelt or Barnardo or Sister Teresa.

Why would a real creator ever make such a bunch of losers and such a
chaotic world?

The fact is, as you can guess, that our creator knows what he has made –
he knows that the only way his son can live a unique life in each one of
us is if we are willing. His son obeys him because he loves him and he
loves him because he is free. It will be the same with us, so our creator
gave us freedom to reject him if we wished so that we would have a real
choice between life in him or nothingness without him. He knew we would
choose nothingness and he, in love, committed himself to bearing that and
all its consequences inside his son. That’s how it’s expressed in the
Bible in Ephesians 1:4 ‘even as he chose us in him before the foundation
of the world’. Our creator determined that he would bear the full agony
(a moment in eternity but in time thousands of years) of separation from
his son’s humanity in its rejection of him. This maintenance of the unity
of his own nature – by bearing fully in himself the effects of the free
will he had himself created – made possible our own destruction and
re-creation. So, here in time we have a choice between our old rebelled
nature and our remade one in Christ.

Our creator cannot ‘play with his creation’ – he cannot pretend he is
loving and then allow us to hate while he remains untouched. When he made
us inside his own son he committed himself to destroying hatred or
bearing it until it was transformed. Thus he bears the fear and pain of
the last man killed today in battle – and at the same time he bears his
own pain at the anger and cruelty of the one who did the killing. By
holding together these irreconcilable attitudes he is able to remake your
nature and give you the chance to live in it.

So today there is only one reality – the one created by our maker in his
son from before the beginning of time. That is you, foreseen by him in
your rejection of him and your choice of yourself, destroyed in eternity
in his son and remade in his son. The other apparent choice we see around

us is a flash-back: it’s the morning-after-the-night-before: it’s life as
it would be without God. The only present reality waits for you to choose
it!

Day 24: Living Daily in Reality: Time and Eternity
==================================================

Reality is that you and I were made to enjoy the same kind of life as the
son of the creator of the universe. We weren’t made to live the little
pokey, petty, self-centered life that many of us drift into. We were made
to be actual willing containers or cohabitants with God’s own son in our
personalities. When we refuse that, we become uncontrollable egotistic
dictators who want what we want – even if it destroys others’ freedom and
happiness. This explains why we destroy our marriages, kill each other,
make life hard for one another, grab whatever we want when we want it,
and generally turn ourselves into anti-social morons.

Our maker has not been caught out by this – he knew what he had made and
he foreknew what we would do with our free wills. This is why he made us
in his own son – so that we would continue to exist despite our contempt
for him. He himself resolved to bear in himself and his son our hostile
attitude and pride while we continued to exist in the mess we made of his
world. This was not just to punish us as we have punished him but so that
we would see and experience what life without him is like. That’s why
this world is so chaotic – he made it good – we’ve made it bad – with our
selfishness and ill-treatment of the world itself. So the present earth
gives us a clear picture of what life on our own would be while life
lived by our maker’s son in us is the reality that exists in eternity –
in the timeless, space-less world of infinity that modern physics is
beginning to point to. That is reality – and we move into it the moment
we believe it and act accordingly.

In other words, unreality is the present life of the world that is
governed by human irresponsibility and selfish will; it is life without
God. Reality is the life in his son that God made us for and this life
really does exist in this present moment of eternity. The only way to
bring eternity into time is to believe the fact that it is reality and to
live accordingly. Only then is the life of the creator’s son experienced
by you and me. The life we live now is like the shadow or cinder-life
that appeared a second after the nuclear explosion – it can be shattered
by touching it. Which is why Paul wrote in Romans 6:11 “consider
yourselves dead to sin (life without God) and alive to God in Christ
Jesus” and in Colossians 3:3 “for you have died, and your life is hid
with Christ in God”.

There are two versions of you – so that you can choose which you want.
Your present life is the one you live yourself and the one our creator
permits for us so that we see that option plainly, but the real one
exists now in eternity and is experienced the moment you really embrace
it in our maker’s son. How do you embrace it? Let’s talk about this next
time.

Day 25: Living Daily in Reality: Eternity in Time
=================================================

Our creator is not some cosmic toy-maker who makes billions of
human-beings, gives them free will and then stands back to observe the
results. He is a loving father who foreknew in a millisecond all the
consequences of the free decisions of billions of us through the
centuries. He bore them all personally in his son, could then negate them
and their cosmic effects, and mercifully made us all again in him. He
then expressed that eternal event in time in his son’s death in Palestine
in the first century. So we are now free to see in this present world the
effects of our decisions and to choose our original creations instead.

This is the meaning of profound statements in the Bible like “we are
God’s workmanship created in Christ Jesus for good works which he has
prepared beforehand that we should walk in them…he himself bore our
sins in his body on the tree….our old self was crucified with
him….with the Lord one day is as a thousand years and a thousand years
as one day”. But how do we change? Many of us have tried to live
independent of the world’s things, people, and circumstances and depend
on our creator for our needs, but we’ve found it impossible.

The only way for us to live in reality is to believe our creator is who
he says he is and has done what he says he has done. Just as in our
day-to- day lives we live in things as they are, so it is in time and
eternity. Only our maker can actualize in time what he has done in
eternity – this is the meaning of that paradoxical Biblical statement “at
the east of the garden of Eden…a flaming sword which turned every way
to guard the way to the tree of life”. Our part is obvious – simply live
in eternity – in accordance with the change our creator has wrought in us
in his son’s death. If we live in that daily, then he actualizes the
eternal event in our present lives.

So there is no mystery about living in reality – it is not just an
ascetic self-discipline of our evil tendencies or a life-long ethical
slog or a self-directed dependence on how-to books or an esoteric
mysticism which tries to believe what isn’t true. Faith creates nothing –
it simply accepts reality and lives accordingly.

In other words, living in reality means letting our creator’s son, Jesus
Christ, live in us the life his father has planned, i.e. a life where his
spirit daily depends on his father for the security, significance, and
happiness that his love and friendship give us. This means daily dying
the death that he died for us to things, people and circumstances in our
ordinary lives – the result is the activity of his spirit in our lives so
that “he works all things according to the counsel of his will” and “all
things work together for good to those who love God”.

This means a life that works from the inside out instead of from the

outside in. All of us are aware of our bodies and most of us are aware of
our minds and feelings, but only a few of us are aware of our spirits.
Sometimes in the quietness of a summer afternoon in the country or the
darkness of a starlit night we – like the poet Wordsworth – “have felt

A presence that disturbs me with the joy
Of elevated thoughts; a sense sublime
Of something far more deeply inter-fused,
Whose dwelling is the light of setting suns,
And the round ocean and the living air,
And the blue sky, and in the mind of man:
A motion and a spirit, that impels
All thinking things, all objects of all thoughts,
And rolls through all things.”

This is the part of our personalities that our creator has brought to
life when he raised us up in his son. Reality is believing that and
living from the inside out each day – from the level of our spirit out
through our souls and bodies. Let’s talk about this kind of life during
these next days.

Day 26: Living Daily in Reality: A Corrupted World
==================================================

Your personal father is not your human Dad – your personal father is
your creator. He made you like himself and put the spirit of his only
Son into you – this is “the light that lightens every man that comes
into the worldâ€(cid:157); this is the good that you feel rising at times inside
yourself. Watch the first six segments of this series so that you
understand the intellectual basis in history for what we’re saying here.

You, of course, like the rest of us have used our freedom to keep this
spirit of God within us damped down so that we could live independent of
our Maker. But this has made us utterly dependent on the world around us
– its things for our security, its circumstances for our happiness, and
other people for our significance or celebrity status. The result is that
our personalities have been corrupted so that we cannot do the good that
we want, but repeatedly do what inside we really want to do.

Our maker knew this would happen but did not want robots who loved him
just because they had to; He wanted dear children who would love Him
because he loved them. This meant he had to experience himself the worst
that they chose to do and be; not only had they to see and experience
what he was not – but He himself had to bear that in them. This meant
His own death – it meant experiencing all that He Himself was not! And,
if we were to have the chance to actually live and love with Him, it
meant His making us then what he wanted us to be – after we had
experienced life without Him.

This is our situation in this world. It is life without its maker –
life mutilated and corrupted by humanity living off the creation rather
than the creator. Our maker “subjected the creation to futilityâ€(cid:157)
through our abuse of nature and each other so that we would see and
experience first-hand the death that existed outside Him. Just think of
it for a moment – how would you make other living beings who could love
you freely because they wanted to and not because they had to. How would
you give them the opportunity to really choose you freely if there was no
other existence outside you? Even more than that – how would you keep
them alive if there was no other life than yours?  And how could you
bear the pain of death that would be inflicted upon you if you stayed
with them as they lived in the midst of the death that exists outside
you? Then imagine what it would be like if their existence continued only
because they were part of your only son and it was him who bore their
destruction to shield them from extinction!

This present fallen world is what life is like without our dear Father
– except that it is ameliorated and made bearable by the life of his
son’s spirit which continues the moderating effect of his spirit.
Wherever this is accepted or exercised without coercing our human wills
our creator is able to restrain the devastation wrought by our autonomous

lives. Thus the present world is “subjected to futilityâ€(cid:157) so that we
can see what life would be like without God as against the life of his
son manifested from time to time. Far from being a perfect world – this
is planned by our creator to be a graphic picture of the kind of world
that our autonomy produces so that we personally can see the difference
between just a knowledge of good and evil and the life of his own nature
within us.  Â

By living in such a world we see how our own personality is warped and
corrupted by the environment we create. So, when we try to live
independent of his life and love by getting life and love from the world
itself, we discover that our nature becomes so corrupt that we cannot
depend on him even when we wish. How can you be freed from your
dependence on things for your security, circumstances for your happiness
and people for your significance? Let’s talk about that tomorrow.

Day 27: Living Daily in Reality: Flashback or Eternal Present?
=============================================================

Why does it seem easier to do wrong than right? Why does our
self-esteem depend more on the approval of other mortal human beings like
ourselves rather than on the one really significant other who made
us? Why do our eyes seek the eyes of others to see if they approve of
us? Why are we stimulated to draw attention to ourselves when we see
the adulation given to celebrities? Why do we find it impossible to
free ourselves from the lie that changed circumstances will make us
happy? Why do we find it impossible to stop worrying when our bank
balance goes down or our house burns down? Why do we strike out at
others if they express dislike of us? And why do we find it impossible
to change these attitudes?

Because we find our natures have become corrupted by this choice we have
made – this desire to be independent of our maker by depending on his
creation for our needs. Years ago the scholars explained that we were
totally depraved – what they meant was that our whole beings and
personalities have become corrupted by our life-style. There is only
death – lack of life – outside the one who made us. When we
choose that autonomy or independence – what is called sin – with an
“I” right in the middle – we experience all the destruction of
death throughout our being. It touches everything and spoils every part
of our personalities and life. Faced with this situation we do what
every drowning person does: we struggle to save ourselves from the
engulfing egotism. And we struggle with the only thing we have – our
own minds and emotions and wills; but the problem is that they are now
corrupted and depraved and twisted out of shape by their very activity.
So even our minds are impaired just as our emotions are unbalanced and
our wills weakened: this is what the Bible means when it states that
“the mind of the flesh is enmity against God, it is not subject to his
law, neither indeed can it be”.

But we continue to struggle – incorrigibly independent! So we write our
“how to” books, we indulge in our own power of positive thinking. We
will even use our maker’s son as a stirring example by asking “what
would Jesus do”. But in this situation “the struggle nought
availeth” – we sink deeper into our egocentricity because our whole
being is under the sentence of death that God’s own life exerts against
all that opposes what he himself is. It is not his nature that we need
– it is him himself; it is not principles that we need but a person –
it is not Christian ideas that we need, but Christ himself. God can only
replace us with his own son if he first bears all the consequences that
follow his giving us free will. He has to face his own rejection by us if
he is to give us a real chance to destroy him. This is what happened in
the timeless, space-less world of eternity – where it is said that
Christ was crucified from before the foundation of the world. In eternity
– before time began – our infinite Maker foresaw what we would all do
with our free wills – He foresaw that we would choose to rid ourselves
of the only source of our own existence – and He resolved to experience
that actual agony himself inside each of us as we had been created inside
his only Son. This is why it is said that “our old self was
crucified with him so that we might be no longer enslaved to sin” and
our own egocentricity. Because the perverted egotist that you would
become was crucified in that cosmic death that God bore for us so that we
would have a choice – the reality of depending on him or the unreality
of depending on things and people and circumstances!
So our choice is to continue the death-life of this present world –
which is really a flash-back to what life without God is like –
although our maker himself has borne its whole life in his own son whom
he has put in each one of us. And because he has borne all of its sin
personally he is able to actualize in time what was done in eternity –
destroy our corrupted personalities and replace them with his own
son’s.

Only that exchange between us and his son will deliver us from
our perverted lives – only our maker can remake us – what we need
is a total refit – a complete remake. We will never bring it about
by the clever use of our own minds – they are enmity against God –
not subject to his law, nor can they be. Our only hope is that we
“have that mind in us that we have in Christ Jesus, who did not count
equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself, taking the
form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men and being found in
human form he humbled himself and became obedient unto death, even death
on a cross”. Our release from the entanglements of ourselves can only
be wrought by God himself if we accept that all that we are has been
destroyed in his son just as we were originally made in him. Only
then are we able to “have that mind in us that we have in Christ
Jesus”. And only when we abandon ourselves and accept him as the
real owner of this life – only then can this corrupted nature be
replaced by the divine one.

Day 28: Living Daily in Reality: Man’s Praise or God’s?

Living daily in reality means that you have to first decide what
reality is. Is it that this earth has resulted from a mindless,
impersonal collision of atoms or that it was created by an intelligent
superior being. As we’ve studied the history of the man known as Jesus
of Nazareth, we’ve accepted that his father made the earth and made each
one of us as part of Him. We are here for Him to do through us what
his father wants done here on earth. Our fulfillment comes from
co-operating with his spirit inside us to bring this about.

When we ignore that we end up trying to get from the earth itself the
love that our maker has for us; so we try to shore up our low self-esteem
by drawing attention to ourselves in conversation or criticizing someone
else to make ourselves look good. Because we miss the reality that our
maker cares about us and watches over our lives we strive to get secure
jobs that will supply our needs, but we never seem able to establish a
permanent sense of security by this means. The result is our
personalities become corrupted by this slavish dependence of things and
other people until we find we can’t escape these strong selfish motives
and self-centered attitudes – even after we’ve begun to believe that
there is really a loving father who has made us in his son!

Our maker knew this would happen, so he has seen all this already in
his mind’s eye – before we ever appeared on the earth. He played the
whole thing through in the reality of eternity – bore all the pain and
death that we spread by our egocentric lives – bore it all in his son in
whom we were made – so that here on earth we could experience a new
start. That start begins when you see that this present world is the
world as it would have been if God had not destroyed it and remade it and
us in his son. That’s the only way we can be delivered from our
depraved enslavement to things and people and circumstances. Only God
himself can actualize here in time the changed “you” that exists now in
his son, Jesus Christ.

This occurs whenever you believe it and behave accordingly. For
instance, a problem situation develops in the office. One of your
fellow-workers gives your boss a wrong impression about you and there’s
just no way in which you can easily correct it. You see the effect of
it every day in the way your boss obviously thinks about you. As this
situation has hardened into permanence, your feeling about your job and
the office has changed. You don’t look forward to going to work any
more and your previous pleasant relationship with your boss has changed
so that you find yourself with suspicions and doubts that never bothered
you before. You’re read several “how to” books about changing your
attitudes, you’ve tried some of the little conversational pieces that
they recommend, but somehow your very own nature seems to be twisted out
of shape in regard to this one thing.

The basic flaw that holds this whole tangled web together is whose
opinion counts in your mind. Your boss didn’t make you and he probably
won’t be at your funeral – he certainly won’t be the first person you see
after you die! Only one person will fill these spots. The one who
made you – and he knew this whole thing would happen – just so that you
would see what your whole existence would be like if you cared more of
man’s opinion of you than his! This is the real issue – do you believe
your Maker made you – inside his own son – and that this son bore your
unbelief in God and your belief in man to death inside himself? Whenever
you start to see that and face honestly whether you will accept Christ’s
attitude to people’s opinion and concern only for his Father’s opinion –
then his spirit will make real in you the change that God brought about
in eternity.

If you are honestly willing to face reality then you’ll begin to live
in reality.

Day 29: Living Daily in Reality: Your Money or Your Life?

The reality of our life here on earth is that our creator is a loving
father who made us as part of his only son so that we could continue to
exist even as we tried nothingness rather than him. Throughout our
lives in his son he has borne the consequences of our choice of
nothingness – borne our sins and patiently kept us alive through his
son’s life. The ancient history book called the Bible states that this
son “was the image of the invisible God, the first-born of all creation;
for in him all things were created – all things were created through him
and for him; he is before all things, and in him all things hold
together.” Thus you have the opportunity to freely accept the reality
that you are part of your maker’s son who has a life to live through you
or to reject that and choose nothingness instead. Meanwhile your loving
father sustains your life and bears personally all the consequences of
your choice in others’ lives. He has foreseen what you would do and
mercifully counteracted it in his son so that he alone is able to “turn
back the clock” on the effects of your choice if you accept reality.

This reality and unreality show themselves in every area of our
lives. An obvious one concerns our sense of security. Most of us
see that food, shelter, and clothing are necessary for our lives.
Although we’ve heard the old saying “look at the birds of the air – they
do not sow or reap, and yet your heavenly father feeds them”, most of us
have smiled sardonically and said ‘God helps those who help
themselves’. So we go to it – get a good education to get a good job
so that we can continue our existence and have children who can do the
same thing over again. But we find there are six billion other
human-beings doing this – and there’s only so much food, clothing, and
shelter, so we determine we’ll get our share. But somehow we never get
enough to make us feel secure or we get it but can’t be absolutely sure
we’ll be able to hold on to it. So begins the life described by the
British poet, Auden – “in headaches and in worry vaguely life leaks
away”. We worry about the stock-market, our job security, our
mortgages, our promotion, our retirement, our health – and on and on!

Of course, we try to change our thinking – especially when we lie
awake at night or take alka-seltzer to get rid of the knot in our
stomachs when a large bill has to be paid. But, however we try, our
minds seem now to be in a rut that we can’t get them out of. We try to
think positively but keep sinking back into worry and anxiety about the
finances, the job, the future – everything.

Our maker knew this would happen to you – and the simple reality is
that – in his son, Jesus (who died in the time of the first century on
earth the death that he died in eternity when you were just an idea in
God’s mind) this life that you have built on your own ability to be
secure – he destroyed and remade in his son. This new life is your real
one but requires you to be willing to let your old self be destroyed in

Jesus so that your new personality can begin to take its place.

So you can stop struggling to stop worrying – what you have to do is
live in reality – accept that you are in this son of your maker – that
you were made in him and be willing to die to the things he died to for
you. Are you deeply willing to die to your salary and job security as
your main hope of success and happiness? Are you willing to accept what
your maker has for you – maybe prosperity, maybe poverty? Are you
willing to live on whatever God who feeds the birds of the air thinks is
good for you? Are you willing to be the failure that everyone thought
this Jesus was in his life?

Will this give you what you want? Maybe not – but this is reality
– and once you start living in it, your life has at last a chance.