Slumber Part 3

I have been going through the book The Slumber of Christianity by Ted Dekker, because it has struck me so much. I was just reading this section titled: In Living We Die; In Dying We Live. It reminded me of the line by Misty Edwards in her song, Servant of All.

“I’m in love with a king who became a slave.
I’m in love with a God who is humble.
You gotta go down if you wanna go up
And You’ve gotta go lower if you wanna go higher …
Cause it’s the inside outside upside down kingdom
Where you lose to gain and you die to live.”

And then I started thinking of some of the writings in the book Masterpiece of the Wilderness by my friend Deanna Deering. The strands running throughout this book are found mainly in Galatians 2:20 – “I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I now live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.” In other words… I had to die so that I could truly live. Her book is about walking out that journey through the struggles of pain and those “wilderness experiences.”

In this section of The Slumber, Dekker writes about how often times we find that the burden on our shoulders is heavy, even though Christ says that it is light. It’s heavy because of expectations placed on us by our church, bad theology, or even our own misconceptions of how life on this earth should be. Often we are looking for this elusive nirvana that we never seem to be able to find, much less achieve. Death is something necessary to talk about and deal with. We can’t ignore the inevitable reality. “In its obsession with happiness and life, our culture has locked death in a closet and tried desperately to lose the key. We certainly don’t treat death as the doorway to bliss.” Today I was talking to my friend Joey about how interesting it is that celebrities are “afraid” to get old. They have surgeries and lifts and tucks and liposuctions and use creams and lotions to hide the fact that they are not 20 any more and the bodies they once had are sagging and wrinkling. One look at Arnold Schwarzenegger without his shirt on now reveals that the “Mr. Universe” body he had in the 70s has long since left him. He is getting old. And truth is, that is a part of the journey. But our culture reveres youth and aging gracefully is not something that comes easy to most of us. We fight it, because most people think that when this is over – this 80 year journey, then really that’s all there is. You better get everything on your bucket list accomplished because you will never have the opportunity to _______ again. “Why are we afraid of death? Why has our focus shifted from a certain carelessness about life to a preoccupation with extending this life? We Christians, like the world, are so taken with this life full of all its colors and sounds and tastes that give us joy, we really don’t want the next life, which, as far as we can see, consists of nothing more than playing harps around a throne. It’s no wonder we don’t want to die.” (For more on this particular topic – the book Heaven by Randy Alcorn is an amazing study about our misconceptions and wrong perspectives on Heaven.)

Death in the Bible was treated quite a bit different than how western culture today treats it. Dekker writes of the reality for the writers of the New Testament, the first death (physical death) was not very concerning to them. But the second death (spiritual death) was of great concern. Paul writes extensively on this issue and in I Cor. 15 we see how he compares the body to a seed planted in the ground. It dies because it must in order for life to spring up — and look how amazing a thing comes from it! So we, like seeds, are buried and we die. But we are raised to such a glorious life – like a tree planted by a river! And so Paul ends with the familiar statement (vs 54-55), “Death is swallowed up in victory. O death, where is your victory? O death, where is your sting?” Paul’s point was that spiritual death is what we should be most concerned about.

This whole section is so rich. I could literally type this entire chapter out because it is chock full of so many good thoughts. If we have hope for eternity, that is what changes everything. Peter speaks of it in I Peter 1:3-4 – “In his great mercy he has given us new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, and into an inheritance that can never perish, spoil or fade.” Dekker points out how Peter says that hope is an inheritance – not on earth – but held in heaven! He then goes on to bring to light so many scriptures that deal with the reality of hope. I love this one by Paul in Romans 5:2-5, “Because of our faith, Christ has brought us into this place of undeserved privilege where we now stand, and we confidently and joyfully look forward to sharing God’s glory. We can rejoice, too, when we run into problems and trials, for we know that they help us develop endurance. And endurance develops strength of character, and character strengthens our confident hope of salvation. And this hope will not lead to disappointment.” Hope for the end of the race, hope for the coming of the bridegroom. Do you have oil? Are you like the wise virgins in Matt. 25 who had brought enough oil to last the night? Dekker asks, “how deep are our reservoirs of hope?” This oil is something that we build up through time – it’s not something we can magically conjure when we need it. He goes on to explain that hope is one of the most personal of all the gifts. “You can show love, you can demonstrate faith, but you either have or do not have hope. The amount of hope you have, like oil, may be shown in how bright your lamp shines.”

Dekker ends the first part of the book encouraging us to fix our minds on heaven and run after it with all we are. In this section, the slumber was exposed as a stealer of the passion for hope for eternity and the bliss to come. It really is a wake up call because I sat there reading this and saw many areas in my life that are sleeping. Even though I work in full time ministry, it is easy to go through motions or to do good things just because. It is easy to lose focus of the hope of eternity because of the pressing day-to-day realities steal some of that excitement of why I am doing what I am doing. I remember one moment though, when I was at Dad’s funeral in 2010, and I had such a calm assurance and felt such a peace in my heart because of the great HOPE that was in me. He had that same hope inside of him – that what lay beyond the boundaries of terra firma; of time; of space was far, far better. There was a clip in the movie, Return of the King, where Gandalf is speaking to Pippen about death:

Pippin: I didn’t think it would end this way.
Gandalf: End? No, the journey doesn’t end here. Death is just another path… One that we all must take. The grey rain-curtain of this world rolls back, and all turns to silver glass… And then you see it.
Pippin: What? Gandalf?… See what?
Gandalf: White shores… and beyond, a far green country under a swift sunrise.
Pippin: [smiling] Well, that isn’t so bad.
Gandalf: [softly] No… No it isn’t.

HOPE. Good stuff.