Walking In The Spirit - Quantum Christianity, #5

Walking In The Spirit is offered by Quantum Christianity, a unique topical Biblical commentary designed to help assess the true nature of our existence and relationship with God in light of both life's daily challenges and ultimate questions. In the wilderness, finding and choosing the right path is one thing. Navigating and completing a demanding trail is quite another. If such challenges hold true for physical hiking, how much greater the difficulties when embarking on a successful spiritual quest from here to heaven.
All the more so when the road is fraught with danger. Scripture reveals enemies abound from above, about and within. So much so, the very context of the Bible is one of Conflict Theology. How then do we proceed? In Whom can we trust? Have we a Guide? What training and equipping is necessary? What are the odds and rewards of survival? And what of failure to take and complete the road less traveled?Every child knows there is world a difference between lying and rolling over, sitting and crawling, standing and toddling, walking and running.
As with the physical so to the spiritual. The problem is that billions expend only a fraction of a percent of a percent of the effort invested in the former to equally master the latter. It would seem genuinely walking with the Spirit of God requires adopting Scripture's revelation that we do so, not hand in hand through meandering a beautiful garden maze but as commander and serviceman navigating an active mine field traversing a spiritual war zone.
No small issue given the Bible's revelation that Earth's an Enemy occupied planet offering humanity one of three options. Become a collaborator, sympathizer or resistance fighter. Those choosing the latter fall into the three additional categories of casualty, POW or Kingdom citizen soldier. All deference to worship songs and choruses such as the the world beloved, In The Garden, the Bible in general and the New Testament in particular, extol quite a different emphasis.
There is however one garden as applicable to our situation as it is shunned. The Garden of Gethsemane. Here Jesus exemplifies, and asks of His disciples, the kind of faith and prayer necessary to assure we "don't wander into temptation without even knowing you're in danger."An essential, yet frequently overlooked foundational element of genuine Biblical faith, is to what degree we appropriately responded to the consequences of spiritual resistance and conflict theology.
If Christianity's a cruise ship, sailing merrily from here to Heaven, then certainly Christ's costly atonement is sufficient passage. The cross of Jesus is indeed all anyone could ever need. If however, Heaven and Earth are at war with fallen angels and devils, Christianity is a battleship and we must follow our Commander and Chief's example and directives by daily shouldering our own. Even if Christianity could be likened to a pleasure cruise, given Churchianity's collision course with so many modern temptations and deceptions, up to an including immorality and the blood red mountainous iceberg of abortion, in certain respects might even many well intended ministries be reduced to simply arranging deck chairs on the Titanic?So is Christianity a cruise or gunship? We must decide.
And do so quickly and carefully. Military directives and drills, cramped quarters and sea rations, would be absurd on a pleasure cruise. So too, civilian itineraries and activities, opulent suites and sumptuous banquets, would be anathema during a time of war. When it comes walking in and with the Spirit, to knowing and realizing God's will, we must do better...