A tissue paper world…

The other day, as I was driving home and looking at the scenery around me, I realized how different I see the world compared to how I used to see it. I’m not referring to a specific time or date that it was specifically different, just that my vision is changing. Not my natural vision…my spiritual vision, I suppose.

It used to be that I looked around me and all I saw was what my natural eyes could see. What I saw was also what was most important to me, for the most part. I knew another spiritual realm was there, unseen…but I wasn’t really aware of it the way I am now.

I don’t know how to describe it, other than that a flip-flop is happening. I’m becoming more and more aware that there are things that are more real than what I see.

I look around me and see fields and trees and sky, but I see them as God’s glorious, but temporary, creation. I see buildings and roads, and I see them as things Man has created and think are worthwhile, when their importance is extremely temporary. I see billboards and I see false gods.

Then I look at my own life, and I see that I am still so caught up in so many things that are worthless!

Then I thought of other areas of my life…my kids, homeschooling, household chores…and I wondered. Putting food on the table and paying bills are mundane, everyday tasks that have very little to do with eternal realities. Yet they’re necessary.

But are they? I mean…they are…but only because of the Fall. If Adam and Eve hadn’t sinned, I wouldn’t have to think about what to put on the table tonight nor make mental note that I must pay bills tomorrow. In the Garden, all their needs were provided for supernaturally.

I’m not in the Garden. But I am set free from the Curse, through Jesus.

So exactly how should that make my daily life different? How has it made my life different?

The way that God has set me free from worrying about money is part of it. I now know that my needs are provided for, just as Adam and Eve’s were.

Part of it is finding it (sometimes) easy not to get ruffled by upsets in the world. I mean, what adult gets furious because someone took his lollipop? None. Unlike when we were two years old, we now know that a lollipop isn’t really that big a deal.

Part of it is how I look at the economy in terms of sin and righteousness and the consequences of both…how I look at the state of the world and see patterns from Revelation, though I still can’t offer a single interpretation for most of what’s in that mysterious and glorious book.

But somehow, I know that the more time I spend with my Creator, the more my vision will change.

I began praying years ago that He would teach me to see the world through His eyes…and that is what I think is happening. Except I’ve got the feeling that what I see now is only the teeniest, tiniest glimpse of it.

I see an image of a world, built out of tissue paper, laid delicately overtop a world made from stone. The worlds mesh and intertwine, yet their roads don’t line up. Some locations that are important in the tissue paper world hardly exist in the one built from stone. There are palaces and temples made from white tissue paper that have nothing but black ash underneath, while black tissue paper covers glorious veins of gold and silver and diamonds that run through the stone.

I think this is the picture that 2 Corinthians 4:18 is talking about. God is showing me the tissue paper for what it really is…even the tissue paper that I’ve accepted as rock all my life. Perhaps learning to walk with God is as simple—and as difficult—as learning to walk along the roads and paths that are set in stone, even though they make no sense in the tissue paper world.

Then I got to thinking about how God’s power is released through His voice, and how I think the devil’s power also exists in his voice, through words and lies and deceptions. Both he and God whisper to our hearts and minds. But God speaks Truth to heal, while the devil speaks lies to harm both us and those around us through our actions.

So were both of these worlds created through these powers? I don’t think so. I think that the world made of stone is like the magic that Aslan spoke of in The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, which existed before the dawn of time. It is primarily Truth—the way things really are.

The world we know—the tissue paper world—God spoke into being in Genesis. At that time, it was clear and sparkling and perfectly reflected the world of stone.

But then the devil successfully used his voice to tear it, and when he glued its crumpled edges back together, the seam was burnt with poison that ran and spread in all directions.

Now we are here, in the twenty-first century, and the tissue paper world is falling apart. Some see nothing but the disaster and are scared. Some look at how past tears have always been glued back together in time and they find security in that.

But others of us are digging deep to the Rock. God created the tissue paper world to last only for a time, and we know that time is getting short. But that does not concern us, for this world is but a reflection of what is real.

The question that I found myself asking is this: what am I doing with my time while I wait? Am I willingly wallowing in tissue paper with only an occasional check to make sure I still have roots in the Rock? Or am I digging my roots deeper and ever deeper?

And what about God’s calling on my life? When He calls us, we begin to realize that there’s another dimension to the world that’s really in control. Yet, so often, we’re still trying to live according to the world we are familiar with. We learn the truths and weapons of the real world and we don’t understand why they aren’t “working.”

Perhaps it’s because we’re not yet walking in the real world. Or rather, we’re not grounded in it.

We must be grounded and walking in the Truth—in the world as God sees it, and as it really is—in order for our weapons and authority to work. Perhaps this is why we fail so often—because we’re wielding them in the wrong dimension. Or rather, we’re trying to wield them in the right dimension, yet we can’t because we’ve only heard about that dimension, instead of actually knowing it.

Perhaps we need to be able to see our enemy, his forces, and the ground we are truly standing on before we can use our weapons effectively. But at the same time, God is capable of guiding our hands and tongues even if our eyes are blind. But that takes an ability to hear His leading and follow it unhesitatingly.

Either way, I am brought back to drawing ever nearer to Him…learning His truths…hearing His voice…spending time in His presence and storing up more and more oil for my lamp.

And I am finding I’m in good company. There is an army growing in the world. An army of worshipers and prayer warriors whom God is grooming for the days ahead. I am honored to be one of them, and the call that I offer is this…

Join us! Seek His face like you never have before. I promise, the treasures that wait are beyond anything this tissue paper world could ever offer…