LOFTY

There are different meanings for this word, but in this posting I’m going to concentrate on the idea of something exalted or refined. With the spiritual realm it just seems like a very natural association. After all we think of heaven as place “up there.” And even one of the ways God is referred to is as the “Most High.” So why shouldn’t it be easy to think in terms of lofty when thinking of anything spiritual.

However does lofty mean untouchable or unapproachable? Should it suggest that there is an immense gulf between ourselves and God to the point that we can only have a very distant relationship?

I believe that it is part of faith to truly see God as a person. And to feel Jesus is really is our Lord and Savior in the most intimate terms. I didn’t say everyone will share the same appreciation or treat that relationship in the same way, but merely that to genuinely have a faith in Christ means having a personal relationship. It means to see Jesus as a person who we can talk to and that honestly cares about our problems.

Yet that doesn’t mean he isn’t also our lord. That carries with it a certain need on our part to surrender our will to his sovereignty. Which means at times being in submission to his greater purpose than simply chasing our own desires.

The funny thing is that I’m not actually saying anything new. Yet it is also amazing how despite this being common knowledge there is still such a diversity in thinking on how people deal with the subject.

For some, lofty means distant. They put such limitations on their relationship with God and Jesus as Lord and Savior that being a Christian takes on incredible burdens in terms of how you behave. Thus they become the epitome of hypocrisy. When in church they act all holy and loving and then outside the doors they are mean, evil and selfish or worse. For them, they never graduate from the delusion of thinking God is only interested in our lives while we are in his house. The truth is God does see every moment and including the ones we would rather not talk about.

Then there are those of the opposite extreme. For them Jesus is like a buddy. In fact they are on such perfect terms that he personally talks to them. There is a difference between recognizing and appreciation how the Lord can speak to us through the power of his Holy Spirit and thinking he actually speaks audibly to someone.

Again in many ways both of these responses represent the extreme in thinking in my opinion. Which to me is also a reminder of how easy it is to let our own prejudices in terms of how we view God intrude upon our idea of a relationship.

I am grateful for the grace of God, which surpasses the limitations in our thinking. He loves us and knows our heart as well as the times when we totally miss the reality of a given truth. In the end the fact remains the same. Regardless of how right or wrong we were in terms of our idea of lofty, we will all be judge by whether we did embrace Jesus as Lord and Savior. Hopefully we never forgot that reality.