“The Secret to Life for the Christian: Clay Pots”

The Apostle Paul notes that if our hope is in this life, we are to be pitied more than all people! 

I want to ask a question: If your house, car, treasures, even your spouse, children and yourself were all lost in a horrible fire, what would you have left? Everything, I hope. (But true, it is a morbid picture).

How Jesus got through every day of His life on earth was by this perspective. He lived literally with an “eternal mindset” meaning, He started His day, moved throughout His day and ended His day in complete, absolute and utter dependence upon His “intimate fellowship” with His Father by walking in fellowship and the power of the Holy Spirit. He was literally “heaven on earth”. 

Jesus secret was He knew “Who He was, where He was from and where He was going” In other words He KNEW HIS IDENTITY. This is also the perspective of Paul, Peter and John and they write from this perspective.  

Now, with this identity comes the knowledge of being “Sons of God” like the Angels who were direct creations of God, just as Adam and Eve were. In the original Greek it is Sons, just meaning “a direct creation of God” We are “born of heaven, born of God” literally!  

What also comes with this perspective is that we “do not live FOR this life” Our ONLY purpose here is to prepare us for eternity. To form us more into the image of Jesus, and Jesus made disciples, who became like Him, so we to lead people to Jesus. All this life is for down here is literally to prepare us for heaven. So, like Jesus, we must LIVE in absolute, complete, and utter dependence upon our Father through intimate daily fellowship in prayer and by walking/living in the power of the Spirit.  

Now the ONLY way we can, and will live like this, is if we get the view Paul had, which I put some scriptures here: 

“as we look not to the things that are seen but to the things that are unseen. For the things that are seen are transient, but the things that are unseen are eternal” (2 Corinthians 4:18) 

“What is sown is perishable; what is raised is imperishable. It is sown in dishonor; it is raised in glory. It is sown in weakness; it is raised in power. It is sown a natural body; it is raised a spiritual body….Thus it is written, “The first man Adam became a living being”; the last Adam became a life-giving spirit. But it is not the spiritual that is first but the natural, and then the spiritual. The first man was from the earth, a man of dust; the second man is from heaven,…. Just as we have borne the image of the man of dust, we shall also bear the image of the man of heaven.” (1 Corinthians 15:42-49) 

Paul is saying that there was a “physical” body and world which we lived for and were born into, being “natural and of the dust” 

But now that we are “of heaven”, born from, and heading towards heaven, a heavenly world. We now are “spiritual beings living with a spiritual purpose and temporarily stuck in a physical/earthly/worldly realm”. True that the New Heaven and Earth will be a spiritual/physical place as was true of Christ’s resurrected body. I am not talking “Gnostic” here, as they believed the body was “evil and bad”. However, according to the scriptures, the body is NOTHING BUT A CLAY POT, cracked clay, perishing pot. 

So if you gain this “true eternal perspective” it will change how you live daily and what you live for. It will change how you view sickness and any physical issue. It will change how you see your body and the purpose of your body. It will change why you do what you do.  

This is why it is essential to see that life down here daily requires dependence upon your Father. By prayer (which brings eternity into perspective) and the power of the Spirit to “walk” in that truth. Now, unless your WHOLE person, identity, is FIXED on the spiritual/eternal perspective then many things in this life will become stumbling blocks. Such as, your health, your loved ones health, your career, your income, your possessions, your life. 

So, this requires you step back and begin adjusting your “glasses” in order to begin seeing EVERY DAY AND EVERY THING as Jesus and the Apostles did. Their treasures were in heaven and they lived without concern for their health or bodies because they “walked with God” and knew He would care for them as they “first sought the kingdom from above” Now, go read Psalm 91 and know that the truths and promises found in that Psalm are for those who truly “hide” in the shelter of the Most High, and only in His shelter.