In Sunday’s message, Pastor Carl taught on seeing the unseen kingdom as an extension of our Summer of Faith message series. Jesus taught in the Parable of the Tares and Wheat in Matthew 16 that the enemy sows counterfeit life in our lives. The tares look like wheat up until the end of their lives. Only then can you tell that this is not wheat, but a toxic substitute. The false life offered by the enemy does not give life, but illusions of life. These hallucinations create a false reality and ultimately death.
Jesus offers us life, but a life that is measured in the unseen realm called heaven.
Jesus told the disciples to allow the wheat and the tares to grow to maturity and at the end of the age, His Father would judge between the two, throwing false light into the furnace which would burn it up. When we operate according to what we can see, we may prematurely judge people as false light when God is not done with them still working to redeem them.
As Pastor Carl expanded this teaching on the reality of the unseen kingdom, he taught from the story of Jacob’s ladder from Genesis. Often, it is in our times of deepest stress that we are weary enough to drop our defenses and allow the reality of God’s kingdom to breakthrough into ours. Jacob was on the run and in such deception about the normalcy of chaos that he used a rock as a pillow.
Sometimes God needs to break in and remind us that the chaos we have normalized is far from His best for us. Jacob could not outrun God. He broke into Jacob’s sleep and reminded Him of His ever presence. When we realize that God is the only one who sees things as they rightly are, we are able to forgive and surrender to His kingdom ways.
As a church, lets be people who accept that God is with us. Pray that God open our hearts so we can see where our judgment has clouded our vision. And stand in faith on the promises God has revealed to us in our times of connection.