Ezekiel 2:1-2 Then He said to me, “Son of man, stand on your feet that I may speak with you!” As He spoke to me the Spirit entered me and set me on my feet; and I heard Him speaking to me.
I'll make a confession here and risk the judgment that could be incurred! Like millions of Christians, I workout daily, iPod on hip, but in my case, the music that flows to my ears in an effort to distract my brain from the muscular challenge is not often Christian. It's not that singing the high praises of God are not conducive to maximum exertion--it's more that there is so much creativity that has been explored beyond the confines of the Christian industry and it is creativity that motivates me--and it is clearly motivation I need when I am trying to get this late 40-something body to embrace the gym moment! However, on my large iPod I do have many Christian albums that I love (many by friends whom I love), and the other day I was exploring one by a British friend named Dave Middleton. Somehow it was working and fueling my inner fire. On his CD entitled "Songs of Men and Angels," Dave reads out a long portion of the vision of God that Ezekiel had by the river Chebar (described--as best as Ezekiel could describe wheels with eyes and four-faced beings--in Ezekiel 1). When he got to the statement above at the beginning of chapter 2, I had an epiphany. It didn't necessarily translate to an immediate increase in the number of leg curls I could do, but it is the kind that will translate to a greatly empowered inner life!
I think often about the "quantum" world and if that doesn't turn you off, you can be my new friend (as many of my current friends are quite tired of hearing about it). This world of new science is such a model, or better said, a reflection of the nature of a reality that is, in essence, spirit. What we have learned about how infinitesimally small, speed-of-light approaching particles behave has given us great insight about navigating our spiritual lives. It's not the "new age" territory--it's the territory of the Eternal One and therefore should be the home of the Christian. But I'll save that large work of persuasion for another blog (and other books) and share with you this specific quantum observation related to Ezekiel and something very important but never mentioned by Ezekiel: grace.
In a quantum world, the notions of time and distance are erased, superceded by the notion of relationship. If things are related, cause and effect is not really an issue--change in status can occur essentially and simultaneously even through distance of space--and time! It turns out that things can be so related that the experience of one particle is "known" by the other instantly, skipping the stage of education--it's more like impartation! This is a shock because, in the classical physics lab that we experienced in high school, the "cause" was issued and then we turned our eyes towards the observation of the "effect" and it slowly yeilded data for us--measurable and comforting. In the quantum world, it is hard to tell which is cause and which is effect--they are so related that they get actually rolled into one--at least to our slowed-down observational powers.
Ezekiel here was told to "stand on his feet"--which might have been a difficult task for him after seeing the vision of blinding God-demonstration that sent him to the ground! But Ezekiel indicates that even as the command to stand was leaving the mouth of the Lord, the responding standing was being accomplished in Ezekiel by the Spirit of God. In these two verses, we see a microcosm of grace: God commands Ezekiel to stand up and hear while the Spirit of God is simultaneously performing that action in and through Ezekiel. Both the command and the ability to carry it out are married as if quantum particles--God says it and Ezekiel finds it happening to him as he hears God say it! Surely this is grace and it reminds us of every statement Jesus made to people in healing: "Rise up and walk...and immediately the man's ankle bones received strength..." We don't hear Jesus use the word grace often--that really comes later in Paul's writings. And yet, Jesus IS grace, demonstrating it everywhere he goes by empowering people to do what he simultaneously calls for! (I have often thought of the woman caught in adultery to whom Jesus said, "Go and sin no more..." I imagine that those very words spoken by Him into the depths of her being did not set up a law or performance standard, but rather released in her an inner empowering that she had never before known, awakening the strength to turn away from her former lifestyle and live out a newly imparted grace.) For it is God who is producing in you both the desire and the ability to do what pleases him. (Phil. 2:13, ISV).
Through Ezekiel's description of his enoucnter, I appreciated more fully the "quantum" nature of grace. So often, we hear an injuction of Scripture and go off endeavoring to "do" it. More often than we admit, however, we hear a command and sigh a sigh of hopelessness inside, feeling we will never be able to "do it". Especially when it comes to those though relational commands, like "Love those who hurt you...," "Forgive...yet again," we often find ourselves so wounded that we just quit trying. Our hearts want to obey, but we find a Romans 7 "wish I may, wish I might" situation cast across our souls and we inwardly lie down. This is not the way God intended it, however, and it is not the way he left it, thanks to the cross!
What we need to do is realize again that the system that we've fallen into: not one of law, but one of grace. (Ezekiel had to reach ahead to that system which was not yet inaugurated, but it is actually the system by which we entered the Kingdom and is intended to be the one by which we function there!) In the system of grace, the ability accompanies the command and is released by the words spoken to our hearts. What Ezekiel "got right" was being so lost in the moment that his judgment of performance was suspended. He was in flow state--one with the encounter and one with the Spirit of God. Though Galatians 2:20 had not yet been written, he was temporarily experiencing "it is no longer I that live" as the Spirit moved and motivated him. Grace is more amazing than we ever realized and it is not just a general change of heart. It begins there, but it goes on to become a specific empowering for the tasks necessary to fulfill the good works God is calling for. Yes, there are "good works" to be done, but the doing of them is the act of the Holy Spirit in and through us in an involvment so intimate it can only be described by the Apostel Paul as "union". He says "go" and the command finds no resistance in the heart of one given over to the union!
I remember in my word-of-faith cassette tape-listening days, often feeling a hint of apprehension when the concept of James 2:26 was referenced. Someone had found a translation that read, "Faith without corresponding actions is dead..." and I remember the pressure I felt to create enough properly corresponding actions to get any "results" from my faith(oh how very linear, when I think back on it, but it was where we all were living...and it did yield fruit at the time to the degree it was based in a learning relationship with God). Now James 2:26 reveals itself gloriously in the light of quantum grace, however. Faith has contained within it the corrpesponding action, for that is the nature of grace-imparted faith. The life of God deposited inside us is not a ball of potential, but rather a tumult of kinetic energy, bursting forth into action. Check the faith you have: if it is not bursting to get out of you into action, then you need to go back for another relational dose! YOU don't go frantically looking for corrpesponding action--you simply step across the line into the spirit dimension and let those actions form themselves in you. You don't create--you yield. You observe the system implanted inside you and silence the opposition telling you it is illogical.
There really is an unseen reality seeking to manifest and I can feel myself only scratching the surface here as I seek to "explain" it (and now I fall on my face like Ezekiel at the impossibility of that challenge--explaining the infinite, ha!). Grace is far stronger and more basic than we ever realized. Though it can be quiet and still-small-voice like in its influence, we should never think that grace is a sweet little force. Grace runs the universe. God thinks a thought and the universe simultaneously resources His intention. We are a part of that, should we choose to loose our religious rigor and let Him play his symphony through us. Grace will accomplish in us all that we need to "do". He will say "stand up" and we, with no barrier in our flesh needing to perform and get a pat on the back, will find ourselves amazingly on our feet. "Results" will be His doing and "response" will be simply our agreeing to be part of the plan. Human effort will be superceded by the inestimable value of divine coordination.
I have had some encounters with God by the rivers of my life--maybe not as apocoplyptic and multi-dimensional as Ezekiel's, but still very real. There have been times that I knew he met and brought a measure of his glory which was much larger than the limited one in which I had been living. And yet, many times, I have pressured myself almost immediately afterward to sort of "live up to" what just happened. I think it is an overflow of too many Easter altar calls in my past: This is the extreme suffering Jesus underwent for you: now, what are you going to do for him? Out of sincere gratefulness for what God has poured out on me, I found myself leaning back into my own strength to carry on--ridiculous! I needed this QUANTUM GRACE that I am describing: the sense that the "encounter" carries with it the ability to live out the command! God, let us more fully, as Stuart Bell says, "live in the good of" what we have inside us. Deliver us from trying to "pay God back" with our actions and lift us into a realm where we aware of the great power available within us through Him! Heal the sick? Raise the dead? We are conscious that it will take God's grace to do those things through us. But what about our own daily living? Deliver us from the notion that we need to supply our own power for those "smaller" actions! It's all grace, from start to finish--quantum grace!
