The Key to Everything
The following excerpt from Norman Grubb’s Who Am I? explores the only way God could fully condition and establish His sons to be joint heirs in His Kingdom of out-poured love.
We shall now move on to the heart of things which we can call the key to everything. We have now come full circle to where we started. We said at the beginning that our total revolution is our return from being matter-people to what we really are–spirit people. And the extent of that revolution is beyond all words, and reaches right down to the tiniest detail or the greatest mountain in our lives. We took a brief glance at the raw fact that either the Bible is an unreliable record, or the men of God from earliest years to the final happenings listed in Hebrews 2, lived in a dimension right in the middle of this earthly world, in which things took place which cannot be accounted for by human reason. Having already referred to a number from Old Testament records, we need only look at the life of Jesus, who the Bible makes plain in Hebrews 2 became wholly one of us, a true human. It is plain that He did not see earth events as we see them. He did not look at them but through them–to what? To the reality of which they were only external distorted shadow forms. He did not look away elsewhere to call His Father on the scene. He saw Him already always there at the hidden part of the apparent condition of the need. He saw the One of whom it is said, “Who is above all, and through all, and in you all,” and, “By Him all things consist.” The distortions had their origin in our fallen human believings, which in their grab and grasp, had brought need, disease, and disharmony into God’s perfect world, so that we have to live out in a world of thorns and thistles by the sweat of our brows.
So how did Jesus act? In the coolest possible manner He continually saw right through the lack or disease. Did they fish all night and catch nothing? He held no prayer meeting, but just said, “Launch out and let down your nets for draught…and they enclosed a great multitude of fish.” They were on the lake when a big storm arose and the boat was filling with water. When they called out to Him and woke Him from sleep, He actually rebuked them for being afraid they would drown. Have we any better faith today?! Don’t we still see at storms and fear them? And all He did was to see through the storm to the Father of all weather and all calm, who is at the heart of the storm because everything is a form of Him, and spoke that word of faith, “Peace, be still.” We see diseases and death. He evidently did not. You don’t tell a man with a withered hand to stretch it out, if you see it is withered. It is only if you see through to a whole hand with God’s life in that man, that you could tell him to do such a thing. He actually only saw sleep when we see death. He said of Jairus’ daughter, “She is not dead, but sleepeth.” And they laughed Him to scorn! Who wouldn’t! They bring Him five loaves to feed five thousand. No concern, no going aside to pray, just in order to get the people settled down in rows of fifty. Meanwhile He “Lifted His eyes to heaven” (it was necessary that they all see the source of power to be beyond Himself), blessed, break and “they were all filled.” And so water was turned to wine, money came out of a fish’s mouth, and all the healings of blind, lepers, deaf, dumb. And Peter picked up this way of faith and boldly asked to walk on the water, and walked. Evidently Jesus took no account to the laws of gravity! And Peter followed through after Pentecost and said to the lame man by the gate of the Temple, “Silver and gold have I none, but such as I have, give I thee. In the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, rise up and walk.” Such as he, Peter, had–not God! You see what I am saying? I am not saying, “imitate Him!” Faith is not imitation, but action on our level.
But I am delving into this key fact, that God is not limited to laborious matter-means of production based on human reasoning. It is the Fall which bound us down to human thinking; and Jesus said we are not to live by “taking thought.”
God is the spirit, matter is only a condensed form of spirit, and we have tied ourselves down in our race-outlook to matter, and matter being the reality. But in Christ, by union with Him in His death and resurrection, and by His Spirit joined to our spirits, we are no longer matter-people, but spirit-people. “Ye are not in the flesh, but in the Spirit, if so be that the Spirit of God dwell in you.”
Now that means a totally different outlook on every detail of life, small or great, insofar as I recognize the falseness of my natural outlook and practice the habit of changing it. That is why we say it is the key to everything–everything. Nothing is outside its reach. It does not make us less practical or sensible, but quietly seeing and approaching everything from a new dimension, or rather as being in that new dimension. It is also wholly logical if it is true, as I believe and there is all Bible evidence that it is.
Say a thing is just some small household or business problem, or some major world situation. I start by the way I am looking at it, for this is our whole first point, that we are inner people and are controlled by the way we inwardly see a thing, in other words by our believing. Now I always am meant, as a practical human, to start seeing it as it outwardly appears. I have mislaid something. There is a financial need. There is a relationship problem. There is sickness or tragedy. Of course, I begin by believing it as it appears to be. That means I am bound by a sense of helplessness, or a drive to try somehow to clear it; but my spirit is clouded by my negative outlook; or of course in a thousand things it never even occurs to me that there could be another way of looking at it. What is more, I am confirming and strengthening the condition that is bothering me by my attitude of believing in it as it is. This is our whole realm of outlook on all life, and any other outlook is merely phony.
But now, supposing the real truth is that this outward situation is only an outward appearance. Really only a shadow. Suppose the real fact is that, as there is only God in the universe, this situation is God in disguise. It is He in some outer clothing of need, tragedy, problem. There are the distortions of God’s perfect world, but they are only distortions. God’s perfection is the only reality, and, as He did by Jesus, by the authority of the faith of His believing sons, He manifests Himself today in His perfection through the outer appearances of imperfection. This Paul says has always been His own planned purpose for the world (Romans 8:19-21)–through His sons to complete the replacement of its present “bondage of corruption” by “glorious liberty;” in this we sons can do today in our local situations, as Jesus our elder brother did.
So we are daringly saying that whenever there is a need, small or great, wherever there is a disturbed or tragic situation, God is not just looking on and to be called upon to intervene. No, God is the Real One right in the situation, and it is only His distorted clothing; and we preserve the clothing by believing it to be the real.
Now, in utmost simplicity, without changing an outward thing, let us transfer our believings. That’s all. Let us deliberately affirm, against all appearances, that this is not the difficulty it appears to be. Instead of looking at the situation, let us look through–to God, again not afar off, but the very situation being He in disguise. He with supply, He with solution, He with change, where we only see the opposite.
