WIT'S END

We have all grown up being taught to rely on our senses, and that has been necessary. We've learned to rely on our trained five senses; what we see, what we hear, what we can touch, what we taste, and what we smell. These have helped us navigate life from infancy. They have helped develop what we call our "wits". You've heard it said, when it seems danger might be afoot, "Better keep your wits about you." We learn that certain sounds do not bode well, certain smells indicate things are not right, if it's hot don't touch it, if it looks like a tornado, seek shelter. We learn early on to spit out strange tastes, like broccoli.

The truth is, however, that life has never been fully defined by our five senses. We have been inculcated by the materialistic atmosphere of the world we live in. Its deception has been repeatedly pounded into the very fiber of human existence. However, that frame of reference is subtly polluted by an insidious lie. The lie has many permutations, but the essence is that humanity is on its own. There is no absolute meaning or purpose in our daily living. We have to fashion, fabricate, construct and defend any sense of meaning or purpose for our existence. Meaning is attributed to vocations, relationships, ideologies, social constructs and groupings that offer some shelter to the innate insecurities that human beings live with.

The truth is, we long for meaning and purpose because there used to be innate meaning and purpose in the human heart. That meaning came from the One who called us into being at the beginning. Life was meant to be an ongoing experience of growth in meaning and purpose. Our knowledge was meant to expand in us due to God's Life being life within us. Created in His image, we were meant to grow in wisdom and knowledge as He expanded His presence in us. There was to be no "dead end."

We, in our ancient parents, Adam and Eve, believed a satanic lie that God was somehow holding out on us because we didn't know everything He knew yet. The lie was that we needed something more than what God has built into our very being. That lie, that God is holding out on us, is unkind, unjust, and doesn't care, still infects humanity. When we acted on the lie, doing the very thing God told us would cause us to essentially die, we died to true Life. We were separated from the full life of God. We lost our true home in Him, and our true identity was marred beyond human reparation. Jealousy, envy, hatred, murder, deception, lying, hiding from the Truth, from God became the expression of our ruined spiritual DNA. For, true identity, meaning and purpose are found in relation to God and from that relationship alone.

We could not restore what was lost. Only God could rescue humanity. He became a human being while still remaining God. His Name is Jesus. He took His humanity from His, then virgin, Mother Mary. He grew into full manhood, sinless, in perfect relationship with His heavenly Father, revealing what the rule of God actually looks like. His Words, His miracles, His signs and wonder were undoing the effects of the sin we inherited from Adam and Eve. Spiritual and existential evil were dislodged, demolished and destroyed as Jesus Christ healed the sick, raised the dead, cast out demons and cleansed lepers of leprosy.

Jesus told us that we had an ancient foe whose only purpose in life was to kill, steal from and destroy humanity because we still bear the Image of God, broken and defiled though it be. There has been spiritual war against humanity from the fall in Eden. Satan is committed to the perversion, the deception, the damaging of humanity beyond repair. The truth is, that he is a defeated foe. Jesus' Life, Sacrificial Death, Resurrection and Ascension back into heaven has made a singular way for humanity to be restored to God, to become new creations by the power of the Holy Spirit.

Colossians 2:8-15 "Don’t let anyone capture you with empty philosophies and high-sounding nonsense that come from human thinking and from the spiritual powers of this world, rather than from Christ. For in Christ lives all the fullness of God in a human body. So, you also are complete through your union with Christ, who is the Head over every ruler and authority. When you came to Christ, you were “circumcised,” but not by a physical procedure. Christ performed a spiritual circumcision—the cutting away of your sinful nature. For you were buried with Christ when you were baptized. And with Him you were raised to new life because you trusted the mighty power of God, who raised Christ from the dead. You were dead because of your sins and because your sinful nature was not yet cut away. Then God made you alive with Christ, for He forgave all our sins. He canceled the record of the charges against us and took it away by nailing it to the cross. In this way, He disarmed the spiritual rulers and authorities. He shamed them publicly by His victory over them on the cross." 

We were born into a world that is at war, a deadly unseen war that defies mere reliance upon our five senses. There are unseen demonic forces that want us to be in bondage to our five senses as if they alone define what is real and good. Satan has devises intricate strategies to deceive, confuse, and keep us from seeing and hearing the Truth of God's love for us.

It is written that, "For we are not fighting against flesh-and-blood enemies, but against evil rulers and authorities of the unseen world, against mighty powers in this dark world, and against evil spirits in the heavenly places." Ephesians 6:12

Being at our wit's end is the very place where a new beginning can be initiated. When we see that we are not our own salvation, that what is broken cannot fix itself, when all the lies and distortions are exposed by the truth of the love of God in Christ Jesus, we may turn from self and turn to God. God has already done for us everything needed for us to have the spiritual death in us replaced by the very Life of God, the living, permanently indwelling Holy Spirit. We can be restored to God from whom alone come human meaning and purpose. Good things that have been twisted satanically to be instruments of degradation are restored to their rightful places to be instrument of life, wholeness and peace.

I came to the end of myself, my wit's end, at 19 years of age. Jesus Christ intervened and by the Holy Spirit lead me out of my own personal bondage, led me from my own spiritual slavery in my personal "Egypt", parted the "waters" and brought me to Himself where I surrendered to Him both as my Savior and Redeemer and the Lord of my life from then on. I continue to be changed and transformed by His power and grace. He has promised that, having begun a good work in me, He will bring that work to completion by the day Jesus comes again. My life has meaning and purpose because I belong to Him and He is Life, itself, within me. I am growing, learning, following, hearing and seeing far beyond what my five senses could ever reveal. That same promise and work is offered by grace through faith to all who, coming to their wit's end, will believe Him, trust His love, turn from self and turn to Him to be forgiven and given a new life, a new spiritual DNA, to finally become fully human again.

How is living by your own fallible wits working out for you?