Outside the Box

King David felt at ease. Everything seemed to be running smoothly. All seemed in good order. All was well, so it appeared. The ark of God was back in Jerusalem, David was reigning in the holy city, and his generals were a well regulated fighting machine in the hands of the king. A break in all the action was well deserved. There is something about the flesh that wants to let up when you’re on the mountain top and this is what King David did. In the time when kings were to go forth to battle, David stayed back and tarried in Jerusalem. Why not? Everything was under control and he was the King. What would be so wrong with taking a little break from all the pressure that a king must endure day in and day out.

Funny how the flesh makes us feel. The mountain top experience can create a false feeling of superiority and invincibility. We become cocooned within it’s entrapment's of security. Soon we are enveloped in a fog and though we see, we really can’t see as clear as we need to see. The fog shrouds us within a veil of dimness causing us to lose our true sense of connectedness to the world around us. Soon, everything we say and do is interpreted through the reality of our foggy vision. Anything outside of the fog is foreign and is immediately rejected because it doesn’t fit within the dimensions of the feelings that are on the inside of that comfort zone of safety. The unknown is a fearful and scary thing to those who live within the box. Inside the box is safety. Outside the box is too unstable and controversial. To step outside the box is nothing but a step in faith. Even more so, it would be at the risk of losing all your ‘friends’ and political connections. To those trapped within it’s enticements the box seems like it is the only thing of value.

Who knows why King David made his original decision to stay back while all the others went forth to battle. Maybe the taunts of his brethren created wounds of anger and pain. Maybe it was the rejection he felt at the hands of his father Jesse who didn’t even recognize him as a son while Samuel looked to anoint another king over Israel. Or maybe, it was just power and position that clouded King David’s decisions. Whatever compelled him to stay back helped to set a course of pain that would haunt King David for the remainder of his days on earth. The harvest of one wrong move brought forth layers of lies and deceit, and when a parable was brought to him by someone outside of the box, King David couldn’t even ‘see’ the parable was directed right at him. I believe one of the reasons King David is remembered and cherished as the greatest King of Israel is because of his response to the man of God who called him out of the box. When Nathan the prophet looked at him and said, ‘Thou art the man!’ Rather than having the prophet killed, King David chose to be purged of his iniquity, step outside of the box, and come clean.

To a great extent, all of us are trapped within a box. All of our feelings, emotions, attitudes, and experiences are housed in this fleshly tabernacle called our bodies. Filled with appetites and lusts, this fleshly box tries desperately to get us to conform to it’s image. Every day it hounds us with perverse thoughts and wrong judgement. It accuses the brethren with evil surmising's. Jealousy, envy, anger, sexual desires struggle within to make their voices heard. There is a war within our members. Factions of forces fighting for control. We know to do right, but sin is always present within us.

The danger of living in this human shell is that we can become snared within so many of its entangling packages. As a matter of fact, like an onion, the layers of boxes that move from larger to smaller, we can also become so imprisoned in the tentacles of emotions that it becomes almost too difficult to perceive the dimension of how lost we really are. Just as we open one box, we look inside to see there is another box, and then another, and then another, until we finally get to this little tiny box within all the layers of boxes. Deep within our bosom lays the initial box that began, years ago, to define us. A wounded heart or a tragedy of life took place. Rather then confronting the wound head on, we submerged ourselves in our pity or pain, leaving us to live in the shadows of our remorse. We try to hide the pain behind an image of stoic behavior and calm confidence, yet the wound never disappears. Like a dagger in our heart, the wound is always opened whenever someone tries to step past our walls of insecurity and secrecy. Rather than opening the box and stepping into transparency and disclosure we put the wound into another box. Soon, the original wound is so layered and enamored with the cares of this life that it almost becomes impossible to remember exactly what it was that wounded us to begin with.

Age can certainly play a role in how you view the world around you. In this world of perversion and pornography, it is far too easy for our youth to get caught in the deceptive web of the world’s sexual entices. It is hard enough to be a young man going through puberty let alone having the sexual exploits of the rich and famous dangling before your eyes on a daily basis. Our young girls are inundated with the slant that the looks of a hooker will bring you a real man. Our homes are in disarray leaving our children wondering what it really means to be a man or a woman anymore. The genders are confused. Men act like prissy women and women act like masculine men. Wounded from broken homes and tormented pasts our youth marry projected images of false selves. Only to find out a few years down the road, the person they really married wasn’t the image they ‘fell’ in love with. Thus repeating the cycle of crash and burn that happened within the last few generations of their family tree. Not only is the generational role of living out of a box repeated but it is also perpetuated into the future as these youth become adults.

A place of position can make people feel safe inside their box of authority. All too soon, many in position forget that it is the Lord who promotes. He sets up and He takes down. Kings and nations are even used in His stead to bring about His perfect will. Yet, the box consumes many and obstructs their vision. Through their impaired vision they think they have arrived, yet when a man thinks he is something he doesn’t even realize how much he is deceiving his own self.

Organization is good, but we must remember that all organizations are made up of people and people are trapped within a veil of fleshly feelings and lust. Whether it be government, religions, or denominations, under the heading of their name, will be a body of people who run and govern them. James Madison said if governments were made up of angels there would have not been any need to have a Constitutional Convention, but since they are made up fleshly men, then it was their plight to enact a written Constitution that would put a check upon the nature of man. History is littered with many organizations that started with a great cause. In the beginning, these organizations started with integrity and vision, but within a generation or two, the vision is lost within a box of fleshly lust and politics. Rather then fighting to uphold the original vision that first brought the organization together, they lost the vision and became trapped within a box of their own making.

George Washington, the ‘Father of Our Country’ vehemently warned of the political ramifications of a two-party system. Two hundred plus years later we are witnessing the ramifications of an ignorance to this warning. Both parties, Republican and Democratic, only see through their ‘box’ of organized politics. Rarely is the Constitution discussed anymore and if the Constitution is discussed it is only discussed in the light of the ‘party’ or if it is at the benefit of the party. When it comes to politics anymore, both parties speak out of their concern for their party ‘box’. Both parties neglect and pervert the Constitution for their own political gain. The box of party politics shrouds their ability to consider the truth anymore let alone stand up for what’s right for this country.

Think of the myriad of denominations that no longer preach a standard or come close to even what they originally preached in their foundational conquests. Just take a quick look at some of history’s pictures of America. Women wore dresses and acted like ladies. Men were fully clothed no matter what kind of work they did. There is no doubt that this ‘modesty’ was preached from behind a pulpit. Early in America’s history, most denominations preached a standard of modesty. But what happened? Lost in the midst of a political cesspool of lust and power, the Truth of God’s Word became second to defending the name of the denomination. Truth is only truth if comes from within the box. Those in the box of denomination remain convinced that only they hold a cornerstone on revelation. To them ‘false doctrine’ is anything outside of the box. Only revelation that comes from within their box can be accepted. Anything outside of their ‘anointing’ is usually crushed with an iron hand.. Anything trying to step through the fog of their denominational scriptural perception is quickly silenced or rejected. Part of the deception that comes from living within the box, is the illusion of the multitudes that comes with it. The multitudes go to the same parties, conferences, and schools. They inter marry and mingle with each other year in and year out. There is so much comfort within the box, that there is no way that anything outside of the box can be of any aide. So all within the box rejoice and flatter each other with great swelling words as they defend themselves from ‘false doctrine’. There is no way they are wrong because the multitudes are on their side. Which again is all apart of the layering deception of living in the box.

It was the Apostle Paul who was on the road to Damascus before his conversion. He had consented to the stoning of Stephen and he was on his way to stone and kill some more of those rowdy rebellious Jesus freaks. He had all the organized religions of his day behind him. I am sure most if not all were rallying in the Saul’s corner and cheering him on as he breathed out his “threatening’s and slaughter” against One God Apostolic’s. The organized religions of his day had the corner on the scripture. They had the traditions. They had the multitudes. They had the years and years of study behind them. They had the great schools of higher learner concerning the scripture. They had so easily taken out the revolutionary by the name of Jesus, so who were these miscreants? It was Saul who had sat down and learned from the greatest teacher’s of the old testament law, including the great Gamaliel. How could he be blind? If anyone understood the law, it had to be Saul of Taursus!

Yet Israel could only perceive the world around them from inside a box. For four hundred years, Israel had not heard from the Lord. Four hundred silent years of no hope and no hearing from anything outside of the box. The harvest was predictable, because God himself told them back in Deuteronomy what would happen if they refused to hear and do His Word. "But it shall come to pass, if thou wilt not hearken unto the voice of the LORD thy God, to observe to do all his commandments and his statutes which I command thee this day; that all these curses shall come upon thee, and overtake thee: The LORD shall smite thee with madness, and blindness, and astonishment of heart: And thou shalt grope at noonday, as the blind gropeth in darkness, and thou shalt not prosper in thy ways: and thou shalt be only oppressed and spoiled evermore, and no man shall save thee." (Deut 28:15, 28-29)

After those four hundred years of silence, God in His majestic greatness stepped down into this box of flesh to show us the way out of the box. As He likewise took part in flesh and blood, then He was also subjected to the same and at all points tempted like we are. Jesus felt what we felt. When He came amongst His own and His own received Him not, Jesus felt the rejection. The four hundred years of silence had wrapped His people within layers and layers of traditions and flesh. He hurt and wept inside concerning the inability to get His people to ‘see’ outside the box. I believe Jesus stood mute before His captives because He knew it didn’t matter what He would say or could say, they had already made their decision.

In 66 AD, Jude cried out and said that there were certain men who had ‘crept in unawares’. These men were corrupting the gospel of Jesus Christ. Paul, many times, warned of men who had left his ministry and rebelled against the truth. When these men left the Apostle’s doctrine, they didn’t just walk away, it is more likely (just like it happens today) they went out and started their own church. Today, rather than having to deal with four hundred year’s of silence, we are at the receiving end of close to two thousand years of sowing and reaping since Jude first cried out. This harvest has produced more than 1700 different sects of ‘Christianity’ and all of them are crying out of their boxes...”Here is Christ!” ”Here is Christ!” It is evident there is nothing new under the sun and the nature of man has not changed. If the religions of Jesus’s time were so shrouded in the fog of their traditions and scriptural interpretations...if the chief priest could move the people to release Barabas and crucify the same God they were purportedly studying to receive...how much more is it possible that the voice outside the box could really be ‘Christ’ and not a rebel who needs to be black balled or crucified?

Help us Lord, to have 'ears to hear and eyes to see', outside the wrappings of this fleshly box and the layers of history that have so entwined us! We cannot be deceived into thinking that the safety of remaining inside the box is worthy to be compared to the glory that shall be revealed in us! We must be able to hear your voice and not follow another! When the Word is preached, we must be ready and willing to be transparent and come clean! Willing to step outside our box of protection and into the substance of His Word! Willing to pursue beyond the biases of within and without! A willing vessel of light within to be broken for a sacrifice of victory without! If we so desire to sing the praises and power of His resurrection, then we must also be willing to step outside the safety of the box and into the fellowship of His sufferings!