“The visible world daily bludgeons us with its things and events. They pinch and pull and hammer away at our bodies. Few people arise in the morning as hungry for God as they are for corn flakes or toast and eggs. But instead of shouting and shoving, the spiritual world whispers at us ever so gently…
Nearly all areas of life in which we could become spiritually competent (hearing God, praying, receiving guidance, leadership) confront us with the same type of challenge. They all require of us a choice to be a spiritual person, to live a spiritual life. We are required to “bet our life” that the visible world, while real, is not reality itself.
God is not insensitive to our problem of overcoming the power of the visible world. He invades the visible…After His resurrection, Jesus appeared to His disciples in visible form over a period of forty days. He made himself visible to them just enough to give them confidence that it was He who was speaking in their hearts [cf. Luke 24:13-35]…
Today, as God’s trusting apprentices in the kingdom of the heavens, we live in the Emmaus road, so to speak. His word pours into our hearts, energizing and directing our lives in a way that cannot be accounted for in natural terms. The presence of the physical world is, then, if I will have it so, no longer a barrier between me and God. My visible surroundings become, instead, God’s gift to me, where I am privileged to see the rule of heaven realized through my friendship with Jesus.”
Dallas Willard in “Hearing God” a reading in A Faith and Culture Devotional: Daily Readings in Art, Science, and Life ed. Kelly Monroe Kullberg and Lael Arrington (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2008) 185-187.
Apart from Christ, we can’t help but be overcome by this world and all the things it offers us. So how do disciples of Jesus and His invisible kingdom live in relationship to the visible world? We can make the choice to live for a world we cannot see because we are no longer slaves to the world we can see.
The visible world no longer masters us; instead, it becomes a gift to be enjoyed and shared. Jesus positions us to shift from self-serving slaves to kingdom-serving conduits of His divine blessings. Apart from Christ we are not only slaves to this world, but we are incapable of generosity (cf. “goodness” in Galatians 5:22).