Why Am I So Miserable?

Now the parable is this: The seed is the word of God. -- Luke 8:11

You could say each of us gives birth from within us to Jesus.  Or we don’t.  That area where Jesus lies dormant is nonetheless a virginal womb or He is not truly birthed.  – from Rick’s comment on “Thoughts on the Comforter” 

I happened to catch a message by Robert Morris of Gateway Church down in Westlake or Southlake or one of those high-end places around Dallas.  I think this is the one, but I don’t have time to verify it this morning.  

Anyway, this isn’t the first time I’ve seen Pastor Morris.  He seems to be one of the more Raccoonish Christian preachers around (if any non-Raccoons happen across this, don’t be offended; we think that is high praise).  He does the typical exoteric stuff, but every once in a while he gets off into the esoteric.  You don’t have to watch his message to get the point.  He was talking about the necessity of being born again as Jesus explained to Nicodemus.  

Morris went on to talk about people he had met who had a common testimony.  People will often say that they thought they were “born again” as children brought up in a Christian home, attending church regularly.  At some point in their early years, they made a profession of faith and maybe were baptized.  Later, they turned from God, went off into a more secular life, found themselves miserable, and came back to turn their lives over to God, at which point, the person will almost invariably say, “Then my life completely changed.” 

Obviously part of that is often just a maturing process, but Morris pointed out that there is, in the natural realm, growth before birth.  As he put it, there is conception followed by a period of misery and suffering.  The misery then brings forth birth and a new life.  Birth is not conception.  An acorn in the ground is not an oak tree.  It’s not even a sprout. 

And he said, “The kingdom of God is as if a man should scatter seed on the ground.  He sleeps and rises night and day, and the seed sprouts and grows; he knows not how (Mark 4:26-27).  That passage in Mark goes on to say that the earth produces the growth on its own, starting small with the sprout then growing to productivity and harvest.  We barely understand this as biology, let alone how it works in the spiritual realm. 

I think this is not necessarily a one-time thing for a lot of us.  Like the nautilus shell we have mentioned before, God intends for us to be born again and again.  We are in misery, constrained by the womb until we are able to live in the new dimension.  Do not despair.  The Word is sown in our hearts.  We are alive in the matrix of this material world to be born.  Give it time.