Two Sides Of The Same Coin

For everything that has a physical side, there is a spiritual side also. Most Christians relate more to the physical to the detriment and neglect of the spiritual. Even though man exists in the physical realm but is ultimately a spiritual being. Essentially there are two sides to man, the physical side and the spiritual component. The famous story of the dry bones (Ezekiel: 37) illustrates this foregoing explicitly. God instructed Ezekiel in verse 4 to “prophesy upon these dry bones and say to them O ye dry bones, hear the word of the Lord”.

As far as common sense goes, dead things don’t hear. And God, of all people should know that. He knows everything, doesn’t He? It seemed bizarre therefore that God would expect the dead bones to hear the words of Ezekiel. The bones in question were very dry and very dead. So why did God instruct Ezekiel to talk to dead things. Maybe God knows something we don’t know, maybe God knows that everything that has a physical side also has a spiritual side, maybe He knows that physical death does not translate to spiritual death.

No question, the bones were dead but that fact is not by any means conclusive or irrefutable. As far as death goes, Sarah’s womb was dead, physically that is, but spiritually, it’s a different ball game. Life and death are in the spirit, not in the physical. No one can be certified dead except their spirit leaves them, conversely, no one can be said to be alive or living if they didn’t have the spirit inside of them. It is the spirit that dictates whether one is dead or alive. Same applies to issues and situations that daily confront us. We only see the physical side of things but we never bother with the spiritual side. For everything that has a physical side also has a spiritual side. Doctors may have certified that you have a rupture in your womb and therefore are not able to bear a child. That is the physical side, how about the spiritual side? You are looking at your bank account which is almost always in red and you’re thinking ‘Am I ever going to be financially solvent? Am I ever going to be able to afford a home of my own?’ Again, that is the physical side you are looking at, how about the spiritual side? It might seem hopeless, look hopeless but it does not necessarily mean it is hopeless. It might seem dead look dead or even certified dead, but it does not necessarily mean it is dead.

Is it not amazing that both Ezekiel and God were looking at the same thing at the same time and yet were both seeing different things. Ezekiel was seeing a valley full of dead bones whereas God was seeing an exceedingly great army. There are eyes that look and there are eyes that see. Sometimes what you see determines what you get. How far you see determines how far you go. So the question I pose before you today is: what do you see?

The fact is, we relate more to our physical side but ever hardly our spiritual side. We are more comfortable on this side (physical side) than the other side (spiritual) and that is simply because all our 5 senses are on this side. We connect more to things we can see, hear, touch, smell and taste rather than things we are intangible. We do not relate to our spiritual side because we do not understand it, we do not see it. We tend to ignore things that we do not understand, we never want to explore them.

But the big problem is that all our blessings are on the other side, the side tend to ignore, the spiritual side. In Ephesians 3:1 the scriptures say we have been blessed with all spiritual blessings in heavenly places. ‘Heavenly places’ is not some far away random place as many people are wont to think; it simply means spiritual place - our spiritual side. Spiritual place is the other side of you, your spiritual constituent. Same you. One coin, two sides. Man is spirit being who lives in a body and has a soul.

What is on this side is what the other side has released. Whatever blessings you have in the physical is what has been released to you from the spiritual side. Whatever treasures you have here, no matter how much, is a trickle, an infinitesimal proportion of what is on the other side. A story was told once of a man who after his transition to eternity was taken on tour of heaven by Angel Gabriel. On beholding the grandeur splendour in heaven he was completely awed. After the tour, he pointed to a locked door that he deemed the angel had missed. Angel Gabriel however waved it off as not important and suggested they moved on. His curiosity taking the better of him, the main insisted he would love to see what was behind the locked door. Eventually, Angel Gabriel yielded to his persistence. On opening the door the man saw the most glorious and beautiful blessing that eyes could behold. He then asked the angel – ‘whose are these?’ to which the angel replied ‘these are the blessings that were reserved for you while on earth that you failed to claim’. On receiving this revelation the man immediately burst into tears knowing how much he suffered while on earth when he could have had all the goodness of life. The logic to the story therefore, is for you to come into the fullness of God’s blessing, you have to reach across to your spiritual side to bring them into the physical. The big question then is how?