Space Cowboys

There’s an old leadership quote: “You cannot lead people where you have never been.” But it’s usually accompanied by another famous quote by Aristotle: “He who cannot be a good follower cannot be a good leader.” Jesse Jackson said it another way: You can’t Teach what you don’t know, and You Can’t Lead where you won’t go!”

This year I’ve been asking the Lord to allow me to experience this one Scripture so I can teach others how to go there. It has intrigued, challenged and puzzled me for years. It’s mysterious and seems to be out of reach. Yet, there it remains lodged as a “splinter in my mind.” The first time I heard that quote from a character named Morpheus in the movie The Matrix: What you know you can’t explain, but you feel it. You’ve felt it your entire life, that there’s something wrong with the world. You don’t know what it is, but it’s there, like a splinter in your mind, driving you mad.

What is the Scripture? Revelation 1:10-12 I was in the Spirit [rapt in His power] on the Lord’s Day, and I heard behind me a great voice like the calling of a war trumpet,¹¹ Saying, I am the Alpha and the Omega, the First and the Last. Write promptly what you see (your vision) in a book and send it to the seven churches which are in Asia—to Ephesus and to Smyrna and to Pergamum and to Thyatira and to Sardis and to Philadelphia and to Laodicea.¹² Then I turned to see [whose was] the voice that was speaking to me,… 

I was in the Spirit [rapt in His power] on the Lord’s Day,…This is my “splinter.” I have prayed to have more understanding of its meaning. I have been praying for the experience – yet it stands removed and distant from me – like a distant planet I have only seen pictures of. Yet contrary to popular, Christian theology, the Bible was written as a testimony – a witness of what others have experienced; a testimony for future space traveling, cowboys who are willing to “boldly go where no man has gone before.”

Now don’t get me wrong I have prayed “in the Spirit” and I believe I have worshipped “in the Spirit” – but I’m still curious what lies beyond the door of being in the Spirit. Jesus said in John 4 that the Father is seeking for these kind of worshippers – so it must be pretty important. Which adds another piece to the puzzle. The book of Genesis, the first book of the Bible, is chocked full of mystical references to doors: entry to the Garden, sin crouching at your door, Noahs’ ark door, and Abrahams’ door. The book of Revelation, the last book of the Bible, has references to doors of time and space, or multi-dimensional portals. Whatever you want to call them they usher you into a dimension that is not your own. And Jesus is asking, seeking, and knocking – for someone to overcome the Laodicean Church Age and answer the Call. Isn’t it interesting the similarities between these actions of Jesus and His teaching on prayer in Matthew 7:7-8 Ask and it will be given to you. Seek and you shall find. Knock and the DOOR will be opened to you…. It’s as if Jesus’ “secret coded message” to anyone who will listen is that what the Father is searching for – Jesus is praying. Are you an answer to Jesus’ prayer? Referring back to The Matrix. Is Jesus like Morpheus and we are His “Neo’s?” Can you “see” the “Voice?”