THE MIND ON HEAVEN
            FEET ON THE GROUND

Read: Colossians 3
                      Romans 12

Somebody told me there was a revival going on in a
certain village beyond the northern mountains. So

I packed my things and set out to see it. I arrived

in the evening when the whole village was gathered
for prayer in the meeting hall.   Taking a seat in
the back, I just rejoiced as prayers came pouring
out of one believer after another. Then we all sang
a hymn and the meeting ended.

Everybody stood around for a while and talked and
shared the wonderful things of God. They introduced
me to people who had been healed of deadly diseases -
to husbands and wives who had been separated and were
now one---joined in a love they never knew before.

Then suddenly a strange thing happened.   A man up
toward the front of the hall underwent a peculiar
change. As he stood there talking to a cluster of
people his shoes and his feet within them began to
grow in size until they became like two huge balloons.

Gradually the man began to rise from the floor on his
balloon feet. And just when I thought he was going
to bump his head on the ceiling his body flipped over
so that his head was hanging down. And all the while
the man kept right on talking as if he didn't even
notice what was happening to him.

Then, in the back of the hall, a woman in a red silk
pantsuit underwent the same change.

"What's going on?" I asked a man standing
next to me.

"Oh," he replied, "it happens every day.
There must be at least three hundred of
them in our village now. Some people think
it's contagious, but it's not, really.

It's just one of the hazards of revival.
Whenever there is revival in this valley

some people get balloon feet and lead 
heads. Their feet go up and their heads
go down."

"But what causes it?", I asked.

"Well," he answered, "when you begin to think
of yourself as being more spiritual,

        more righteous,  
        more holy,

                           more important than the
others around you, your feet start to swell
until they literally start rising above you.

 
But while your feet are going upward, your
head is drawn earthward by its love of glory,
pleasure, and money, and the next thing you
know you're upside down."

There was a Bible Study down the street last
week where it happened to everybody at once.
They all started feeling superior to each
other and all experienced that craving for 
mammon and self-glory. When a latecomer got
there they were all hanging from the ceiling.

Funny; when it happens to you, you don't even
realize it. You actually think you're still
sitting in your chair or walking down the
street. So when the latecomer came into the
Bible Study and urged his friends to come down
off the ceiling they laughed at him. ' What are
you talking about? We got our feet on the
ground, you're upside down.'

It's especially odd to see these leadheads
with balloon feet floating down the street
passing out tracts. They think they're
walking down the avenue like anyone else,
but the people wonder what they're trying to
prove floating along like upside down clowns.

 
'If I read your tract and do what it says,

will that happen to me?'

As soon as we begin to get into the things of the Kingdom

of God and experience the power of the Kingdom, there is

a danger that we misappropriate this power. The danger

that, because God has come in and done something in

our lives, instead of giving Him the glory we begin to

think of ourselves more highly than we ought to think

and get balloon feet...while at the same time our minds

are really set, not on God's Kingdom but on this earth....

leadheads.

That's what happened to the Pharisees. They really

believed that they were more spiritual than other people.
They trusted in themselves that they were righteous
and despised others while at the same time their minds
were chained to the earth. Outwardly they appeared
righteous to men but their minds were full of hypocrisy
and iniquity. Those Pharisees were upside down. Their
feet were in the clouds and their minds on the ground.
They were Jesus' constant example of what he did not
want his disciples to become.

And how relentlessly Jesus taught and still teaches
his disciples not to be leadheads. The mind must not
be chained to the earth, it must be fixed on God.
Don't let your mind get bound to mammon.   Set it on
God. Seek first the Kingdom of God and his righteousness.

Don't let your mind be chained to that field you
bought, or that wife you married, or those five yoke
of oxen.

Fix it on the Kingdom!

Love the Lord your God with all your heart
and with all your soul and with all your
strength and with all your mind.

He who loves father or mother more than me
is not worthy of me. He who loves son or
daughter more than me is not worthy of me.
Whoever puts his hand to the plow and looks

   back is not fit for the Kingdom of God.

And just as relentlessly Jesus taught and still teaches

his disciples not to get balloon feet. Not to think of

themselves more highly than they ought to think.

Blessed are the poor in spirit.
Blessed are the meek.

Take my yoke upon you and learn from me for
I am meek and lowly of heart,

Whoever humbles himself shall be exalted and
whoever exalts himself shall be abased.

Let the greatest among you become as the
youngest and the leader as one who serves.

I don't care how well you know the scriptures (the
scribes and Pharisees knew the scriptures too) or how
much faith you have, or what gifts operate in your minis-
try, or how many visions and revelations you have had,
you'll never make it as a disciples of Jesus until you
learn to have your mind set on heaven and your feet
planted on the ground.

Don't look at somebody else, examine yourself in the
light of God's Spirit.

Is your mind set on heaven?

If then you have been raised with Christ,
seek the things which are above, where
Christ is seated on the right hand of God.
Set your minds on things that are above
not on things that are on earth.

Be not conformed to this world but be
transformed by the renewal of your mind.

For many walk, of whom I have told you often
and now tell you even weeping, that they are
enemies of the cross of Christ: Whose end
is destruction, whose god is their belly and
whose glory is in their shame who mind earthly
things.

God won't set your mind on heaven for you, you have to
set it on heaven and keep bringing it back to heaven
every time it roams toward its old haunts.

"But I just can't seem to do that," you say.
"My mind keeps wandering."

This is because your vision of heaven is weak and your
vision of the heavenly Jesus is vague.

                 I turned around to see who was talking to me.
There I saw seven gold lampstands. Among them
stood a being who looked like a man, wearing a
robe that reached to his feet and a gold band
around his chest. His hair was white as wool,  
or as snow. His eyes blazed like fire. His
feet shone like brass melted in the furnace and
then polished. And his voice sounded like a
mighty waterfall. He held seven stars in his
right hand and a sharp two-edged sword came

out of his mouth. His face was as bright as
the midday sun.

If your mind is getting caught in the things of this
world turn around and look up, at this Jesus.   No other
words in scripture can better describe what Jesus is
like at this moment than those words in Revelation 1.
Keep soaking them in until the Spirit of God opens
your eyes and you begin to see what John saw....

the burning, 

holy,  
blazing,

terrifying in his splendor,
wonderful Jesus!

               ....not the

        weak Jesus, not the effeminate Jesus, not the soft   
        emaciated Jesus of churchianity, but the ever-living
        Lord who has the keys of death and Hades. Set your

        mind on this Jesus and it will live in heaven even
        while your feet walk this earth.

And that leads us to the next question....

Are your feet really on the ground,

or are they floating like balloons?

For by the grace given me I bid everyone among
you not to think of himself more highly than
he ought to think.

To keep our feet on the ground and not go floating off
with our own phony righteousness there is another
vision that we need:

The vision of Jesus on the cross .... the
finished work.

And I beheld and lo, between the throne and
the four living creatures and in the midst
of the elders, stood a lamb as though it had
been slain.

Even in heaven Jesus is still the crucified one.

 
If you want to keep your feet on the ground, look at
him on that cross.

He wasn't standing up for his rights.
He wasn't demanding respect.

   He wasn't calling down fire to consume his enemies.

He was going through this painful lonely death without
making one complaint.

He was oppressed and he was afflicted, yet
he opened not his mouth.

He is brought as a lamb to the slaughter and
as sheep before its shearers is dumb, so he
opened not his mouth.

You can't get any lower than Jesus was that day when
he died on the cross. And if you belong to him you'd
better not...ever...think of yourself as being one inch
higher than that. You stay right down there with him
as long as you're in this body.

The anchor of your life in this world is the cross of
Jesus Christ and so long as you're anchored to that
cross you can't think of yourself as better than some
body. You can't think of one soul as being beneath
you. Nobody can get any lower than you are because

you're living down at the bedrock of redemption.

God has caused this flock to share in the revival that
he is sending to the earth in this late hour.

Lives are being changed.

Eyes are being opened again this day.

But it's not all peaches-and-cream. Some of us are

inclined to get lead heads.   Our minds are dwelling,
not in the heavenlies, but in the old rat-race of
this world.

If this is happening to you, God in his mercy is opening

your eyes and showing you today. His Spirit is
saying to you,

- look  up,

- behold the One who stands in the midst of
the lampstands with eyes like flames of
fire and worship him.

And, if you're getting balloon feet, secretly thinking
of yourself as superior to this brother or those sisters.
God is putting his finger on it and showing it to you.

"Come down out of those phony clouds and

fall on your face this day before the blood
stained cross of my Son."

God help us to get our minds on heaven and our feet on
the ground...even if we have to fall on our faces to
do it...that the revival in our lives and in the lives
of those around us may not die but burst forth more
gloriously than ever, strengthening us for the work
which is still to be done and the things which are
still to be suffered.