Reimar A.C. Schultze

Past Issues of the Call To Obedience

"Aha!!! "

By Pastor Reimar Schultze

I do not recall ever having written on such a subject as the Aha! factor. But although this word is not in our Bible, the Aha! response is to be found from Genesis to The Revelation. An Aha! is the sudden, unexpected, surprising discovery of truth, of an amazing unknown being birthed into the known. An Aha! is a teachable moment when the light goes on. It is when the blind man, healed by Jesus, could say, “whereas I was blind, now I see” (John 9:25).

I am sure there was an Aha! in the heads of Adam and Eve when God confronted them in the garden for their disobedience and told them to get out of paradise. There was within them that sudden realization that, after all, God does mean exactly what he says. Of course, this theme could be traced all the way through the Bible, each man on his own having to discover over and over again that God means what he says and says what he means.

The Lord Jesus extended this revelation in the Sermon on the Mount when he said, “Let your Yes be simply Yes, and your No be simply No; anything more than that comes from the evil one” (Matt. 5:37 Amplified). God means what he says, and he says what he means. So as his children, we are to do likewise. We must surrender our habitual insincerity to the cleansing light of truth. Not meaning what we say is a sin—it is not a personality quirk or a cultural flaw.

I was raised in a culture where it was the practice to say what we mean. When someone told me that they would be at church, they would be there. Then I came to America and discovered that when someone says, “I’ll see you at church,” it generally means nothing. And when such a person is queried later as to why they did not keep their promise, it is likely to be followed with a shrug of the shoulders and the words, “Oh, something just came up.”

I was in Mexico a few years ago, and church service was announced to be at 10:00 AM. Our party was there at 10:00, but no one else showed up at that time. Actually, it was about an hour before the full complement of saints had come in. When I asked about this, I was told, “Oh, Pastor Schultze, it is the culture here. You have to adapt to it.” I am sorry, but there is something inside of me that cannot adapt to not meaning what I say. My moral compass cannot make the North Pole the northeast or the South Pole the southwest. I understand the cultural part, but I thought that after we have come to Jesus, we bring the Lord’s culture into the culture where we live, as far as possible.

In contrast, what a joy it was when I recently traveled to Latvia and spoke at a new church. Several visitors had come to hear this American speak. After that meeting, most of them said to my translator, “I’ll be back next Sunday.” I asked her, “What does that mean over here, I’ll be back next Sunday?” With a surprised look, she said, “Well, that means they’ll be back next Sunday.” And so it was.

Oh, how we let pagan cultural habits corrupt our faith and rob us of the anointing of the Holy Spirit. Indeed, it has been said, “In Rome, do as the Romans,” and as Paul said, “I am made all things to all men, that I might by all means save some” (1 Cor. 9:22), but when looked upon in a biblical context, it excludes lying and stealing and bearing false witness, does it not? Don’t let the world be the salt that seasons you. You be the salt that seasons the world! Yes, “Let your speech be alway with grace, seasoned with salt, that ye may know how ye ought to answer every man” (Col. 4:6).

If there is any place for the world where truth is to find a resting place, it is to be in the heart of the Christian and his church. If we don’t mean what we say about coming to church, can we mean what we say when we sing, “All to Jesus I Surrender,” or “Sweet Hour of Prayer,” or “Have Thine Own Way, Lord”? Do you think there is any anointing on the Christian who does not mean what he says? Do you think there is any power in a church that does not mean what she sings or says? So, there was the Aha!, perhaps the first one in the Bible, when man discovered that when God speaks, he means what he says.

So there is the Aha! when we discover that when God speaks, he means what he says. Here is another Aha! It is one that says, “If only I had known,” and it takes me to another story.

The story is of a passenger train. In the car next to the last, a father sat with his little boy. The boy kept crying and crying and carrying on uncontrollably. The passengers of that train car got more and more annoyed at the father in his refusal to discipline his child. In other words, they all inwardly passed judgment upon him. Finally, one of the passengers had had enough and approached the father, saying in an angry voice, “Can’t you control your son...” The father calmly responded, “I am sorry, sir, but this boy has his mother in a wooden box in the train car right behind this one.” Aha!

Oh, how many times have we passed judgment upon people without having known all the circumstances. If there is one sin I have committed more than any in my life, it is that of having misjudged people and circumstances. Oh, how many times did I have to say, “Aha!, I wish I would have known that. I am sorry, so very sorry.”

Judging without knowing all the facts is sin. It cannot be measured how many people’s reputations have been hurt and discredited by premature judgment, and how many churches have been split and pastors have lost their pulpits because of it. Solomon cautioned us on this matter when he said, “The first to present his case seems right, till another comes forward and questions him” (Prov. 18:17 NIV). Is it any wonder that James had to write, “Wherefore, my beloved brethren, let every man be swift to hear, slow to speak, slow to wrath: For the wrath of man worketh not the righteousness of God” (James 1:19–20).

The only times we really know all the facts, absolutely, is when the Holy Spirit reveals them unto us. Friend, until you come to that Aha! moment of light, you will keep bungling around in spiritual darkness, falsely accusing all kinds of people of all kinds of things because you do not know all the facts.

Until we have the full revelation of God, we are in darkness, either total darkness or relative darkness. It is therefore best to heed the admonition of Paul given to the Romans, “Let us not therefore judge one another any more: but judge this rather, that no man put a stumblingblock or an occasion to fall in his brother’s way” (Rom. 14:13). This is the safe way. This is the godly way. Can you now say, “Aha! I’ve got it”?

Even Jesus did not have a full revelation of everything, for he said that he did not know the hour of his second coming (Mark 13:32). It is therefore that he, too, had his Aha! moments, such as when he first saw Nathanael and said, “Behold an Israelite indeed, in whom is no guile!” (John 1:47). He said another Aha! when he saw the faith of the centurion (Matt. 8:10) and the unbelief of the people of his hometown (Mark 6:6).

Notice then, also, there are the Aha’s! of joy and of woe. There is the Aha! with joy when we realize we can stand on God’s promises because he means what he says. There is the Aha! with woe when we realize we have damaged our fellowship with God because we have sinned and the blessings and joy of the Lord have disappeared.

Ultimately, I am looking for the great Aha! from all mankind as we approach the second coming of Jesus. What a great Aha! will be on the lips of all humanity when she will see Jesus appearing in the sky in a moment of the twinkling of an eye.

But there are many Aha’s! preceding it, even more so as we look for his appearing. As at Jesus’ first coming, there was “a fulness of time” (Gal. 4:4), a readiness in the world, a feeling towards him, so it is now. We are now slowly moving out of the dictatorial realm of relativism in philosophy and science. Philosophers, as we move toward the final cataclysm, begin to return to absolutes. Scientists, as they dig deeper and deeper into the secrets of the physical universe, begin to say Aha! and Aha! and Aha! over and over again. They finally recognize, “It is, after all, not evolution that brought us all this amazing world but a mastermind.” In fact, the first seed of that Aha! was already nascent in the man’s mind who started this whole evolutionary thinking: Charles Darwin. When he came to study the human eye, he had a flip-flop, although it may have only been momentary. He found something of which he could not say: this came from this or that. Rather, he stood in awe and wonder and said, “To suppose that the eye...could have been formed by natural selection seems, I freely confess, absurd to the highest degree possible.” Aha!

Over the years, modern science, with more and more pride, supported Darwin . But today, as we have come to ultra-modern science, we begin to see that what we first thought to be simple and explanatory now manifests itself with such beauty and complexity in ever-increasing expansion that we can only say Aha! and Aha! and Aha! over and over again. There must be a God, after all!

Just remember, we started out with thinking there were only four elements, or primary substances: earth, air, fire and water. But now we know that there are more than one hundred. However, as our lenses get better and better, we find that the atom, rather than being the end of our discoveries on the small side of things, could contain another universe, which could contain another universe, which could contain yet another universe. And what we find in the microcosm, we do also find in the macrocosm of God’s infinite space. This all leads to yet another way of saying, Aha!:

“O Lord my God! When I in awesome wonder consider all the worlds Thy hands have made. I see the stars, I hear the rolling thunder, Thy pow’r throughout the universe displayed. Then sings my soul, my Savior God to Thee; how great Thou art, how great Thou art! Then sings my soul, my Savior God to Thee; how great Thou art, how great Thou art!” (How Great Thou Art!, by Carl Boberg).

Remember then these three Aha’s!, the three discoveries. Once you get them, they will greatly enrich your life:

1) God means what he says, and you had better do likewise, or you will find yourself outside the garden of abundant life.

2) Be careful with your judgments. Most of them tend to be wrong and create irreparable damage.

3) God is a lot bigger than you think, and we shall all find that out sooner or later.