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Friday, August 29, 2008
The transformation of the church into the Kingdom of God that is taking place today has been enriched by the Vineyard Movement, in which the Kansas City Prophets played a part. Today’s Post on the Kansas City Prophets and their contribution is written by Bruce Judd. It is dangerous to throw the baby out with the bathwater when it comes to prophets and prophecy. As far as the so called Kansas City Prophets I have sat under all of them – some a number of times. At its time, meaning up to the Toronto Blessing, the Vineyard movement was at the cutting edge of what God was doing. What he was doing was trying to bring together the Pentecostal/charismatic and evangelical factions of the Church. In other words to bring the understanding and reality of the power of God through the Holy Spirit together with strong and sound understanding of the scriptures.This is what is referred to as the ‘third wave’ of the Holy Spirit, the first being the Pentecostal movement in the early 20th century and the second being the Charismatic movement of the 1960s.Even though John Wimber and a significant section of the Vineyard movement rejected the so called ‘excesses’ of the Toronto Blessing, which took place in a Vineyard Church, the move of God continued to disseminate through people who had departed from the Vineyard movement. Having visited both the original Vineyard church and the re-named Toronto Airport Christian Fellowship in 2006, it seemed clear to me that the Vineyard movement had suffered somewhat from this split.I say somewhat, because it is still a sound movement, some say a denomination now, with good theology and experiencing the power of the Spirit. But it has ceased to be on the cutting edge, I believe because it rejected that next move of God, which like Lakeland was criticized by many – evangelicals and Pentecostals alike.Toronto remains, from my brief experience visiting there in 2006, and having heard a number of speakers who have come from there, a very healthy church, with sound teaching, experiencing the power, and leading the world in contemplative worship.
The prophetic people that were associated with the Vineyard Movement were of a high calibre in their anointing, accuracy and, for the most part, integrity.They still spearhead the prophetic today.While it may be true that some have fallen (I think here mostly of Paul Cain), the enemy does seem to succeed in taking some out from time to time in all ministries, denominations, roles and giftings , Ted Haggard, Todd Bentley and now Michael Guglielmucci being the latest examples.It is always sad when this happens, and is used powerfully by the enemy to discredit the gifts of the Spirit, especially prophecy, and mostly within the church. But if we reject those with integrity because of association we run the risk of quenching the Spirit big time – the very problem that has most plagued the modern church. Evangelicals generally quench the Spirit by distorted teaching and the absence of the ‘demonstration of power’, and Pentecostals by dishonoring the Spirit through false or unbalanced ‘demonstrations of power’ (hype) and (often) paucity of sound teaching. This truth is that these two pillars of the ‘the word’ and ‘the power’ in Christianity are meant to inform and complement each other. We also need to remember that in new testament prophecy, no one is 100% accurate, none are infallible, none free from the influence of the flesh, none with 100% pure theology, and none sinless - therefore the principle of the ‘witness of two or three’ (triangulation, as we researchers like to put it) and the discernment of the Body of Christ is critical. Paul indeed outlines this in 1 Cor 14 quite clearly.We also know that there will be false prophets in the last days, but neither this nor the abuse of prophecy should EVER DISCOURAGE US FROM SEEKING WHAT GOD HAS FOR US THROUGH THIS AMAZING GIFT, otherwise why would Paul exhort us to ‘earnestly desire spiritual gifts ESPECIALLY the gift of prophecy’? Indeed if we let it frighten us off this blessing from God, we reject Paul’s strong advice not to ‘despise prophesying’. Discernment is not prejudice. It is not fear of deception, is not intellectualism, is not a committee decision. It is itself the Spirit of God moving upon the hearts of men and women to help them negotiate their way individually and corporately through the true, the false, and most confusing of all, the mixed. Finally one of my favorite sayings, “There is no greater deception than the fear of deception itself.” _______ When Bruce is not being the father of Sarah or writing a post in the Daily Journal he is being Associate Professor Bruce Judd at the City Futures Research Centre at the University of NSW.
Thursday, August 28, 2008
We’ve been talking about discernment. In regard to the recent issues, I’ve tried to give a sampling of thought from a number of sources, the reason being that an assortment provides insights and perspectives that builds up the whole. We don’t have to agree with all that is said. For example I do not see Todd Bentley as ‘a liar and a deceiver’ as has been stated in one essay. People do tell lies and some deceive, but this is not true in every case. It’s not the real identity of many. Some are just weak. Some are just entrapped by a scheme of the Enemy. “Liar and deceiver” are, however, terms applicable to the marketers and mechanics of the christian industry, who in most cases have never committed physical adultery, yet promote lies and adulteries of a more serious kind. Discernment will not come easily to us if we are of the view that God would never change any structure that gives me comfort and security. Nor can revelation benefit me if I ignore a person’s thought, a stream of thought, or the tenor of a movement, simply because it does not fit the grid through which I interpret the Bible and my religious world. My colleague and friend will have more to say tomorrow on this. If there is a good grid it is a grid with a name. Our world and the Bible is to be viewed through the name and person of Jesus. He is our lens and our light. We get to the Father through Jesus. Rather than remain trapped and blinded within the bars of our own grid, Jesus invites us to align with Him and see through Him. Aligned with His interpretive grid we perceive what He is doing and facilitate what He wants done. Jesus lived to do what His Father was doing which meant that He lived in the flow of the Spirit. He lived in what the Father was doing today – not in a fixation which what the Father did yesterday or last decade. Jesus released the Father’s will so that His Father’s will each day was done on earth as it was in heaven. Jesus reveals His will through people and movements – people and movements who are intimate with and obedient to Him. The will of God was made manifest through David when he was dancing before the Lord, not when he was with Bathsheba. Everyone should know that, and we would hope that they would know that God was with Todd Bentley when He was doing fine and not when he was stumbling. Like it or not, urbane and inhibited church, Todd himself in his personality, his unconventionality and radical individuality was the Lord’s message to those bound in the conventions of religion. Get used to it. There will be many more like Todd! I believe that religion as a worshiped object keeps more people out the Kingdom of God than all of paganism. The holy laughter of the Toronto Blessing was the Lord’s rebuke to the obsessive seriousness of emasculated christianity. It was Christ’s invitation to rejoice. Toronto was the Lord saying, ‘I’M NOT LIKE YOU! I’M NOT HALF AS STUFFY AS YOU LOT! I AM LIKE ME. THIS IS ME! LAUGH A LOT AND YOU WILL KNOW ME!. THERE IS HEALING IN MY LAUGHTER!’ But many could not receive it because they reasoned that God is boring and restrained like them and they would not repent and accept that they were meant to be like God. The flaky things that occurred around Toronto were not the real reason why they rejected Toronto. These were just their excuse for not repenting and accepting God as He. God releases Himself so that people will see who He really is and REPENT! God releases Himself at Lakeland so that people will rejoice over Him and repent! Must we be so blind and pharisaically PEDANTIC about the fact that repentance was not preached? God releases Himself among us to provoke us to repentance! So what’s happening at Lakeland now? “The morning training sessions continue with a couple hundred every day, and teams continue to move daily into the streets of Lakeland spreading the gospel. Percentage-wise the dramatic miracles and healings occur nightly with probably a higher percentage of salvations on a daily basis.” This must be a disappointment to those affected by the leaven of the Pharisees. Cut ourselves off from any revelation of the Lord and a part of us begins to die. Should we get a blockage in an artery and part of our heart or brain dies and our body is jeopardized. We get a stroke or heart attack and are lucky if we do not cark it. The same occurs when we harden our hearts against revelation that Jesus releases into movements in the body of Christ. Our spiritual witness begins to die. Segments of the church die and the Kingdom of God is weakened. This is why Jesus says to people like us, REPENT FOR THE KINGDOM OF HEAVEN IS HERE. To be continued.
Wednesday, August 27, 2008
None of us has all the truth. Only Jesus is the truth and has the truth. All of us are in need of direction and correction. Jesus is the source of genuine correction. The prophets spoke of the way of God revealed to the Godly: ‘Whether you turn to the right or to the left, your ears will hear a voice behind you, saying, “This is the way; walk in it” Is. 30.21 (NIV). But the way is not only progress in the right direction. Since Jesus, The Way is the Person of Jesus. He is the Light. The Way is walking in Him and releasing His Light. Truth is truth. Truth is correspondence with reality. Truth is not what the majority thinks. It is what God thinks. Much of what God thinks is written in His book. But not all of it. Because God is bigger than His book He writes in the world. He also speaks through people. People are also His Message. Particularly people who refuse to be confined by boxes that man built. Jesus left Himself behind when He returned to heaven. He said ‘I will be with you forever,’ through the ministry of the Holy Spirit and through His Spirit ministering through people. We understand truth through union with God. We came from God but we need rejoining. Genuine minister rejoin us to God. But they are opposed because they set us free from the gods we have made out of things. God re-joined us to Himself through the body of Jesus – a Person of real flesh and blood. Jesus liberates the religious using their colleagues who shun the esteem of many so that the religious can go free. Just in case it was not clear what I wrote yesterday I’m going to state it again. I believed in Todd Bentley when I went to a conference in which he was a co-speaker about five years ago. I found him an out of the church box guy and a breath of fresh air. However I also believe he finds himself in the predicament he is in today because he came to believe that because God told him things in striking ways, he possessed discernment. He came to believe he 'knew it all' and could not be told. In other words he believed he has wisdom and strength he did not have. He’s not alone in this attitude. It’s a common miss-apprehension with many who hear from God. They get words, visions and dreams from God but are not discerning. Many are not even wise and even more are not in possession of sound doctrine – which means that men and the messages get sadly distorted. In a way Todd is a symbol of us all. And a warning. A warning to all of us who imagine that because we get words from God, we have the wisdom of God. There’s a shaking going on. God is bringing correction to the church. When its over the church will be much stronger than it is now. Let’s just ensure that when the shaking stops we are still here! Discernment comes from the layering of wisdom into our spirits – and usually with a lot of pain. With some discernment is also a specific gift of the Spirit. Some have discernment with a Big D. Others have a modest endowment arising from their humility and intimacy with God. All discernment, even in the most pronounced gifting, is partial. No one has comprehensive discernment. We discern in part. Many have specialised discernment giftings. We see in part because we are only gifted to minister the sector of the Kingdom in which the Lord has given us authority. And we are meant to minister to each other in a complimentary way. Which brings me back to where we began. We are accountable to God and accountable to each other. We need the guidance and correction of each other. The poor in spirit see God but the proud do not see anything. ‘But if your eye is bad, your whole body will be full of darkness. If then the light that is in you is darkness, how great is the darkness!’ Mat 6.23 NASB. PS
Tuesday, August 26, 2008
Spiritual discernment is a particular kind of wisdom. It majors in discovery. It involves the ability to penetrate beneath appearances to discover underlying truth or error. Spiritual discernment is more than the ability to distinguish right from wrong. It is subtle, precise and accurate in its delineation of truth. Spiritual discernment is interpretive revelation – the interpretation of things as they are rather than as they appear. Spiritual discernment is revelation that enables us to accurately describe the interplay of factors and forces operating in a particular situation. Spiritual discernment is the ability given to man to describe people, events and movements as God sees them rather than as man sees them. Spiritual discernment has a natural and supernatural aspect. It is a form of revelation but it is not disconnected from intelligence, desire to learn and experience. If intellectualism can block access to the Kingdom of Light, so can anti-intellectualism. Spiritual discernment is found among the humble, teachable but particularly among the thoughtful. Spiritual discernment is linked to character. It avoids the proud and deserts the headstrong. Spiritual discernment is grounded in a sound familiarity with the interaction of God and man in biblical history; an understanding of sound doctrine as distinguished from popular christian myth and the ability to foster enjoyment when working with others. More than anything else, spiritual discernment is evidenced by an informed knowledge of WHAT GOD IS DOING NOW. I’ve encountered people who are potentially spiritually discerning. But they themselves quench their own gifting and what God might accomplish through them. They are obsessed with controlling others and cannot take instruction themselves. Spiritual discernment is a gift bestowed on those who love knowledge and seek wisdom with all their heart. Spiritual discernment is the supernatural wisdom of God operating in humble, obedient men and women. But be warned. Hearing from God is not a substitute for a willingness to take instruction from wise people. Don’t let it be said that we hear from God but we don’t listen to man. That we cut ourselves off from what we could have heard from God via our fellows had we the wit to listen! Let’s be clear. We don’t get spiritual discernment just because God speaks to us in visions and dreams. We are not filled with wisdom, understanding and sound doctrine just because the Lord tells us what is going to happen in the meeting planned for that evening. Such info is not spiritual discernment. It’s just following orders. God spoke through an ass but the ass didn’t become an oracle. No doubt if the ass was human it would have wanted to! Jesus can tell us something specific and we may remain in the dark in regard to the overall scene. This info may come through one or more others. Spiritual discernment is a particular kind of revelation. It is revelation of a kind that enables us to correctly read the text of a spiritual landscape, the state of a church, the spiritual contours of a city or a person’s heart. Having a prophetic gift we may assume that we have spiritual discernment because God tells us things. Not always so. I have encountered too many instances were the opposite to discernment is the case. To assume that we have discernment because God has spoken a word to us is presumptuous. This distorts the intent of God’s word and leaves us out of alignment with what God is doing. Personal character is the crucible that determines if the gifting and the out-pouring of God can be carried successfully. Which brings me to Todd Bentley. Has Todd got some issues and made some mistake? Seems so. But I believe he has an honest heart. And he’s not a man to be found among the eight foolish spies who chose safety rather than obedience. I believe the signs and miracles at Lakeland were of God. Lakeland was and is part of the beginning of the power and love of God poured out through an open heaven. Further, I believe that “discernment” that defines the Lakeland Revival as of the devil is very bas discernment and in need of re-alignment. God was at Lakeland and lots of people know it. Could it be that those who were too religious to see God in the Toronto Blessing will have been too religious to see Him at Lakeland? Will it be that such people will go back to burying the inheritance Jesus has given them in the ground? Will they continue to cultivate their forms of godliness without power in order to rationalise their fear and unbelief? In the meantime the Kingdom of God will continue to flash forth through daring and fallible men like Todd Bentley until the kingdoms of this world become the kingdom of our Lord. Don’t let it be said that any of us were so religious and afraid of being deceived that the Kingdom of God passed us by. ‘Today it will be stormy, for the sky is red and overcast.’ You know how to interpret the appearance of the sky, but you cannot interpret the signs of the times’ Matt. 16.3 (NIV).
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Writing by discerning authors on Lakeland and Todd Bentley.
4. The Body of Christ has entered into a new place. 5. A Blunt Rebuke to the effete conformists who presume to speak on behalf of God.
Monday, August 25, 2008
It is regrettable, but not surprising, that Pastor Michael Guglielmucci defrauded the public in regard to the cancer he never had. This fruit had grown inevitably out of a certain garden: The market garden of marketed christianity with its cult of hype and celebrity. Early last week I posted the following in my blog, “Immorality and the compromise of relationship are obvious kinds of ungodliness currently being exposed in the leadership of the church. The less obvious and more subtle kind are more serious and more wide-spread. I mean the use of the name of Jesus for personal gain, for the promotion of career and the promotion of one’s own name using the name of Jesus. The prostitution of the name of Jesus on behalf of self and self’s empire will not be allowed to proceed forever. Just as the more obvious acts of immorality are being exposed today so the careers of arrogance and presumption will be exposed tomorrow. The unraveling of deception that covers our own sin in the eyes of ourselves and the eyes of others is proceeding apace. If we are too insensitive to repent out of love for the Lord, perhaps we should consider repenting out of fear of Him.” Pastor Guglielmucci’s deceit is seen to be obvious. Let’s be glad that he has admitted his deception, because the falsehood he perpetrated falls into the category of the sin of Annanias and Saphira. It is to be hoped that while pastor Mike is being restored those who operate from other modes of carnality will repent. That is, repent of the principle that the end justifies the means, repent of encouraging the belief that crowds and clamour are indications of the presence of God, repent of imagining that it is permissible to market ourselves using the name of Jesus, repent of the lie that it is ok to corporate-ise the Kingdom of God and to operate in the power of Egypt. Yesterday I read the following passage in Isaiah of which the following is a paraphrase: ‘Israel is led by drunks. They refuse to listen to the Lord’s simple talk, so He will speak to them through oppressors. The Lord says ‘You have made a refuge of lies and deception. There is only one fortress and One alone that it is safe to build on: The Lord Your God. I will examine your building with the measuring line of justice and the plumb-line of righteousness. Since your house is made of deception, the Enemy will sweep it away’ Isa 28.7-17. Don’t defile yourselves with your Egyptian Gods. I have allowed you to pollute yourselves with your idols and corruptions so that I might devastate your work and show you that I alone am God. I am God and you are not, although quite a few of you imagine you are. I will scatter you and judge you face to face’ Ezek 20.7-38. Whatever power the song ‘Healer’ may appear to have had, be assured that Jesus does not build His Kingdom of truth on lies. No matter what the words of such a song may say the spirit multiplied by such a song is a lie. As wonderful as the words of such a song may appear, the effect of this song are poison.
Friday, August 22, 2008. Many people are looking for a church today. Nomads wander from place to place seeking a church. Whether they know it or not most are really looking for the Presence of God. Their hearts are seeking union with the living Christ. They are seeking healing for their mortal wound and are thirsty for living water. Many seek the freedom to be who God made them to be in the community of those who are at peace with God and at peace with themselves. Yet it concerns me that many seek a church out of a me-centric world view. They want a place to meet their needs. There needs are not unimportant but they are not the centre of the universe. Jesus built His disciples up, healed, forgave and established them so that they could meet His needs - His need to save a world. We get to be useful for the Lord and His Kingdom when we tumble to the fact that our life is not about us. It’s about Him. He’s not here to do our will. We are here to do His. So instead of seeking a church, let’s seek His Presence. Better still, rather than grazing about expecting others to do what we are capable of doing ourselves, take the initiative. Create a space for His Presence and begin to release Him amongst each other. How would we assist Jesus to build His church?
Thursday, August 21, 2008.
IT SHOULD BE OBVIOUS BUT IT ISNT. The Father did not send the church into the world to save the world. He sent His Son. Long ago, before I came into the Holy Spirit and before I knew anything about intimacy with Jesus, an interior decorator came to our house. While there she sensed the presence of God - tasted a little of His grace and peace – an occurrence that was very gracious of the Lord, as I was more than a little legalistic and pretty much fundamentalist in disposition. Having sensed something she said, ‘I must do something about getting along to church.’ I knew as she said it that she had not got it quite right, even though heading in roughly the right direction. We are accustomed to think of church as a particular entity of religious merit. But The Lord had said in the Old Testament that He did not live in temples made with hands, but with those who were humble enough to do what He says. When Jesus came He began a new order that He had alluded to with the words, ‘Destroy this temple and I will raise it again in three days.’ He spoke of the temple that consisted of those who lived in Him as He lived in them. This is to say His Temple is something that is where His Presence is. His church is an organism of The Presence that transcends space and time, yet intersects them in powerful ways.
There are some basic principles of church growth that we should note. Jesus sent His Son in into the world in the body of a woman. He sent The Presence. This in itself speaks volumes into the notion of the Bride of Christ. ‘A body You have prepared Me.’ Today Jesus is preparing a ‘body’ in which to dwell. We are a dwelling place for His Presence. The church is those people in whom Jesus dwells. The church is the living presence of God in people. The church is believers in Christ made pregnant and potent with the Christ who lives in them. The church is those whose lives bear children to Christ. Children of holiness, wholeness, creativity and dominion over the works of the Enemy. Jesus grew the church by the Presence of God. He does not grow the presence of God by the church. It is for this reason that many in the Renewal have experienced stagnation. They think the Holy Spirit is something to augment the church. No my friend. The church is entirely the function of the Presence of God in you! Plant as many churches as you like, but a church is not a real church unless we plant the presence of God. His manifest presence in the power of the Spirit is not an addition or an extra. His Presence is the essence of the church. Genuine community arrives when human beings are joined to the heavenly community of Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Only then are they whole and only then are they the church that Jesus builds.
Wednesday, August 20, 2008. The anointing of the Spirit of Christ is increasing, which means that the freedom of the people of God is increasing. Freedom is foundationional to the anointing. It’s not going too far to say that freedom is the anointing given that the Spirit of the Lord is the Spirit of Liberty. Adam and Eve lived in the freedom of God’s Presence before the fall. Jesus was nailed to the cross so that that all of us might grow into the freedom of God’s Presence after the cross. The Spirit of sonship is also the spirit of liberty. It takes daring to live freedom; daring to believe Jesus totally and abandon ourselves to Him. Jesus, in Himself, is more than sufficient. He is totally sufficient. ‘There is one Lord, one faith, one baptism; one God and Father of all, who is over all and through all and in all’ Eph. 4.5,6 (NIV). This is our opportunity – the freedom to live our life in Him with Him in us. ‘In him we live and move and have our being. We are his offspring’ Acts 17.28 (NIV). As His offspring and co-creators we create our lives mentally, physically, socially and spiritually. But our imprudence impels us to seek life in our own creations rather than become a new creation and a new creator in Jesus. Many are living their lives in their own christian creation garnished with a sprinkle of Jesus. Freedom comes with total abandonment to Jesus. ‘I am crucified in Christ. But all the same, Christ creates a new creation, a new world through me.’Frequently Jesus grows us at a rapid rate in the desert. He often contrives a desert in which there is no bible, no church, no communion, no internet devotions, no religious figures and no books. He gets us into a place where there is no possibility of our attempting to draw life from religious behaviours and icons. Until we are able to do without all of these and be supplied entirely by Him, we are not able to derive life from spiritual disciplines or release His life into our worlds. His grace does not need to be added to. His grace is not nearly sufficient for us or almost sufficient for us. His grace is entirely sufficient for all. Jesus calls us to walk on a high wire holding on to nothing but Him. This is what it means to walk in the Spirit instead of the letter. As scary as this looks it is more substantial than all our religious props. We grow in the most authority when we are in a place so out of control that the only possibility of safety is Him! Those who live in the freedom of Jesus have what it takes. They have the power and the authority to carry the revolutionary banner of His Kingdom.
STATEMENT The breakdown of Todd Bentley’s marriage is very sad. Ungodliness of any kind debilitates us personally and enables the Enemy to advance against the Kingdom of God. Immorality and the compromise of relationship are obvious kinds of ungodliness currently being exposed in the leadership of the church. The less obvious and more subtle kind are more serious and more wide-spread. I mean the use of the name of Jesus for personal gain, for the promotion of career and the promotion of one’s own name using the name of Jesus. The prostitution of the name of Jesus on behalf of self and self’s empire will not be allowed to proceed forever. Just as the more obvious acts of immorality are being exposed today so the careers of arrogance and presumption will be exposed tomorrow. The unraveling of deception that covers our own sin in the eyes of ourselves and the eyes of others is proceeding apace. If we are too insensitive to repent out of love for the Lord, perhaps we should consider repenting out of fear of Him. I recommend Loren Sanford’s article, When Leaders Fall.
Tuesday, August 19, 2008. By His word Jesus created the world. By His word He creates the realm of Grace out of which flows the Kingdom of God. One word in the Spirit accomplishes more for the Kingdom of God in a moment than performance orientation achieves in a decade. Jesus is our peace. He is our peace because He has washed away our sin. He is our peace because He has earned our rest. In Jesus, the Father established the realm of grace for our freedom – freedom from preoccupation with guilt and compulsion to perform. ‘Doing church’ is a performance. Jesus desires that we be grace based. Grace frees us from striving. Grace liberates us from dead works. Grace permits us to be still and know that God is God. Grace enables us to soak and draw nutriment to create from the creator. Grace enables us to live in koinonia. The performance oriented ‘church’ has so little koinonia that it must attempt to build it with activities additional to the weekly gathering. Shouldn’t the main gathering facilitate koinonia? Koinonia facilitates love and enables iron to sharpen iron. Koinonia is the crucible of grace and creativity. From koinonia springs life works. Grace based new creation is alive because it is birthed by co-creators soaked in the presence of the Creator and each other. The new creation is never performance based. It is grace based. Yet it is fertile and produces much fruit. Without striving and in the grace of Jesus but filled with the Holy Spirit we create LIVE WORKS. All that is original, imaginative and creative grows from the soil of grace. All that is unique and correctly targeted flows from a regime of peace. The new creation flows from the realm of being, not from the realm of doing. Which brings me to that domain of the Kingdom of God, the church. Doing church is a performance. Why perform for that which God has already given us: His Son? The Kingdom of God is not performance based, so neither is the church Jesus builds. It is grace based. It’s all been done. We don’t have to contrive Him among us or choreograph him into our presence. We’re already in His Presence and He is already here. ‘By grace you have been saved, through faith — and this not from yourselves, it is the gift of God’ Eph. 2.8 (NIV). Therefore church is not meant to be something we do. It is something He does among us and in us. Church is something Jesus does among us. He builds His church. Let's be still and know that God is God. Unfortunately, most churches as yet are performance based where each episode is something we do – a bunch of segments tied together and labeled ‘church.’ But we are not only saved by grace. We are graced by grace. He wants to grace us with His manifest presence.Grace based church is the fruit of the real presence of the living Christ who says, ‘Peace be with you. My grace is sufficient for you. I’m here to fill you with My Life.’
PROPHETIC WORD
“Many choose to return to the safe place of familiarity and control to gain perspective, and lose the joy set before them. Few have stepped over the line into the abandonment He desires from those who claim that their lives are for His use. WHAT IS IT THAT JESUS THAT JESUS WANTS FROM US... ...REALLY? The obedience to do the simple, and often at times, mundane acts of “silencing our fleshly need for action and comfort."
Monday, August 18, 2008. Today’s post is a video: Not The Thingified Church. Jesus came to make us more human, more the sons and daughters of God than we were before both as individuals and as the church. The church is not a thing. It is an ‘us’ called to grow from glory to glory into the fullness of Jesus. Are we graced based or performance based? The answer determines whether we are building His Kingdom or ours. Click on the live text for the video or on the graphic below.
Friday August 15, 2008.
The new testament portrays the Kingdom of God as a kingdom of freedom. Heal the sick, raise the dead and cast out demons and tell them, the Kingdom of God is among you. The kingdom of Jesus Christ is light and truth because its essence is freedom. These posts are about freedom because Jesus is about freedom. Jesus first sermon was a declaration of freedom. A declaration that He had come to set captives free and give sight to the blind. Freedom in God’s sight is not an optional extra. It is the essence of the Kingdom of God. Freedom has the highest priority with God because freedom enables us to receive God’s love. Freedom enables us to love God and love other people. Freedom permits us to come out of hiding into the presence of God and to celebrate the presence of each other. Freedom enables us to see, which is to say that freedom removes both bondages and lies. Freedom enables us to repent because freedom allows us to see the issues and gives us room to move. Freedom empowers us to live. The power and mercy of God is poured out to provoke repentance. The power of Jesus is poured out to set people free from disease and the control of demons. Signs and wonders are sent to set people free from mistaken world views, particularly the view that if there is a god he is either powerless or doesn’t care. Masses are contained in prisons of false ideas about God. Many christians live in cages of faith that are actually unbelief. Outpourings of signs wonders, healings and liberation from demons demonstrate that there is a God who is powerful, who loves each person deeply and who loves to put things right. Signs demonstrate that Jesus is real. Wonders give the lie to determinism. Miracles disprove fatalism. Signs and wonders send a message to wicked hearts that practise evil because they have given up hope: ‘Look! There is Hope. There is a Way! Turn to God! This Hope is the Person of Jesus Christ. When a person is raised from the dead it is a sign that Jesus was raised from the dead and more. It is a sign that ‘He has set a day when he will judge the world with justice by the man he has appointed. He has given proof of this to all men by raising him from the dead’ Acts 17.31 (NIV). Jesus reveals Himself so that all will turn from themselves to Him. Having been soaked in a ‘sin outlook’ we often miss the fact that Jesus is about liberating His people. Liberating them not just from sin but setting them free from religion. There are bondages that are obvious like the common addictions. Then there are the more subtle, Not as obvious as the gold bovine, such compulsions are more numerous. They are chains that the Lord wishes to shatter with His active word of freedom. Jesus, the living word and the light of life exposes our chains so that He can set us free. ‘The word of God is living and active. Sharper than any double-edged sword, it penetrates even to dividing soul and spirit, joints and marrow; it judges the thoughts and attitudes of the heart. Nothing in all creation is hidden from God’s sight. Everything is uncovered and laid bare before the eyes of him to whom we must give account’ Heb. 4.12-13 (NIV). We must give account. There’s a Kingdom of God that many are too religious to see. Freedom in God’s sight is not an option. It is the essence of the Kingdom of God. Freedom enables us to grow from glory to glory as the sons of God. Freedom enables us to represent Jesus accurately. This being so, Jesus wants to know why so many choose to represent religion when He offers Himself.
Thursday August 14, 2008. The Melbourne, August 2, Round Table Conference – a few more observations. Personally I do not see the orthodox pastor as the solution to the fragmented and powerless church. Any ‘unity’ that such roles might bring would be mechanical, disjointed and carnal – a creature cobbled together by Dr Frankenstein. To me orthodox pastoral roles are the problem, not the solution. Why? There is only one Head of the church, made present by the Holy Spirit who makes His will known through all. The acceptance of Jesus Lordship by leaders and people must be a reality before the church can be redeemed. This is to imply that in many cases the orthodox pastor and ‘his’ congregation and the orthodox congregation and ‘their pastor’ are alienated from Jesus, if not in rebellion and that they interact in uneasy ‘harmony’ in order to have their own way. Many pastors are locked into their political constituency and their own little empire. And many congregations and the cliques within them vie to own and control the pastor. The church must overcome being self-centered and become Jesus centered in order to rise to the position Jesus intends. To criticize the notion of ‘the local church’ is criticize God in some quarters. Nevertheless I am going to take this notion to task because too often it is a god. The church as described in the New Testament is not a building, not a program, not a hierarchy of officials and not a lay/cleric dichotomy. It is a gathering of believers led by elders. The church of Jesus is undoubtedly local but it is not necessarily an organisation - although it can be organised. Jesus’ church cannot exist without people but does well without officials. Neither is His church just a community. It is the community of those communing with Jesus. This is the community of those who believe that Jesus is just as present in the Holy Spirit, as He was with the disciples in the Upper Room. There are ‘communions.’ But many of these involve communion with a culture and church as a thing rather than communion with Jesus and those joined in the Spirit with Him. There are more than a few communities who exist quite blatantly with little of the real presence of Jesus. They relate to information or make do with the presence of themselves. Others go by His name but are not particularly interested in His Person. The people of God, wherever they may be are those in whom the real presence of the Son of God dwells. This is the church of Jesus and the church in any city that will ultimately prevail.
The church Jesus has in mind is more local and more personal than the most local institutional churches. Jesus is about is face to face local, face to face REAL! Jesus’ church is not built by human hands, yet is more real than all the constructions of dead works. He builds His church by joining hearts and lives to Himself. His church is the spontaneous product of face to face relationship. His church is the communion of those who seek Jesus face and the community of those who are who are being liberated and empowered to seek the faces of each other.
The community of Jesus church is the fruitage of genuine membership in the Family of God. It results from our being a real participant in the Father’s House – of personally being in Christ who is Himself in the Father. Koinonia is a Greek word connoting intimate participation in Jesus, the nurturing of each other and an imaginative communion and interaction with the creation. The latter dimension of Koinonia occurs because God loves the world. This kind of community involves the redemption of creation. Genuine Koinonia is the foundation of the Kingdom of God – a form of community that occurs only when Jesus is King. It should be obvious that Koinonia does not happen in a setting focused on program, performance or system. It flows from seeking the face of Jesus, which liberates us from self protection to know the face of others. Koinonia is the flow of God’s life through people. Koinonia is not so much something you do. Koinonia is something you are in the presence of Jesus. My final point. I love landscape, skyscape and the richnes of creation. I glory in its colour and the boldness of the canvass. I like to gaze at the creation, stand in it and take pictures of the beauty God has made. I’m getting a new camera and have been doing some reading with a view to improving my photography. Last night I came across this snippet which relates to this issue. ‘Be warned. The internet is overloaded with the technical people who invented it. These are the last people from whom you'd want to learn, since they are usually equipment fetishists, not artists,’This is why which why I believe many pastors are not equipped to grow Christ’s church. His church grows out of those who have a passion for Jesus. Not church growth professionals, christian industry spokesmen or ‘christian equipment fetishists.’ Jesus builds His church using those who really believe ‘There is only one Lord, one faith, one baptism, and there is only one God and Father, who is over us all and in us all and living through us all’ Eph 4.5 NLT.
Wednesday August 13, 2008.
On August 2, 2008, I attended a roundtable discussion on ‘The Unity and the Future of The Church in Melbourne.’ There were about thirty present including pastors and leaders of various ministries. During the discussion I saw a picture of a rusted moldboard plough. In front of the plough a crop of wheat grew up and the view of the plough was eclipsed. The stools of wheat were green and vibrant. They covered the breadth of the paddock. They were a panorama. The plough, rusted, disused and antique only took up a fraction of position with old machinery under a gum tree. Significantly I saw the picture as one of the speakers grieved about the mechanical nature of the church machine and warned of the dangers of getting together only to manufacture yet another mechanical construct of the christian industry. One of the ladies warned that many simple churches and house churches were variations of the institutional church, and that, what is important is not size or the configuration of the gathering but the manifest presence of Jesus. She drew attention to the inherent blindness of formula mongering – which reminded me of an interview I heard on NPR in which a pastor of one of the most celebrated yet mechanical churches in the world claimed his church was organic! Jesus declared, ‘I and My Father are One.’ Christ’s church in the city of Melbourne is those who are one with Jesus. Not one in vicarious representations of Jesus or one in attachment to substitutes for Jesus. ONE IN UNION WITH JESUS. The church that Jesus is building in Melbourne is composed of hearts joined to Him. His church is those standing around His cross, carrying it on their shoulders and anointed with His Spirit. They know Him and He knows them. That’s His church. Those who eat His flesh and drink His blood are His church. They will be His Body.’ They are His Bride. They give birth to His fruit. ‘I in them and you in me. May they be brought to complete unity to let the world know that you sent me and have loved them even as you have loved me’ John 17.23 (NIV). So what about the picture? This is what I believe the picture means. The moldboard plough made of iron and drawn by a horse or tractor represents the institutional church. It is mechanical and fleshly, inflexible and contrived. It is iron as in ‘part of iron and part of clay.’ It will be shattered by the rock cut out without hands. The plough represents striving and mechanical unity as opposed to organic unity. As defective as the plough was was, it was used by God to prepare the ground for this present season. But not any more. The church will grow no more by this method. The iron plough is a thing of the past. The growing wheat crop is the present. Christ’s emerging church grows from seeds that drive their roots deep into Jesus. These ‘hungry for the presence of God’ seeds take root in the deep soil of intimacy with Jesus. ‘The one who received the seed that fell on good soil is the man who hears the word and understands it. He produces a crop, yielding a hundred, sixty or thirty times what was sown’ Matt. 13.23 (NIV).The growing wheat is a supernatural crop. It is the crop that produces the multiplication of the loaves. It’s a bread of life crop in the making. This crop of wheat, green and well nourished grows from the bottom upwards. It grows from union with Jesus. Not union with man or man’s burocracies. This maturing crop represents the priesthood of all believers; the coming to maturity of a kingdom of priests authorised by Jesus Himself. This is not a top down thing. Its’ life and its standing comes entirely from its union with the nourishing PRESENCE of Jesus. It is the crop our of which the genuine five-fold ministry grows. Christ’s church cannot be the product of a bunch of leader’s gathered around their false christ’s. empires and fiefdoms. As His first advent His church was the product of a bunch of ordinary people gathered around Jesus. ‘Is Christ divided?’ No. The church in Melbourne is the natural outgrowth of lives lived intimately in the Spirit of Christ. ‘Just as you received Christ Jesus as Lord, continue to live in him, rooted and built up in him, strengthened in the faith as you were taught, and overflowing with thankfulness’ Col. 2.6,7 (NIV).
Tuesday, August 12, 2008
We were on a mission trip in a foreign country. People were being asked in an interview, ‘What do you hope to get out of this trip?’ When it was my turn to answer I replied, ‘I want to know what Jesus wants to get out of this trip for His Kingdom.’ I am in my 60s now and would not always have answered as well. My point is this: How much of our activity for God is really the overflow of our self-life and how much is really about Him? The plight of the mortally wounded is separateness. The focus of the natural man is inward. Our weakness as individuals and as the church is separation from God. The worship of the spiritual man is directed toward the Son of God. The Father invites us to join ourselves to the Parent Rock. ‘Join yourself to the Rock from which you were hewn,’ invites the Father. Joined to Jesus we are joined to the Father. Our position in relation to the Rock determines our destiny. We can fall on this rock and be broken and re-born as a victor. We can resist the Rock and ultimately have it fall on us. Is this a cruelty on behalf of the Father. Not at all. It’s just a statement of the fact that if we are determined to live within the conceit our own ideas in an us-centered universe, reality will eventually fall on us. The Elijah message is ‘repent and turn to your God.’ This was the message of John the Baptist and of Jesus. Today Jesus might phrase it, ‘Repent of your kingdom because My Kingdom is here.’ He calls us to abandon our self-life in order to find ourselves in His life. Monopolized by a self-life, we become separate from God. Separate from God we lose perspective and discernment. Lacking discernment we become hostage to confusion. Living in confusion we engage in the thingification of our God and ourselves. Separated from the rock that is The Rock we make rocks out of stones. They look solid. We esteem them and, like baals, they rule our lives. But here’s the rub. Centered on these pseudo-rocks our life takes on a ‘wobble.’ We start to gabble and gobble and sometimes in the name of God. Enclosed in self-absorption we are taken over by a kind of lust, enslaved in occult power, a force that is greater than us. Here is an influence that purveys a distaste for that which is centered on Christ. The stones to which we are attached oppose the Rock! Jesus broke the reign of self. He was crucified because His choice to lay His life at His Father’s feet was real. Paul released the Kingdom of Christ because he really was crucified with Christ. Paul advanced the Kingdom of Jesus because Jesus really did live in him. Paul was part of the parent rock from which he was hewn. Paul’s life was the overflow of Christ’s life in him. How much of our activity for God is really the overflow of our self-life and how much is really about Him? There is a wholeness and completeness that rests on the self-divested. We have Kingdom authority in the world in proportion to the extent that the world in us is really crucified in Christ. Empty of self we are privileged to be filled with the living Christ. Living in the Christ-Life ‘The spirit of the LORD shall rest upon us, the spirit of wisdom and understanding, the spirit of counsel and might, the spirit of knowledge and of the fear of the LORD; and shall make us of quick understanding in the fear of the LORD: and we shall not judge after the sight of our eyes, neither reprove after the hearing of our ears: But with righteousness shall we judge the poor, and reprove with equity for the meek of the earth’ (Isa 11.2-3. KJV).
Monday, August 11, 2008 Jesus builds His Church on the Rock of Himself. As a son, Jesus was joined to His Father by birth, by worship and by mission. In fullness He was His Father’s Son, joined to the parent Rock. When Peter acknowledges the Lordship of Jesus in passionate exclamation, Jesus responds. You are Peter. On this Rock I will build My Church. Was He saying He would build it on Peter? No. Jesus was declaring that when Peter affirmed who Jesus was an exchange took place. The Father was affirming Peter’s identity in God’s Son Jesus. As we respond to the Lordship of Jesus, so we become the indwelt sons of God. We live as the sons through whom Jesus builds His church. The church is those who believe God and are joined to Jesus. The church is that spiritual building of living stones whose hearts are joined to the Father through the Son of God. The church is those living stones who have become alive, solid and impregnable because they have been rejoined by Jesus to the Rock from which they were originally hewn. The key to understanding what God is doing know is the understanding that the people are the church, not the building. Being living stones these Jesus-joined people are the children of Abraham because they believe God enough to find their being in His Son. And so Isaiah had written hundreds of years before: “Listen to me, you who pursue righteousness and who seek the LORD: Look to the rock from which you were cut and to the quarry from which you were hewn; look to Abraham, your father, and to Sarah, who gave you birth. When I called him he was but one, and I blessed him and made him many’ Is. 51.1,2 (NIV). A clump of five people filled with God’s presence and aware of Christ’s authority in them is worth more than an entire cathedral crowded with repositories of unbelief. There’s an imitation church that parallels the genuine church Jesus is building today. It’s joined to formulae, program, ministry and denomination. It is the church in old and new formulations joined to itself. One of its names is The Christian Industry. Each stone in the genuine church is joined to the person of Jesus. More than by act of will or by discipline these stones are filled with the presence of the living Jesus courtesy of the Holy Spirit and His anointing. The stones of Christ’s House become alive because they are aglow with the presence of God. This House becomes led by those who are intimate with Jesus, obedient to His will and humble before God and man. This edifice of people; this dwelling place of living stones is the ark of the new covenant. It is not stationary. It is not glued to one location. It is on the move. It is Christ in the power of the Spirit manifest in the new and living way of His church active in the world.
The Turning of the Tides
Nicolaitans: A symbolic name of a party that represents the hierarchy of a ruling class over the rest of the people, developing a pecking order of fleshly leadership. It’s the result of an unholy synergy between people who are too indolent to respond to Jesus’ overtures themselves and those who have successfully made a career out of marketing christianity to those only too willing to buy a form of godliness that favours the flesh. It includes those whose innocence and gullibility has made them vulnerable to the machinations of man and therefore blind to the Way of Christ. Nicolaitan doctrine is frequently expressed as the ‘covering doctrine’ which is itself a perversion of genuine Christian accountability. In this context, there is a word calling for humility, obedience and submission to Jesus as Lord and the abandonment of ‘other lords’. It is a call to repentance and a warning of impending judgment.
Friday, August 8, 2008
Last Saturday, August 2, I attended with others a round table discussion on “the unity and future of the church in Melbourne.” My experience at the meeting has prompted my recent posts on ‘The Church.’ Since this meeting I have felt an urgency to write about the church, hence the longer posts. This post is also about, what I believe, is Jesus’ vision for the church. I will return to this later. There’s plenty of hub-bub about church and churchiness right now, just as there is a frothing and stirring of the waters around the events in Lakeland. It’s not difficult for me to drum up circulation with a focus on these things. But it does not necessarily build Christ’s church or His Kingdom. More important than the fizz of Todd and the carnival of the latest outbreak, is our deep-rootedness in Jesus. On this rock Jesus builds His Church. Deep-rootedness in Jesus causes us to bear much fruit. Deep-rooted in Him we impart the fullness of Jesus to people and the things we create. Many are unable to distinguish their own presence from the presence of God. If we have not yet done so we need to make a life out of encounter with the living Jesus. We need to live in His Anointing. His presence alive in us warms and shines through the worlds we create. But this happens only when we believe His presence is real, alive and actively seeking to be released and targeted through us. The life of Jesus is transferred to our creations as a result of one thing: Seeking His Face with all our heart. The key words here are ‘all’ and ‘heart.’ All meaning in the totality of our being and heart meaning the core of our being. Jesus desires to mend our broken notions of church and unite us with His heart. God’s heart is to bring the broken and floundering church into union and wholeness with Him. As I listened to the interchange of views at the round table discussion, it seemed to me that some had broken concepts of church they needed to defend – concepts like the ‘thingified’ church, the glory box with a name on it, territory and empire that must be maintained, career and identity that goes with the box, spheres of influence and ‘what will happen to me?’ All of these packaged in a mechanical view of the church with its mechanical understanding of unity. To my mind the healing of the church comes as we respond to Paul’s question. ‘Is Christ divided?’ Of course He is not. He is One. His healing and grace make the individual one. As individuals find wholeness in Jesus; as their inner man is quieted and becomes one, individuals are able to grow towards completeness among each other. Unity in the church comes as we are really joined to the factual, healing presence of Jesus. ‘Just as you are in me and I am in you. May they also be in us .. I have given them the glory that you gave me, that they may be one as we are one’ John 17.21,22 (NIV). The glory of the Church is union in Jesus. The shame of the church is a gaggle of pastors gathered around false christs. Paul gloried in the cross of Jesus. With clean hands and pure hearts we join with Jesus to build His Church.
There’s such a thing as mechanical unity and another called organic unity. The former appears energised but produces dead works. The latter is alive and multiplies the new creation. It is fresh, creative, liberating and nourishing. The former is popular, political and ultimately co-coercive. One comes from the hand of man. The other originates in the broken heart of Jesus for the joining of hearts in the homes and in the nations. When explaining His Kingdom, Jesus always used living things like yeast and vines. He spoke always about real union with His real presence. Ultimate union is signified by His Cross. An institutional church, whether it be traditional or house, receives the energy that it has from the structure of man. Many simple churches and house churches are alternative institutions. They exist in the name of Christ but are almost entirely man-oriented. The favour of God on a fellowship is not dependent on size and conformation. It’s dependent on the honour given to Jesus and the powerful presence of the Holy Spirit. How deep-rooted are we in the Parent Rock? A community of people deep rooted in the real, face to face presence of Jesus and in face to face communion with each other, grows a new creation. From this grows structures that are alive, life-giving and liberating. The so-called non-institutional church is not without structure, any more than the human body or a plant is amorphous. Any group living in the real presence of Jesus will become the true essence of themselves, living out what they were created to do in originality and joy. Their distinguishing feature is that they are people of Jesus and hence people of their true selves. The are alive with the real and transforming presence of the Son of God. The live as the sons of God and they transform the world. Many of us need to examine our rootedness. What are we rooted in? Is it a spin-dried whirl of christianity and churchianity? Is it the christian industry and our little factory with which we manufacture religious objects? Is it our membership under some ‘trade mark? Let’s ensure that we drive our roots deep down in to the soil of Jesus. ‘The one who received the seed that fell on good soil is the man who hears the word and understands it. He produces a crop, yielding a hundred, sixty or thirty times what was sown’ Matt. 13.23 (NIV).
Thursday, August 7, 2008 Cancer is an insidious disease and an all too accurate metaphor/reality of a thing that tyrannizes the person; draws life from the person and eventually kills him. Cancer is not a ‘him’ but an it. A production of our body it is a part of us that tyrannizes and kills us. Cancer is an all too real example of the thing that takes over its creator. I’ll explain.
The Father gave His Son because He loves the world. Our privilege under the new covenant is to live in Jesus to re-produce the new creation. The new creation is the life of God made manifest in our person, in commerce, education, industry, science, technology, agriculture, the environment and the church. The new creation is the Kingdom of God. Our calling is to make real in the earth what God has already made real in the Spirit. This is to live out in the world, ‘Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven.’ In order to place our efforts for God in God’s context, we need to establish the meaning of the church as part of the Kingdom of God. The Father’s plan was never to bring worldlings, into the church. His plan is to use His church to transform the world. Thus His Church is not something that is ‘walled in.’ It is Christ’s dynamic life in people to transform the world. Jesus builds His Church in people and through people.
His church is not a thing. His church is people worshiping Jesus.
The fatal floor in man’s mind-set following the fall is to worship the thing rather than the creator. This can be so in an innocent yet misguided fashion and it can be so in a wicked, and rebellious fashion. In both cases it is idolatry. Leanne Payne describes the more innocent kind in her example of a wife and her art of home making. ‘Should she become overly conscious of herself, she soon might find that instead of running her house, her house is running her. She becomes tyrannized by her house.’ This is the plight of all forms of self-centeredness. It is the plight of the distorted notion of ‘church.’ This is the notion of the church that is not always selfish but self-centered. The thing that was meant to serve us swells to distorted proportions and begins to rule over us. In doing so it robs us of the very life it was meant to impart. It robs the world of God. Such is the case with our mistaken construct of church. Centered on man and on self it robs God of us and robs us of God.
In its more innocent formulation, the church has become a thing and an object – a reification. Innocent or not it is a distortion and a scheme that has robbed God’s people and the unsaved. The genuine church is defined by union with Jesus; by the Son of God in sons of God loving the world – not loving and redeeming the world system. The genuine church is the real presence of Jesus in people. Put another way the church is the Bride of Christ pregnant with the seed of Jesus to produce fruit in the world. Yet ‘much fruit’ is not the multiplication of little boxes called churches. Much fruit is the mustard seed and the leaven in believers that transforms the world. Much fruit is Jesus loving the world in you.
All of us are indoctrinated with a notion of church that is a faint and distorted shadow of Christ’s real church. There is a real church, a domain of His Kingdom that He is releasing through those who believe. We can repent and seek His Way in mercy or we can resist and have Him relate His grace to us in judgment.
YouTube Video, NO WALLS CHURCH | Higher definition version, 6.5 MB here. YouTube, River of Life Church. | The Kingdom |
Wednesday, August 6, 2008 Increasingly people are ‘looking for a church.’ But it’s not only pastors who have abused them. They’re battered by the concept of the church itself. Our current notion of church can abuse pastors by setting them up in a role than no one could possibly fulfill. Then it fosters the abuse of those in congregations who would rise above passivity. A key part of the problem with church is that it is an abstraction that sits outside ourselves. It rules over many of us and is often used by a few to rule over the many. The notion of ‘a church’ or ‘the church’ implies a something that transcends us; an entity to which we must submit. But many are finding that in submitting to the church they are unable to honour Christ, let alone find nurture in Him. In reality the church is us and it is meant to be our servant not our master. We have one husband who is Christ. I am happy to receive people into fellowship with Jesus, yet I reject the notion of ‘I’m looking for a church.’ Why? Not only because ‘church’ can be a surrogate Jesus. Too often ‘a church’ has the meaning of something outside and in addition to ourselves; a cave in which we lodge to be pampered, made comfortable and passive; a place for the fostering of our prejudices. Maybe it serves as a stage for our ambition, or a place to remain for a season until, offended or disillusioned once more we move on. Like a nomad we wander in the pointless search to find in an institution, that which can be only found in the intimate fellowship of Jesus. The intimate fellowship of Jesus and those communing with Him is the church wherever it is found and whenever it meets. The church is simply Jesus and His friends. Two or three or 503 gathered in their own name; in the name of their denomination, in the name of their ministry or in the secret desire to make a name for self, is the bane of the Kingdom and the reason for the counterfeit church. Two or three or more gathered with Jesus is the church whether or not it is called ‘church,’ has a pointy-shaped roof, meets in a shed or seldom meets at all. What is important is that people meet in Jesus Name and in His real Presence. Jesus’ church is not defined by place, time or building. The church is people gathered in His name, in His Lordship and in the power of the Holy Spirit. If it’s in a café or a home and lacks these characteristics it is a church but not Christ’s church. People who are intimate with Jesus are His church when they are at large and when they are gathered. The church as we know it, is not the centre of the universe. Jesus, the centre of the universe lives in you! We need imagination to understand Christ’s notion of church. It exists in Him and because He is in us. His imagination comes from possessing the mind of Christ and the revelation so imparted. We cannot see in the Spirit if our imagination is rooted in the letter. The Lord has a new dimension for us that transcends ‘ecclesiastical-religious’ definitions. God has a House that is much larger, more diverse and more colourful than the stereotype we have come to know as ‘church.’ It is looser yet more unified than present configurations because it consists in Him. ‘In Him we live and move and have our being’ and in Him we are His Church. We resort to contraptions and contrivances when we don’t live in Him. The Lord is in the process of creating the church not only IN HIS IMAGE but IN HIMSELF. The day of the barren watering hole is over. The Bridegroom has come for the Bride. Jesus says, ‘Sing, O barren woman, you who never bore a child; burst into song, shout for joy, you who were never in labour; because more are the children of the desolate woman than of her who has a husband,” says the LORD. “Enlarge the place of your tent, stretch your tent curtains wide, do not hold back; lengthen your cords, strengthen your stakes. Your Maker is your husband — the LORD Almighty is his name — the Holy One of Israel is your Redeemer; he is called the God of all the earth’ Is. 54.1,2,5 (NIV). It’s time to enlarge our concept of tent, of sanctuary, of church. Jesus is about to empower His church by demolishing the definitions that bind it. Enlarge the tent of our mind and we will be able to comprehend the nature of His Church. Ask for an imagination that is in step with what Jesus is doing now. Be in step with the Spirit. Genuine imagination comes from God. It is a function of holiness and a fruit of new creation life that is bearing fruit in you. The power to frame striking new conceptions comes from the ‘life-giving Spirit of Christ’. Church is not something beyond ourselves. It is ourselves in the company of the Son of God. Church is us in the Son of God at large in the earth. The church is the presence of God in us to love the world. God so loves the world that He gives His only Son in you!
The church is us. However any notion of church that does not call us beyond that to which we are accustomed is not the church that Jesus is building. His church is not a temple made with hands. It is not built out of the spirit of religion. It rises up in he spirit of life. His church consists of hearts joined to Jesus and empowered by the Holy Spirit. Christ’s church is a spiritual edifice more real that the buildings, programs and meetings that have hitherto defined ‘the church.’ The church is HIS PRESENCE in men and women. The church is those whom the Spirit of Christ has bidden to stand up; to stand up and fulfill God’s heart to LOVE THE WORLD; to bring forth the new creation. The Lord is not so much asking us to sit down ‘and be fed’ but to stand up and feed a world that is hungry for Jesus’ Presence. The world needs to know that heaven is real! Stand up on your feet and live the church in a desperate world! Just as there is a real presence and a pseudo-presence, so there is a real church and an immature and broken church. Christ’s real church is not that fragmented, discontinuous, divided, localized and divisive collection of independent entities that the church is assumed to be. The real church is one and it is one in Christ. Much of the pre-occupation with the local church comes man’s need to create for himself a ‘territory’ over which to preside and own, if not to reign over and control and say, ‘This is what I have built.’ But Jesus would have us find our identity and purpose in Him. As living stones expertly fitted together in His new and living way, we become a new temple that is His Body. _______ Shortly after writing this post I found this vision entitled "tied up in church"
Tuesday, August 5, 2008
Jesus came to earth as a faithful and obedient son. He lived to do the will of His Father. His was not a just a generalized will. It was a particular will. It was doing what the Father was doing on that day. ‘I tell you the truth, the Son can do nothing by himself; he can do only what he sees his Father doing, because whatever the Father does the Son also does’ John 5.19 (NIV). Jesus lived in the Father’s ‘now revelation.’ The Father was incarnate in Him and the Spirit directed Him. He lived to promote His Father. Because of this He carried out His Father’s perfect will. Jesus did not live in a blunt will, a stumbling will or a scatter-gun will. He carried out His Father’s perfect will. Jesus lived in His Father’s light and we are called to live in Jesus’ light. Fruitfulness comes from living in the revelation of what Jesus is doing today. People who read the Bible and avidly look up scriptures are not necessarily in Jesus’ will or aware of it. A load of prayer and fasting is not going to accomplish something that is our will and not Jesus’ will. Prayer and fasting will not help if Jesus has moved to a new season and we are fasting for the maintenance of the old. It’s ‘Your will be done. Your Kingdom come.’ We will accomplish with gusto that which is the Lord’s will! The awareness of what Jesus is doing comes from the anointing. As stated yesterday, clarity concerning His will comes from humility. In order to know Christ’s specific will, we must swim in the stream of revelation flowing from God’s throne. This revelation is not distinct from His Presence. It is His presence. It is the Spirit of the Living God. It is the Holy Spirit’s witness to those who have removed themselves from submission to things that are not Christ to sit under the supremacy of Christ. Revelation and instruction for day to day living comes from humble hearts whose desire is for Jesus to use them to fulfill His purposes. To be real is to be in tune with what God is doing now. Real is His will being done today as it is in heaven. To be one with what Jesus is doing now is to be fruitful. Could it be that many of us need to stop asking the Lord to bless what we are doing and instead, wait on the Lord, worship Him, hear His Voice and then do what He is doing?
Monday, August 4, 2008 Jeremiah’s prophecy of doom over Moab contains God’s stern warning to the proud; ‘Because you have trusted in your wealth and skill, you will be taken captive’ (Jer 40.6). Pride is the adulation of the self. We are living in a time of great revelation. In this time of God’s revelation the Enemy will counter with his deception. There is a grave danger of deception at this present time. Those most prone to be deceived will be those most captive to their pride.
In a vision Rick Joyner is in the presence of the Lord. Foolishly he takes off his shirt of humility to get a better view of his own glory. He is shocked by the fact that suddenly he cannot see the Lord, much less anything else!’ Humility is the eye of discernment. Humility is the difference between those who see what Jesus is doing and those who don’t. The absence of humility assures us that Jesus is doing what we are doing! Conceit is zealous and conceit is blind. C.S. Lewis writes, ‘When a man is getting better, he understands clearly that evil is still left in him. When a man is getting worse, he understands his badness less and less .. A thoroughly bad man thinks he is alright.’ (Mere Christianity, page 87). So does a thoroughly conceited man. Locked in pride we think we are alright when we are all wrong. ‘Create in me a clean heart O God and renew a right spirit within me!’ A prideful heart is a polluted heart. A clean heart is a humble heart. The pure in heart see God. The prideful only think they do.
‘Because you have trusted in your wealth and skill, you will be taken captive.’ Captive by what? Captive by the chains of your own illusions. One of our illusions in pride is that we imagine that our pride does not show. But it cannot be hidden. Pride cannot hide its patronizing and manipulative ways. There’s an agitation that one feels in the presence of the latently manipulative that grieves those grounded in Jesus and intimidates those who are not. Manipulation flows from a heart of pride – a pride that we may attempt to conceal with motions of ‘spirituality’ and talk of love. But the symptoms insist on escaping like gasses from a leaky pipe, because we cannot hide what we are. Pride, being an absorption in the self, attempts to conform others to itself. Pride is both manipulative and ignorant. It is also abusive because it attempts to manipulate in the name of Jesus.
You can discern that which is the aroma of Christ and that which is not. Our number one discernment lens is personal humility. Number two lens is life in His Presence. Number three is obedience and number four is a self hidden in Jesus. These qualities set us up to receive revelation and to see what the Lord wants us to see. The opposite qualities set us up for deception and captivity to the Enemy’s schemes.
The humble heart that lives out of Jesus sees God and purveys the Kingdom of God. Surrounding such people is an aroma of innocence and purity, the tang of originality and groundedness in wisdom. Their company releases the fragrance of peace, freshness, liberty and alertness to truth. The humble heart exudes a spirit of freedom and liberation. The humble heart is surrounded with the fragrance of life. Humble hearts are entrepreneurs of laughter and truth. They are the genuine builders of the Kingdom of God. Those who live out of self have an entirely different aroma. There’s the smell of bondage, the scent of captivity, a burden of heaviness, the sniff of striving and the stale odor of dressed up flesh. It’s the aroma of death. ‘Repent, then, and turn to God, so that your sins may be wiped out, that times of refreshing may come from the Lord’ Acts 3.19 (NIV). ‘Anoint thine eyes with eye salve, that thou mayest see. Those whom I love I rebuke and discipline. So be earnest, and repent’ Rev. 3.18,19 (NIV)
Friday, August 1, 2008
We heard Him say, 'I will destroy this temple made with hands, and in three days I will build another made without hands’ Mark 14.58 NASB.
The church that Jesus is building in this season, is built without human hands. It is a House that is not built with the help of human ego, formula, letter or flesh. It is a house composed of living stones, or lively stones as one translations has it. These stones are Jesus intimates. They are those who have built on His Rock. They are the Holy priesthood of His spiritual yet wholly substantial House. The House of God is a spiritual house, composed of people whose hearts are joined to Jesus and to each other. Yesterday I closed with a plea for church planters to plant the presence of Jesus. I speak of the real presence that is the very essence of God in Christ manifest through the Holy Spirit. The Father sent the Presence of Himself into the world through His Son. His plan was to establish a new creation, so He sent the one who had created the world’s into the world of men and women. He did not send some container of life. He sent Life itself. We know from God’s command, ‘Have no other God’s before Me’ that the Father abhors any substitute for Himself. So when preparing the way for the arrival of His Son Jesus, He sent a Forerunner to ensure that people got it. Getting it was to live in the certainty that the power for re-generation was in the son of God. Not near him or associated with Him. Not in some container called ‘church.’ Life-giving power was in Jesus. Re-creation comes from Jesus. And so ‘There came a man sent from God, whose name was John.He came as a witness, to testify about the Light, so that all might believe through him.He was not the Light, but he came to testify about the Light. There was the true Light which, coming into the world, enlightens every man’ John 1.6-9 NASB. True light is not the product of human hands. If there’s true light there is false light. Any edifice that is the work of human hands is not the Light. Jesus is the Light. All true servants of Jesus are self-effacing. They represent Jesus transparently. They talk about Jesus, represent Jesus and multiply Jesus in the power of the Spirit. Like arks they carry the presence of Christ within them to release living action, living words, liberation and supernatural demolition of the Enemy’s works. The early Christians were the church but they did not do church as it is done today. Church was those who met in the presence of the living Christ. Living in the presence of Jesus for them was their experience. Few of them had bibles but all had the presence of the living Christ. This church, build without human hands was not restricted to a day or a building. It as simply those who worshiped Jesus. The Father began with One, who was the Presence of God. Others gathered around the Presence of the Son of God. One or two people overflowing with the Presence of the Living Christ are worth far more than a mixed multitude purporting to plant a church. In the early church those who ministered were filled with the Holy Spirit and lived the experience of God. Church was a place of The Presence. You planted churches by transplanting the manifest Presence of Jesus. Evangelists like Evangelists Bonnke and Bentley today transfer the presence of the living Christ from place to place. ‘Paul and Barnabas spent considerable time there, speaking boldly for the Lord, who confirmed the message of his grace by enabling them to do miraculous signs and wonders’ Acts 14.3 (NIV). This is the biblical version of church planting.
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‘There is one body and one Spirit one Lord, one faith, one baptism one God and Father of all, who is over all and through all and in all’ Eph. 4.4-6 (NIV |
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subliminal and extensive bondages that bind the christian in his ‘christianity’. These are the things that we have made in the name of God in an attempt to fill the space left by His absence. I refer to the many behaviors, we know as ‘church.’ As subtle as these routines are they are as damaging as the golden calf that the ignorant gathered about while Moses was in the Presence of God.
