Being your Sword
To know what is your sword personally is to know how The Word is activated through your unique vessel and personality.
Each person is a unique expression or creation of God. At times, God uses or wields you as a spiritual weapon, or to minister Himself into another person or situation. When He does, it has many purposes. Often it is as much about you understanding and knowing more of who He is, as it is about helping the other person or fighting the enemy. Each person has a unique identity (Ephesians 2:10-for we are his poesias or craftsmanship). Each of us IS a unique path or way of God! Accordingly, each of us is used in unique ways and times to accomplish His purposes.
It is not just that each person has unique spiritual gifts, which we are given by God to accomplish His purposes in our lives; but it is also that the “gifts” flow through each person uniquely according to how we are made. You see that Jeremiah carried the spirit of prophecy in a different way than, say, Isaiah. They both moved in the prophetic parts of God, but they carried unique EXPRESSIONS of the prophetic.
As I believe that knowing one’s identity preceeds knowing one’s calling or appointment, it is important to see the contours of who we are, before we can understand what He has given us to “do” in our lives--identity preceeds vocation. Identity has to do with how we express the spiritual gifts out into our vocations or “jobs of the Lord”. Being able to discern between who we are, and what we “minister” is another way of talking about this subject.
To minster is always to offer some aspect of Christ’s Life into a person. When He picks up us as a sword or instrument to use to minister to someone else, we should know this. In this way, we learn His Wisdom. For He does not just pull out any old sword at any old moment, but He wields with precision and accuracy. So to know what kind of sword you are is good; for it is to know your identity. But to then be led by his Spirit, and “be wielded” when He chooses,to become a weapon in the hand of a mighty God, is to go further and learn His Wisdom.
Once, we know our gifts or our sword, we are tempted to use them willy nilly, or whenever our soul’s desire. But wisdom is to be led to use our sword only as and when He is using it. In this way, we learn more about the complexity of how God ministers. It is then less about ourselves and our gifts, and more about The Father’s ways and how HE ministers (“I only do what I see the father doing”, Jesus, the ultimate minister, said).
Most people do not know their swords. And they do not know that they ARE a sword. This is basic. When I speak of people as swords, I do not mean that we are ONLY weapons. I only mean to say, that God uses people to cut through flesh and carnal nature to minister to and address the spirit of others, to give it things it needs at a certain time on its journey.
If we continue to think of our swords as only external to ourselves, we will not learn how to use them! Yes, the Bible is the sword, but, even it must be wielded or made active by The Spirit. The Word, which is in the Bible, is also living in us, if we have Christ living in us! This Word must be made active in us for us to become swords wielded by God. A sword which is wielded by God is always wielded in love, for He is love. When we wield our own swords being led by our souls, we often lack love, and always lack wisdom! But it also does not end up ministering Christ AS he is being minstered. So we don’t learn how God is working in that situation. Our goal again is to know and love God!
The church largely has not understood the relationship between soul and spirit; nor has it understood the relationship then between identity and spiritual authority. I often go to the beginning of Jeremiah for this teaching, because that is how it was taught to me. First God told Jeremiah, that He formed him in his mother’s womb (this echoes what God told David in Psalm 139); then God told Jeremiah, that he was a prophet. The fact that God made and knew Jeremiah’s identity gave Him the authority to know exactly what Jeremiah was given to “do” or his spiritual profession or appointments.
Being shown who we are in Christ, comes before being told what we are to do or minister for God! Again, identity preceeds vocation.
Discernment, practically speaking, is a gift God gives us to be able to tell among other things, what is from the soul and what is of the spirit. When we are leading our lives from our souls, we will not be moving in the fullness of what God has for us. Our soul’s must be led by The Spirit in order to become “sons of God” (“for as many who are led by the spirit, these
The soul was meant to be led by and express the spirit! This is true even within an individual. So that the spirit of a person should lead the soul. A person’s spirit should in turn be led by The Spirit of God. This is the order. When we lead based on our soul, we place our gold in the wrong pots! And we do not get to see and know His Wisdom as we minister His gifts and life into people! Discernment, which has within it understanding, shows us the difference between what is soul and what is spirit. If we don’t move in discernment, we are unable to distinguish when we actually using our swords in alignment with how He is using them! And this is my point. To be wielded by God, is to know how God wields and why. This lead to understanding and knowing His Ways and His Wisdom! To know and love God is our goal in life, and is the goal of any helping of others we do on earth.
To not know when we are using our God given swords, is to get into all sort of messy situations! In this article, I am suggesting that knowing thyself comes first before ministering Christ to others. The reason is that we can be using our swords in places which God is not using them, and bring much damage to others rather than Life! For example, if your “sword” is to see deeply into people’s pain and minister His healing there; and you do not know when you are doing this; you may pop open deep life wounds, that you do not have the ointment to heal. People will end up feeling violated, and without the necessary support to walk through those issues you have just poked open!
I for instance, have a gift of words, to be able to speak deeply into people’s spirits and basically name their identities for them. Well, if a person is not ready to know their hidden heaven name, then this can suddenly throw someone into very deep waters. When I was younger, I often did this, and could not understand why it did not bear fruit, and instead, often just left that person confused, having been touched deeply and “seen”, but not able to walk that naming out and encouraged to life in it! I think that therapy often leaves people in this place. If you have the gift to see deeply into others and name what you see, then you really need to be led by The Spirit when and how to do that. Otherwise, you may prematurely open things in them which God is not opening! God does have great grace, and let me swing my sword around before I knew I had one; but there is a time to grow in wisdom and to be led by Him, allowing Him to use that sword when and how He sees fit!
The same holds for those who have the ability to build networks or structure events. Yes, you can build this or that bridge, but if you are not being led by His Spirit, people will not be ready to walk on those bridges or receive all that God has for them in those structures. So someone with that structure building “sword” may make many beautiful bridges between people, but forge the wrong relations or ones not in God’s timing etc. To know both what your sword is, and how HE is using it is the key to knowing His wisdom, and also to building AS He is building.
I do think there are seasons of Grace, when people are learning to use their gifts and swords; but then there is a time for greater maturity. To learn who we are in Him is the basic starting point to growth in what He has given us to do. As we give Him more and more of who we are, and ask Him to show us how He sees us, how He formed us, we will gradually come to see why and what He has asked us to “do”. Our vocations will pop freely from our beings, and we will become swords wielded from above by a great unseen Hand of wisdom and love! And we just might be more helpful in the long run!
today spent some time looking at other friends' blogs, which I appreciate so much. Everyone has such a different way of expressing and that's really cool. I always get really aware when I poke around blogs that we are not super-personal on ours, which we are ok with. Part of that is because we don't know all who reads it, and the few times that we did get responses, while they were very meaningful I am also the sort of person that likes to have those meaningful conversations in person.
But all the ways are good and there are pros and cons to being either private or open about yourself. In my case, I used to expose my inner life a lot because I was very insecure about who I was and so I wanted to see others' reactions. But I don't really have that anymore so I feel a lot less like I need to. Also, I have never been a short writer--which is why when I used to work for newspapers I always went way over my word limit and was terrible at writing catchphrases. I admire people who have that but I also know I have a different gift.
It's funny, because some days I say, 'oh I'm going to post more pictures and more everyday things'... like pictures of our very cute border collie... but then I end up writing an epic about Scotland. (Don't get me started.)
Lately we have both been realizing we have a really basic heart to help people grow spiritually, no matter where you are at on your walk... and so I've felt like writing some parts of my life, places where I grew... so I'm experimenting with that and hope it blesses y'all.
Anyway, just wanted to really say that I appreciate people being really authentic on their blogs... it's always nice to surf everybody and feel your voices... now Debbie Jones has a blog and I am so thankful for her. She has blessed our life in person and I can tell you that her voice on her blog is as real as her voice in person. She is such a deep person and we love her.
i had a very difficult but also, i think hopeful vision about America this week. wanted to share the raw form of it, and suggest the parts i got of interpretation...
I saw a huge gold covered thrusting left arm. This gold painted arm was just like the statue of liberty, and was holding out a torch--but this was the left arm. It was sort of ramming the arm straight out in front of it, leveling. i watched as it thrusted out, and then crumbled and broke, revealing the whole internal part of the arm to be mechanical.
(interpretation: the left arm is that through which we are to embrace “other” and relate to the world. it was important that this arm had become systems based or mechanical, and that it was exposed to be so when it crumbled. The left arm had been covered in painted gold, very thick, but easily chipped off as the arm crumbled. What looked shiniest or most gold was easily exposed. The right arm is the arm of authority and blessing. In this vision, the right arm was healthy and skin covered--ie still alive and human. The left foot and the right hand were the two healthiest places in the body. The right foot is the steppin out foot; while the left is the one which is back “at home” or supportive)
The arm crumbled to the joint which was like a many holed electrical outlet. Immediately i felt the vulnerability of the heart which was nearby the left arm. But then I looked and saw VERY high up the right arm extended. It was skin covered like a normal but large hand, and it was both sort of worshiping and welcoming all nations. On this side of the body was great life passion and strength, and then immediately I saw the right foot of america.
It was sandled and the foot was exposed and bloody, but a hairy man’s foot--like a strong greek athlete. The left foot was back and clean and strong, but this right foot was really working and being bloodied. I felt this had to do with the current moments in her history.
Then i looked back up and watched the remainder of the left arm draw down over the heart, and i felt a wisdom enter--like the left arm was going to be left in that dismembered state as a memorial, so that the heart would remember what happens when it relates to other nations too mechanically or through systems.
I then saw the whole frame from below, and the feet were huge and free. They were a large, even collosal, man’s feet, and they had a humble and more tender heart. They wanted to serve others.
The whole body then stepped out from the frame, and was skin covered and alive. Then again, i saw the long and high extended hand of welcome far above, near the sky.
jesus on the cascade pouring water into africa
in this, a short vision. i saw jesus sitting on the edge of a large cascade. He was playing with the water with His bare feet--sort of arranging it in mid air as it fell. There was a huge drop off just below Him. then i became the water and fell down through many miles of space eventually entering the earth’s atmosphere. at this point, there was a sort of invisible aquaduct system which would suddenly split the water off into different channels. i saw that a huge stream of it was flowing onto Africa right now, and smaller one flowed to other areas of the planet.
it was as if jesus were just watering the earth, and directing the flow once there. all this with His Feet!
The water was purified as it passed through such distance, so that it was actually purer and more rarefied as it flowed onto the earth. The flow of the water was not random by any means, it gushed in clear passageways, though its conduction seemed still somewhat mysterious. Certain areas of the the earth were receiving much more than others, and specifically as i said, africa was getting gushed.
I have always liked having secrets.
And Mary hid these things in her heart.
I think it is a woman thing. Women like to hold things and sometimes in a somewhat martyrish way for long periods of time without really speaking their heart on matters. But the beauty of this holding is also in the way a woman can wait and wait until the fullness of something shows itself. (After all, this is sort of a requirement with childbirth!)
But I remember when I felt like God gave me a secret. It was at the beginning of me getting to know Him, or wanting to know Him, and I just wanted to have something that told me I was special. Secrets are like that when you're a little girl--sometimes we used them against other people--but you inherently like them because they are something that you have, something special, that requires a key to enter.
My first big secret came in the form of a God-dream. It was a very life-changing dream, one which woke me in the middle of the night so vivid and alive in its emotions that I had absolutely no doubt that I was being shown something. This dream still sticks with me because it showed me a lot of things that still yet to happen, but also because it gave me something to want to grow into. God trusts me, God wants to tell me something.
And I realized, God knows things that I know nothing about, and He is much subtler than I am. What makes you want to go to the next level with God? Not just so you can do something, or be a better person, but really find out more about Him? For me, it came in the form of secrets. I felt like I had this mission to 'hold things in my heart.' I could go about and tell everyone about them, but then that spoilt the whole mystical garden I was meeting God in.
I wanted to go out and carve this little space where just He and I talked. That was pretty radical for me, because up until then, most of my spiritual life was generated by other people, by being around others. I knew what He thought as long as it was agreed upon by others, or taught by others. I had nothing of my own experience to go by.
Mary took it to the next level when she hid the things in her heart. She carried on for nine months, and then for 30 years, holding this terrifying knowledge that God was going to break in and alter people's reality. But even in that hiding, she let this knowledge grow and become a beautiful thing between her and Him.
What I like about it is also that she had to let it grow and mature in her, too. Even the angelic 'ta da' and the life-changing experiences have to go dig down deep into our spirit and mature in their understandings. A lot of us get some vision and then immediately go out and try to serve with it or get people on our train of thinking but even though sometimes God uses that, there is still the need to really sit and hold things. Men need to learn that, too.
But what is it that begs you to get into a room alone with God? (I mean an inner room?) What gets you excited about knowing more?
Yesterday I was going through old pictures... it was time to do that because I'm really trying to weed out stuff we don't need. I found things that I shouldn't have kept anyway, but some of them really reminded me of how far God has brought me. In some of them I could visibly see a cloud of depression over my face. (Did not help that all I did was wear black and brown.)
When I was 27 I had this mission to move to San Francisco. I spent the whole year saving up and getting rid of things and plotting what to do when I got there. At the time I was a writer for a newspaper in Ohio and probably thought I'd do something like that in California but I wasn't going for a job. I just needed something, anything. I really hated my life. I knew God but I was definitely not excited by him or anything that looked Christian. The whole Christian experience seemed really boring to me. I had a religious upbringing but it definitely was not enough. Just knowing about God was not enough. Reading my bible and all that was not enough. I had friends that tried to get me to church but that was never enough.
I blamed most of my problems on broken relationships, but I never stayed still long enough to just be alone and feel what was making me so lonely. But the worse part about it is that the more people I surrounded myself with or the harder I tried at some relationship, the lonelier I felt. In the most crowded rooms, I could hear my heart beating uncomfortably.
Four days before I was supposed to fly out, I had this very intense experience. I was stoned and writing in my journal and I felt this voice break through my head like a piercing arrow. I just knew it was God. It was really strange because if any of you know that haze you can hear just about anything in that space, but not usually a piercing voice that feels like love and sternness all at once. This voice shot through me and hit my heart and I trusted it in a really strange way, although what it was telling me was not exactly what I wanted to hear. He told me not to go to San Francisco, not to go. But to trust him and that there would be something new for me. I went anyway, and it only lasted three weeks--the most miserable three weeks of my life--but the whole time I just felt this bubbling, like something very radical was going to happen to me.
I can't tell you how depressed I was at that point in my life. Everything was hazy, every day felt like a blue blur and like things just happened to me. I had gotten so fatalistic that all I really liked doing was sleeping. But the next few years were a ride. I knew that I had to find out what Jesus was all about--it was going to be all or nothing--because why waste time just going through the motions?
And I went to live in my mother's basement. I moved away from all my friends and went to work for a nursing home. Not exactly the most exciting place in the world. But suddenly there came some red and yellow, more than just the repetitious blue. A fresh breeze came into my life--it was this thing I wanted to know more of... this place between me and God.
I had no idea what he had in store for me but my life is so incredibly exotic that when I sit and think about it for any length of time, I am really blown away at the absolute intricacy of how much he knows me and the things I really care about. It was like I felt I had been rescued.
You know when you first get born again and you have all this excitement about him? Or if you haven't felt it, it's almost good to turn into a time bomb, to screw up and hit some pit. Oh lord, my rock and my redeemer.
I remembered this book I once saw called "Passion for Jesus" and I was telling Derek today--that's what it's all about. I would be nowhere if I didn't get all excited and passionate about getting closer to Him. Otherwise it would just be a bunch of mindless religion or another path that had no future. I felt like I was stuck in the first 27 years of my life with a little bit of knowledge about God and even a thought to go do something for Him, but never getting really excited that He happened to be standing in my room.
I walked around doing some really weird things after that. I'd read books out loud on a city bench as if God was reading them to me (and scaring a few passersby, I'm sure). I stared hard at trees until I felt God shaking their leaves. I drove one time from Cincinnati to Detroit just listening to one song over and over for five hours because I felt God in it. Literally, my poor tape player. I felt like it was all or nothing.
Some days when I am feeling gloomy I turn my face toward Him and just look at Him. "Whenever we turn to the Lord, the veil is lifted." That's literal. You turn to look at Him and there He is, open to you. So I really practice that and make myself listen to the good things He has to say to me. I wait until I hear, "I love you."
Sometimes we go for days without feeling God in them, or maybe yearn for a touch from Him. I am really learning that it is a matter of turning toward Him and putting aside my own stupid feelings about myself, until I hear the words. The more I do this, the more the passion to be near Him comes in. I just want to get better at that.
A lot of us get "saved" and maybe coast for a lifetime just plugging in here and there, but why coast? You can change all your externals but the tyranny of the familiar will still hunt you down the on the inside. At least that's what it feels like. It used to drive me nuts when I was around people who talked about nothing but God stuff, like they were crazy or naive, but now I feel like an ironic reversal. It's like you have this friend with you who goes everywhere with you, who knows your armpits and still wants to hang out with you... now it's almost choking when I feel that I have to be silent about Him near people. (And, yes, sometimes He is silent.) But there He still is, and you are aware of it.
"The priest did not say, Where is the Lord? And those who handle the law, did not KNOW ME." Jeremiah 2
Reading lots on an emergence of true apostolic leadership. The focus I keep getting is to see the church as the habitation of God, and leaders as being responsible for helping to make people into this habitation.
There is little talk of new structures or networks, and more of how God forms His Son inside of His People. So much more emphasis on His Ways and talk of who God actually is, and how He is forming His Habitation or Dwelling. So there is this shift in all the prophetic literature from how men make church, to how God is forming Himself within His People. This is a much more creative and spiritually charged discussion, and is more like overhearing heaven, than a board meeting. To overhear these words, is to start talking Ephesians and Revelation--it is to actually get to know God just by overhearing those who have been above and are starting to get parts of how God is forming His church within us.
There is also a much greater emphasis on His Actual Presence than ten years ago, especially among those who are trying to help form leadership. This is exciting to me!
In Jeremiah's word, the actual Presence of God had moved out away from their religious practices. They no longer knew the true knowledge which flows from His Presence. The priest, or leaders, who were to carry His knowledge, no longer knew His Face.
And the prophets, alongside them were delivering messages from lesser sources than The One Most High. Both were still functioning--priest carrying knowledge, and prophets carrying messages from the heavens, but both had lost contact and intimacy with His Actual Presence!
Why have your fathers traveled FAR FROM Me? God asked through Jeremiah. At first, they "went after Me", but gradually, they drifted far away from actual intimacy with Me, and in doing so, actually made idols of their own leadership abilities!
If we are to see true leadership emerge, it will be preceeded by intimacy. You cannot lead by strategy or information--but only by re-formation (actually growing Christ in people), but by having Christ more fully formed in yourself, and then helping form HIM inside of people. The building is people. Until formation of Christ becomes prioritized over doctrine, strategy, methods of church growth etc, we will not see the fullness of what God wants to bring in our day.
Where we are headed is a place where all leadership has the priority of being a habitation for Christ firstly, then being part of Him being formed in people. This will have very little to do with outer structures or frames, though many unique ones will be birthed; it will have to do with the focus being The Head. It will be much less about our ideas of church structure, and much more about speaking from Him Himself and out from that intimate position. Many who have been called leaders but who do not have this spiritual focus, will be seen to not be walking in His Authority. Many who knew the law, will be brought back to WHERE He IS!
For "those who handled the law, did not KNOW ME". We must come to know Him first, and then lead from that place. If that is not our primary focus, we won't be able to move forward with our own plans. If He does allow us to do so, it will not bear true fruit! The garden of intimacy must actually be the place we lead out from. Many great leaders who have the ears of man, will topple until low enough to enter His Gates, and come to KNOW Him.
A key in the earlier part of this word Jeremiah got, was that in her youth, Israel, "WENT AFTER" God. There is a time for going after Him which I believe is coming for many who have been in church leadership in this past season. Many will be asked to step down from positions in the institutional church, and pursue God alone, so that they might be made ready to serve Him in the times to come. This is less a demotion and more and re-motioning into His Actual Life!
We MUST know WHERE He is, and be seated with Him, growing up into Him in order to wear His Authority in the days to come! If many are not being protected in their current positions, it may be for the same reason that God lifted His protection from His Children in this passage fo scripture--when Israel was holiness to God, disaster came upon all those who offended her. When this is not happening, it can become clear that we are not in that position of holiness with God--that place where we are "going after Him". I'm not saying that all lack of protection comes from this, but many will suddenly feel unprotected in the days to come, until they come more fully under His Canopy of Intimacy and Grace.
Many of our seminaries no longer have this focus of forming Christ in people. If they did, many of the structures would loosen to allow The Spirit to make deeper relationships required for Christ formation among and within His People. We will see many of these training centers become nearly spiritually dead, so that they might fall into the ground and be a seed for true training centers of the Spirit, for the formation of Christ within His People. This will be less about man made frames, and more about God formed relationships and creative structures flowing out from these authentic relationships.
God is able to form His Son in His People, but He is much more creative than we are! And we will see many sorts of frames used to birth Himself within us! But first, leadership must actually return to prioritizing knowing God and being formed IN CHRIST, so that they can receive designs and patterns from Him Himself--this is especialyl true of those now called apostolic leaders. Leadership is about to get much more "spiritual" in this sense. Much more time in heaven, and a bit less on earth for a season. Paul was lifted up for an indefinate period of time (including his time in the wilderness) that Christ could be formed in Him--this is leadership training--allowing God to form His Son in us, so that it is His Actual Son who is leading!
The primary concern for coming leaders will be that Jesus have His place to dwell FULLY in His People, starting with ourselves!
Hello all, for the last month or so I've been writing some things about 'who is your church' and felt it was good to blog them, but if you are interested in reading back through them, I have put the whole group of writings up over here.
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As I have been writing, we are in the midst of a restoration of what it means to be the mystical body of Christ, the spiritual house of God. There is so much to be mined here... what does it mean that God wants to dwell in us? This is so much bigger than even what the garden of Eden was all about. There, God walked with Adam, but did not live inside of him. The church is cosmically a new creation.
Christ is making himself in us. Paul called this a mystery. It was "kept hidden for ages and generations, but is now disclosed to the saints" (colossians 1:26). Why would it have been kept hidden? Well, one thing about mysteries is that they need to be searched out. Even as the hidden things of God are revealed, they are DEEP hidden things, as David said, and they beg to be searched. "Christ in us" isn't just some twinkie truth and it is not just about salvation. It is about revolution. Jesus is going to sweep the earth with his presence, and once again God will dwell among men--through men. The king of all reality is going to inhabit people. This is radical, and it is going to shake the heavens and the earth. Everything as we know it is going to change!
Even though we might say, 'yeah, yeah, Jesus is in me,' this reality goes far beyond salvation. Even after 2000 years of it being revealed the church walks as if it has not heard the mystery. But where we are going, no people have walked before. And he is going to reveal this mystery to the earth when it needs it the most. A fresh restoration of this truth is coming now to the body of Christ in many different ways. It is a fresh stream from heaven that is trickling and then pouring down on his people. As it begins to dawn on us, there will be many expressions of what it looks like to be church.
At the moment there is a lot of excited interest around New Testament Christianity. We want to get back something that has gone missing for so long. What was the divine spark? We are going nowhere if we just try to copy their form. They had no rule book, no scriptures, except for the Hebrew scriptures. As the apostles went out to the Gentiles, the only guiding light was the Holy Spirit.
We are going to taste what they tasted if we hold to the same light. That kind of light is already becoming more and more normal in our present. The important thing is to keep our eyes on him and not necessarily on their forms or methods. Even the most basic things that were given to the early church--breaking bread, baptism, even prayer--can be religiously interpreted and taken from their deeper, spiritual significance, and even the early church in various places struggled with misunderstanding and abusing these things. The practices that emerged in Acts came out of revelation and overflow of Christ in their midst, and they will come to us if we are devoted to His presence growing in us.
Those from the early church are watching, excitedly, on the edge of their seats from heaven because they are about to see the church grow into her final stages of maturity. This means the restored body will have much greater and world-wide apostolic power and glory than the New Testament church. The first church was the beginning, a seed, but we are called to walk in their same power... and more.
The glory of the second temple was greater than the first, and that is because the work of restoration and redemption is always more amazing than the original creation. Something that has been made new from rubble is so beautiful to behold, and the pain it went through to get there make it a living testimony of who He really is.
God spoke to the king of Judah this promise:
"Who is left here who saw this house in its former glory? Doesn't it look like it's nothing now?
But now be strong... Because I am going to fulfill my promise to you when you came out of Egypt. My spirit is still with you, so don't be afraid of all this mess.
In a little while I will once again shake heaven and earth, the ocean and the land. I will shake all nations, and the desired of all nations will come, and I will fill this house with glory. The silver is mine and the gold is mine. The glory of this present house will be greater than the glory of the former house. And in this place I will grant peace,' declares the LORD Almighty."
There are a lot of prophetic parallels between the stages of the temple's life and the history of the church. The church as a whole is going through a restoration process--an amazing beginning, an ugly and drawn out fall, and then a rebirthing.
So I write this because it is easy to get caught up in looking like the New Testament Christians--and while at times it seems we are far from how they lived--we are going to witness something that goes beyond New Testament church. The authority and the power of the first-century church were great because its foundation was the Lord Himself. They were utterly dependent on His Spirit for everything they did. People saw the Lord everywhere the apostles went. Miracles happened. Their methods and practices were given as instruction but these methods were not their foundation. They had no books, they had to follow Jesus at every bend and turn. Our foundation will also be this rapturous love and attachment to Jesus. We are going to be restored to their way and also to a redeemed church that has come through centuries of fire and weakness.
Even when we talk about "building the church" the talk is usually about something that is outside of people, whether its buildings or programs or networks. This needs to change and will--into a devotion to building Christ inside people, because people are the church. We have to love people and really want to see each other grow up to know Jesus better and better. Christ wants the "fullness of his stature and maturity" to come alive in us.
So also this means not just getting people into God or saving them, but growing people up. He wants to dwell as fully as possible in us. What it looks like is different in every nation, city, neighborhood, circle of friends.
In the meantime, you might be wondering who your church is, or where you are supposed to get your spiritual juice from... Is any of us willing to let this be a mystery? I don't mean sit around in the unknown, but let Him bring Himself together in a way that you probably don't expect? He has so much to teach us about how he is building Himself. Are we willing to wait for Him to do that?
All the valves and proper connections, every joint supplied... all of this is yet to be fully flowing. When He is operating and flowing through His whole body it will be the "Day of the Lord"--and aha, that day is not yet. So nothing's perfect, and nor should we expect it to be. But among us we can let the circles flow. First we let him build around us what He wants. It may be one or two or three or four--maybe much more. But we will know who He brings around us. He can flow to the degree that we are available personally.
I want to end all these writings on the church with a piece from one of my favorite writers, Austin Sparks. He was an English teacher and pastor writing at the beginning of the 20th century.
Then again, the temple was the embodiment and expression of God's thoughts. Every stone, everything used, all size, dimensions and measurements, materials, they all represented some thought of God. God's mind was expressed in all. It was a symbol of a spiritual attribute. Peter, following up that word which is before us - "a spiritual house" (1 Peter 2:5) says a little later that the object of the spiritual house is to "show forth the excellencies of him who called you out of darkness into his marvellous light." The temple was to show forth the excellencies of the Lord, the embodiment of Divine thoughts, and the Lord's people in any place should be the embodiment and expression of Divine thoughts. There should be there a disclosing of God's thoughts in a very blessed way, a coming to know the mind of the Lord for His people, a rich unveiling of what is in the heart of God concerning His own. That is how it ought to be: not just addresses or sermons, but a ministry of revelation under the Holy Spirit through an opened heaven. That is of value to the Lord and to His people. But it wants a living company for that: and oh, how we know it! Sometimes we are not all alive to the Lord for some reason or other when we come together. Perhaps we are tired, or have been bothered, something has come in to cast down, and although the Lord has prepared for us some rich feast, something He wants to make known, He cannot; He is held back, and there is just a state of lifelessness. But let us come together in the Spirit, alive unto the Lord, and the Lord's thoughts come out and they flow. The condition of the company of the Lord's people very largely determines what kind of time we have. It very largely depends upon us how much the Lord can give us. The company of the Lord's people is to be the expression and embodiment of God's thoughts. That is what it exists for.