Don't Tamper With the Mail (part I)

There is so much confusion in the body of Christ as to the purpose of the individual believer and the role of the Church here on the earth.  The message is simple and powerful.  God and man were in perfect harmony, and God gave man the right to rule over himself.  Man was taken captive and held hostage by Satan, and was now subject to a dictator.  God sent His Son, who won a decisive victory over Satan, stripped him of his dictatorship, and annulled his right to rule over us.  At that point all that was left to do was to go announce to man was that he was free!   The truth began to spread; men everywhere enlisted in the new Kingdom, and went forth as an army, to liberate all those that had been forced into slavery under the law of sin and death. 

The ruler of the slave kingdom feared the message of freedom and set about to sow seeds of confusion among the hearers.  The message took on a different tone.  Many were being told that their liberation hinged on certain requirements and standards that must be met.  This message was not one of hope, and freedom, but simply bondage to a new set of requirements, a message that said their freedom could be maintained by daily good works and behavior modification.   Many chose to stay and serve under the dictatorship of death, they had grown accustomed to the current workload, and the “good works” option seemed cumbersome.  Their hearts were darkened from years of indoctrination by their perpetrator, and only the light of the TRUE GOSPEL could free them from their chains.  Those that did opt for good works, were soon disillusioned, the freedom that was promised was impossible to maintain as this ruler seemed as hard to please as the last one.  

The Church should be an unstoppable force, moving en masse in one direction, with one clear objective.  Instead, we have turned our weapons inward and seem intent on devouring our self whole.   If the devil’s plan was to divide and conquer, we have walked unflinchingly into his trap.  Discipleship has become an assembly line where we stamp out Methodists, Catholics, Baptists, Lutherans and Charismatics, instead of as Paul puts it “imitators, and followers of me (Paul) as I am of Christ.  (I Cor. 1:11)  Paul had complete confidence in the message that was given to him by God.  Remember Paul was not a disciple of Christ while Christ was alive; the gospel that Paul preached was divinely imparted to him by the Holy Spirit.  It was not the teachings of Jesus and it was not the message that Peter preached to the Jews.  Much of the confusion in the Church comes from a “mashing” of the Word of God and not recognizing what it is saying to whom.  I call it the “gospel mash” it caught on in a flash, it was a graveyard smash.  

This is a whole kettle of fish I will not get into today, but I would urge you in reading your Bible, take the time, with the Holy Spirit as your teacher, to understand what role you are playing today as a believer, and the role of the Church.  If we call ourselves believers why are we at such odds with other believers?  How could ONE message with ONE purpose have taken on a life of its own?  Somewhere along the way, we stopped being the ministrants of the message and made it personal.  I am reminded of what my small group leader says frequently, “don’t tamper with the mail, just deliver it.”  I want to be on the earth to see the Church become all that Christ intended for it to be.  I want us to realize our purpose and the power that we embody with Christ as our Head!  I want to see this sleeping giant awaken!  I want the devil to be gripped with fear when he hears the rustling of the Body of Christ on the move.  Just as he was when he realized he had not killed the Christ but instead played right into the hands of the Living God.

As with most of my postings that turn into 2 and 3 parters somewhere in the middle, we will continue this train of thought next time.  In fact this does not at all resemble the posting I “thought” I was going to write this morning.  I love it when the Holy Spirit comes in at the last minute and says “Stop the presses!”  It keeps me weak, and dependent on Him.  After all it IS HIS MESSAGE! 

Dumbing Down the Gospel

As I listened to my Pastor deliver the message last Sunday, I wondered how we, the body, have taken the Gospel of God, in which God has given us everything pertaining to life and godliness, and have managed to make the promises of God of no effect in our lives? This is the same gospel that by its OWN power caused the Holy Spirit to fall on the hearers, as they believed, while Peter was still speaking! (Acts 10:44) And I heard several people talking after the service whose Spirit man recognized TRUTH and LIFE and they physically felt Him grab onto the message. A woman said it’s as if she’s had amnesia, and grace was something she knew once and was now awakening to. One man said he felt like he was having a panic attack on the inside during the message. AMEN! If we weren’t in “civilized” America, I wonder what that reaction would have looked like on the outside!
This week I’ve meditated on “what responsibility as a body do we bear for the lack of power in the church” and the answer is ALL of it. In our effort to make it palatable we coin phrases (I’ve done it, we all have) like “I’m living for Jesus” REALLY? As if we could, on our BEST day, do anything in our own strength and pride to add one iota of Magnificence and Glory to His person. He isn’t asking us to live FOR Him, He says Yield! And I will live through you. Even there, we pat ourselves on the back for “accepting Christ” we tell others, you can “invite Him into your heart” MORE LIKE TRY TO RESIST HIM! I will never forget the Sunday evening service 30 years ago, I experienced His love full force. I had said no to Him for the last time that Sunday morning. When the service started I knew what I was there to do, I could hardly wait for the altar call. I don’t even remember getting to the front of the church, nothing around me mattered, at last I was His. It reminds me of the old movies where the man decides he will kiss the woman and she makes a futile attempt to struggle for a while before she surrenders to what she was hoping for all along.
The ironic thing is, our biggest struggle seems to be remaining humble, “less of me and more of Him”, and we end up making ourselves the focal point even in that. We worry so about Him getting the glory, and if we are in His will. When we see how big He really is, we will see that He is not concerned with our ability to stand in His way. In fact our preoccupation with our “self-centeredness” may be the one thing that makes us most ineffective.
The key is seeing Him. When He unveils Himself in the Gospel, we are beholding the risen Christ; the inexplicable truth of everything that He is overwhelms us. At that moment we begin to understand that He has done it all, and all that is left to do is yield, and we are so disarmed at that juncture that we can do nothing else.
If we truly believe He is IN us, the Spirit of the risen Christ, will we believe for a moment that our simple fleshly shortcomings are an obstacle to Him? He will simply reveal more of Himself, become even more disarming, and in a moment of “controlled ecstasy” we will relinquish what was never a concern to Him anyway. And our plea that we would bring Him glory. Hah, how ludicrous, we cannot! All glory and honor belong to Him; by His very nature he receives all glory. For us to bring Him glory we must stop trying to bring Him glory. We are hidden in Him so He has already taken us out of the equation and He lives through us to glorify Himself because any attempts on our own would only serve to give us cause for boasting. We grovel and attempt to demote ourselves, all the while bringing more attention to ourselves, He waits patiently till our flesh is satisfied that we are sufficiently humbled, and then reminds us that our flesh is no match for Him and can we now proceed? True humility, is boldness, as we recognize that it IS none of me and ALL of Him. We will stop being victims and we will walk in victory when we stop trying to make Him preeminent and recognize that He already is!