Dear Friends,
Since I have begun more intentionally gathering with other believers in smaller groups without any title or authority other than what friends extend to each other, Church has begun to take on new meanings. The following was written as a Thanksgiving word of encouragement to those whom God has graciously connected me to;
Happy Thanksgiving Dear Family. Please don’t read this in your phone. It is WAY too long.
“How good and how delightful it is for brothers to dwell together in unity!
A strand of three cords can not easily be broken.”
These are just the words that came from my heart as I think of you friends this AM. We can only speculate the delightful strength of our cord – with our multiple strands!
A few years ago the Lord encouraged me with one of those quiet inner, yet persistent, promptings. It consisted of this; “Find ways to love and serve those near to you and to tell them My story; the one I am writing on your heart (with the implied caveat; if and when they are interested). Accompanying the quiet inner prompt (which I am learning to recognize as God’s voice) was this, “….and just watch what I will do.” As I have watched (which is what I do) I have discovered something remarkable. The Church is alive! It exists! It just wasn’t where I was looking! We don’t have to build it! We just have to discover it! It’s not an event. It is not a 501(c)(3). It doesn’t have a physical address. It is not even an it! It is an “us”!
We are the Church! You and I are the living breathing representatives of Christ in this earth. That is why our lives are crammed with adventure and purpose! We are the light of the world! While Christ was the Incarnate Word; He is now incarnating His Word in us in the presence of each other and before an unbelieving and skeptical world that He died to save. (By the way, the process He uses to do this is called discipleship. That transformational process is what exposes the Light of the World – Christ, who is our life. He Himself, in us, is the engine behind the harvest and the Great Commission.) Absolutely remarkable!
You may not be familiar (or even keen) with prophetic words but my life has been influenced by them. To be sure, some have been laughable and harmless as they were quite easy to forget. The legitimate ones have always been encouraging in their tone. They have also been mysterious in that they did not make sense at a purely rational level. Some have been profound. A prophetic voice that I trust told Daneille and I in January of 2011 that our family was going to be radically changed in the near future. My response was, “Hmmmm” (I suppressed the “Reeeally?!” part.) Granted, that was three grandchildren ago but I have come to understand this word with greater clarity. It was about much more than my immediate blood kin. It was about the family of God (those washed in His blood) that is distributed and in place all around me and throughout the world with divine intentionality. The realization of this has provided a kind of ongoing “OMG!” experience for me.
I recently explained to an institutional branch of my family that I was separating myself from the institutional side of them (Grace World Outreach Church) but that I was going to hold on tightly, if they will allow me, to the precious relationships God had formed between us over the past 21 years. These bonds are sacred in His sight. These bonds represent the community of the saints – the Bride and the Body of Christ. Most of the heads of these spiritual leaders were nodding in approval. OK, so the cord is slightly raveled here and there. I acknowledge I myself am part of the fray. The good news is that this condition is only temporary. Because He has reconciled all things to Himself in the cross, we are all, even in our present individual and corporate condition, joined in Him, one to another. We just don’t all know it yet.
I went on to explain that I had lived roughly 1/2 of my very serious Christian life outside the institutional structure (wineskin); and the other 1/2 half of my very serious Christian life inside the western institutional model (wineskin). Having experienced them both, I have decided that for the remainder of my life, I should cast my vote for a far less serious, far less structured wineskin that is actually flexible enough to contain the new wine of the Holy Spirit. We wonder why God withholds miracles or revival. Our structures would burst at the seams under such a strain. Our current vested egos and pride would explode under the pressure of His glory. There is currently not enough safe physical or relational space within these aged wineskin hearts and structures of ours for all those whom God loves and all that God desires to do. Only the net of divinely woven relationships could ever handle the strain of such a catch. But He is changing His Church. The Church, as God sees it, not as we have currently envisioned it or organized it. We might come closer to an accurate vision of the Church if we were to think of it as a great net of which we are a functional or a non-functional part.
“God’s kingdom is like a fishnet cast into the sea, catching all kinds of fish. When it is full, it is hauled onto the beach….That’s how it will be when the curtain comes down on history.” Matt 13 (MSG)
I went on to explain to my beloved friends that I had tasted something in that first-half of my Christian experience that I refer to as community. This something vibrating in me also resonates powerfully when I read the narrative of the New Testament and the story of that community of saints. I have tried to report (as a watchman of sorts) to my dear friends who are overseeing institutions and are committed to them what I think I am seeing and experiencing. Since we are made of the same fallen stuff and filled with the same Spirit, I assume, in a sense, at the core, your story is like my story and that my story is like yours. In other words, the things that trip me up trip you up. The process that transforms me transform you as well. My heart has been telling me for years that there is a yearning kind of vibration in creation as well as in the body of Christ for more. The devout have looked everywhere for it. Could it be that we will eventually discover it was closer than our skin?
This vibration at times expresses itself in some discordant ways. I have heard this longing in my conversations with those who have just up and left the institution without ever saying why. They might not even have been able to say why. If I could restate the essence of their complaint it is, “It just didn’t feel like there was Life here. (and certainly not abundant Life).” The vibrations coming from the microphone did not resonate (or match) the longings in their hearts. Their thoughts usually contained this sentiment; “My lack of resonance is way to complicated to explain. My experience tells me that you do not have ears to hear me anyway. Adios.” Because my sentiments matched their own and I understood their hearts, I chose to remain in the institution, thinking what I had been watching (in my observations and experience) was somehow relevant in the sense that I was the exit interview that never happened with; 1) all those who have come and gone, 2) all those who had stayed but who had exit plans, and 3) possibly even those who never came to begin with. I assure you I didn’t arrive at this apparently egotistical self-appraisal by myself.
I am tasting again a sense of community. It has happened with you and with friends in other smaller gatherings. It reminds me of something I have experienced before and of something I have read about in the New Testament. My experience with you has been life giving. Our experience registers on my heart as something alive; more accurately stated, it has registered in my heart as Someone who is alive! A few more verses and I will wrap up my Thanksgiving homily.
Indeed, I have been crucified with Christ. My ego is no longer central. It is no longer important that I appear righteous before you or have your good opinion, and I am no longer driven to impress God. Christ lives in me. The life you see me living is not “mine,” but it is lived by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me. I am not going to go back on that. Gal 2:20 (MSG)
This mystery has been kept in the dark for a long time, but now it’s out in the open. God wanted everyone, not just Jews, to know this rich and glorious secret inside and out, regardless of their background, regardless of their religious standing. The mystery in a nutshell is just this: Christ is in you, so therefore you can look forward to sharing in God’s glory. It’s that simple. That is the substance of our Message. We preach Christ, warning people not to add to the Message. We teach in a spirit of profound common sense so that we can bring each person to maturity. To be mature is to be basic. Christ! No more, no less. That’s what I’m working so hard at day after day, year after year, doing my best with the energy God so generously gives me. Col 1:26-28 (MSG)
If our cord is proving more enjoyable and stronger with our many and varied strands, what might His Body look like as this tiny kingdom seed takes root and believers are awakened to the immediate reality of Christ in us, the hope of glory. The enemy’s days will be numbered as all of us strands are gathered and woven together. What might His Body appear to be if we are all woven together into a tapestry of fabric so beautiful, so strong and enduring that by its very nature men are compelled, even before the great day of the Lord, to bow their knees and proclaim with their tongues that certainly Jesus Christ is Lord over all. Christ In Us will be the ultimate headlines of the Universal Times. Subtitle; In His cross He has reconciled all things unto Himself.
He was supreme in the beginning and—leading the resurrection parade—He is supreme in the end. From beginning to end He’s there, towering far above everything, everyone. So spacious is He, so roomy, that everything of God finds its proper place in Him without crowding. Not only that, but all the broken and dislocated pieces of the universe—people and things, animals and atoms—get properly fixed and fit together in vibrant harmonies, all because of His death, his blood that poured down from the cross.
Col 1:18-20 (MSG)
All that to say, it a delight to find myself being woven together with you.
I apologize that I so regularly violate length-of-email, text and conversational protocol. I am thinking of another verse that says, “When there are many words, transgression is unavoidable, but he who restrains his lips is wise.”
So, forgive me my friends. For the time being, I am the chief of transgressors,
Your Fellow Strand,
Rob