by RobertCummins | Aug 1, 2016 | 31. Quieting
Daniel (my son) and I had just floated “The Box” of the Henry’s Fork River which the locals know as the North Fork (of the Snake River). This stretch of river is famous for the numbers of fish it holds. (Idaho Fish and Game estimate 3500 hundred per mile.) The six hour float we took through The Box, making hundreds of casts, tended to confirm this as well as the fact that some of these fish are ginormous!
How did this come to be? Where does such an abundance of life begin? At day’s end we decided to find out. We pulled out our map and began our search. What we discovered surprised us. This river did not begin as snow melt, cascading dramatically from thousands of feet above; it was coming from beneath our feet!
Our search led us, within a short drive, just a few miles upstream, to Big Spring. Here, without much fanfare, 150 million gallons a day of cold, crystal clear water bleed out from a fifty foot gash in the mountainside. From an overlook only a brief walk from our car we looked down to see Big Spring pumping its quiet torrent, first into an inviting pool of shear beauty then spilling out onto the descending rocky gradient which is the Henry’s Fork. It turns out this spring was the inconspicuous origin of the abundant life of which Daniel and I had just partaken.
In the ecosystem of this flowing water, plant life had taken hold and had become in itself a perfect habitat to the crustaceans, leaches and insects which in turn become the feast of the hungry and awaiting trout downstream. To me, the earth was declaring the glory of her maker and preaching an unforgettable sermon.
Then (an angel) showed me a river of the water of life, clear as crystal, coming from the throne of God and of the Lamb. Revelation 22:1
If you read further in Revelation 22 you discover this river is also the origin of an ecosystem, one of eternal life that brings healing and abundance to all those downstream. Not only did the Henry’s Fork nourish the fish in the river and the birds that hunted it, it was also drawn upon to irrigate hundreds of thousands of acres of rich farmland. This brings us to the grand miracle which it seems few discover; this Spring is within us and would run through us, would we permit it.
Most of us know of the book by Norman Maclean, A River Runs Through It and the movie that made it famous. Maclean leaves his readers with a deeply personal word, a synthesis of a life’s observations; “Eventually, all things merge into one, and a river runs through it…I am haunted by waters.” If the scriptures are true and the testimony of the saints who have tasted abundance is accurate, our story (that of the Church) should be titled; A River Runs Through Us, subtitled; We Are Inhabited By Waters.
As I read scripture it seems apparent that living water was meant to come from Christ who is the Big Spring deep within us. As we learn to live out of that stream, we become the stream bed where life may propagate. Surely it was God’s intention that our hearts be that place where abundance is cultivated and eventually spills out to those downstream from us. How does this come to be? Where does such an abundance of life begin? We must each decide to find out and trace it back to the source. Those who will take the time will discover it is but a short distance to the Spring and that it is less conspicuous in presentation than we have perhaps been inclined to think.
Our theme this week “Quieting” is surely a pathway to personally discovering our Big Spring.
Father, may your life find its way within us. May the river which comes from your throne birth in our hearts sufficient abundance to nourish us and those you have placed nearest to us. May this eternal system of life even spill out and bring healing to the nations. Amen.
by RobertCummins | Aug 9, 2015 | 31. Quieting
Quieting – Isaiah 30:15-18
The passage begins with God making a powerful declaration over His chosen people;
In repentance and rest you shall be saved, in quietness and trust is your strength.
But they rejected R&R and Q&T. Instead they elected flight and even though they used the swiftest horses the result was a chaotic affair where a paranoid mob of a thousand are being put to flight by the bluff of a single enemy. The outcome of Israel’s independence was being left alone and dangerously exposed.
We no longer ride horses into battle armed with swords and spears but the nature of warfare has not changed. When I hear God declare that our salvation will be worked out through repentance, rest, quietness and trust, I picture the intentional cultivation of a grace-saturated inner-life.
Do we really understand that our hearts are the battle field? Is it possible we too have turned down God’s terms of R&R and Q&T? We still have a diabolical enemy who would love to destroy us. As far as we know his chief weapon is deception. He is referred to as the prince of the power of the air. When I think of the war he is waging I picture this air where radio waves travel unseen through walls carrying their messages of advertising, news and entertainment. I see the prince of this age overseeing the bulk of these unseen transmissions crafted from carefully blended amounts of truth and lies. This content typically passes unchallenged through our hearts and minds. I picture a day though, when Satan’s lies have been filtered out. On that day I believe we will be astounded that this singular master lier has caused so much paranoia, and driven so many into chaos, bondage and misery. But our passage concludes with…..
Therefore the Lord longs to be gracious to you, and therefore He waits on high to have compassion on you. For the Lord is a God of justice; How blessed are all those who long for Him.
To compose our hearts for a war with the father of all lies we must remind ourselves that light obliterates darkness. Ours is the Father of Lights and we are children of light. Our spirits were created for Truth and Light. The Blue Book is an excellent tool which has helped many in personally developing the best practices of watching over our hearts. The Blue Book has been a faithful servant to repentance,rest quietness and trust.
Father, may it not be said of us that we rejected your means of working out our salvation. May we establish our secret places of retreat and prayer. May we become adept in discerning spiritual reality, in distinguishing religion from relationship, in separating truth from error. Help us to cultivate longing where there is complacency. We long to see Your justice exercised against Your enemy and ours. Amen.
by RobertCummins | Aug 7, 2015 | 31. Quieting
Lamentations 3:19-28
A child we knew described that time of day when the sun was setting as “darking”. Darking may be an apt description of what was going on in Jeremiah’s inner and outer worlds. Here is a sampler…..
He has driven me and made me walk in darkness and not in the light…..In dark places He has made me to dwell, like those who have long been dead. He has filled me with bitterness. He has made me drunk with wormwood. My soul has been rejected from peace; I have forgotten happiness. So I say, my strength has perished, and also so has my hope from the Lord.
Admittedly, calling and context are important. Jeremiah was the watchman on the wall observing the rise of Babylon and the fall of Israel. He knew Israel’s demise was due to her idolatrous and unrepentant heart. Her sin was so grievous, her heart so hardened, God had arranged Babylon as her punishment. Jeremiah had the additional burden of knowing that God himself was in the middle of it all. Perhaps our circumstances are not as severe but even so there are valuable things to learn from Jeremiah. This passage reveals some of them. One, is his response to suffering, especially of the God-prescribed variety. How Jeremiah handles his relationship with God is worthy of our attention.
He begins by remaining in communication with God and emotionally open to him. He intentionally names his sufferings and asks God to remember each of them. He tells God outright that he will be unable to ever forget. However, he also demonstrates that emotional responses to hardships do not have to be our determinents. In other words he was not a victim of circumstance, however nightmarish they were. Jeremiah demonstrates that emotional responses must be subservient to our powers of choice.
Regardless of how we feel, we must choose how we think and what we say. Even in the midst of punishment, Jeremiah demonstrates this as he deliberately recalls God’s loving providence as the greater context of his life. So, in the presence of dire circumstance he says, with great intentionality (and I believe we can say in worship), “I have hope that….
The Lord’s lovingkindnesses indeed never cease, for His compassions never fail. They are new every morning. Great is Thy faithfulness. The Lord is my portion, says my soul, therefore I have hope in Him. The Lord is good to those who wait for Him, to the person who seeks Him.
I believe our love of black and white explanations generates many innacurate doctrines about God. Some cast Yahweh as the angry old testament sovereign with a hair trigger on judgement, ready to disperse suffering aplenty where it is warranted (which is mostly everywhere). Others are designed to get God off the hook for having any association, direct or indirect, with suffering. When the Bible has not gone to this trouble, why do we? Could it be in our inability (or unwillingness?) to reconcile suffering with what we prefer the will of a good and sovereign God to be, that we fashion an image of Him more to our liking, then hire teachers who will represent this god to us – one bent on delivering us from all pain in this life?
The bottom line is that suffering is a mystery and a potential stumbling block unless we learn a crucial lesson from Jeremiah. From what I can read in scripture and from what I have experienced so far in life, I believe God is more often inclined to help us through suffering as opposed to delivering us from it. Yet, as God moves us through suffering we find we are brought to one primary question: Is it essential for to us to know why we suffer? Jeremiah may not answer our question directly but his commentary may keep our hearts attuned to God in the midst of the universal and unwanted mystery of suffering. Listen to his wisdom…..
For the Lord will not reject forever, for if He causes grief, then He will have compassion according to His abundant lovingkindness. For He does not afflict willingly, or grieve the sons of men.
Jeremiah’s own heart is conflicted regarding the origins of suffering. In the first 18 verses of chapter 3 he clearly portrays God as the willing author of suffering. Then, In verses 31-33, not so much. So what is our application?
My takeaway is that God permits us, even encourages us, to vent our anguish directly to him. It is a big deal to sustain communication with God and remain emotionally honest with him. This is not an easy path but it leads us to that precious place where we are exhausted by, and have emptied ourselves of, our questions – a place where all that remains is our willingness (in our darking) to be quiet before Him.
At some point all the tears have been cried and there is simply nothing left to be prayed. It is here in the lull after our storm (which may last for days or for years) where we discover an ember is still burning which awaits the breath of God. In this place, many of our why’s remain unanswered but surprisingly, they are now less insistent. The heart which is left with nothing discovers it now has everything and can say with certainty….
The Lord is my portion.
Father, nothing has been so vexing to my intellect as suffering. Even the modest amounts of it I have known have seemed like bitter wormwood to me and at times have caused me to stumble. Forgive me for viewing You or others as the authors of my pain. Teach my heart that in all circumstances, I live and move and have my being in you. You alone are my context and my sufficiency. Truly Lord, you are my all in all.
by RobertCummins | Aug 6, 2015 | 31. Quieting
Quieting – Psalm 131:1-3
I do not involve myself in great matters or things too difficult for me.
This verse sparks vivid memories. It was one of three verses I had claimed for myself as a young believer. For the historical record, claiming verses was a very spiritual thing to do in the mid-seventies. At that time it was doubtful God was leading you if you were without life-verses.
Another of my verses was …
Make it your ambition to lead a quiet life and attend to your own business and work with your hands. 1 Thessalonians 4:11
I believed these verses fit me perfectly in my mid twenties. However, through hindsight, I discovered there were mixed motives in my choices of life-verses. Yes, I passionately wanted to know and follow this Jesus who had radically altered my life but why had I latched onto simplicity and manual labor as conditions to this relationship?
The truth is at a younger age I had made some vows in order to avoid, at all costs, ever becoming involved in anything great or complex, more precisely, any greatness or complexity associated with my family’s businesses and their contetious relationships. I could not have articulated it as a child but now I know that those vows were made to insulate me from something I perceived would hurt me.
Neither did I know as a young believer that my life-verses were also servants of my agenda – to live a pain free life. While my Dad’s vocation as a contractor provided material security, for me it seemed to create relational insecurity. The business consumed my Dad’s time. During my junior and senior high years, my Dad would leave on Monday and return on Thursday or Friday. I did not fair well during those adolescent years. There is no need for details, suffice it to say, I was a troubled kid who was always in trouble. Sadly, I have no memory of a normal conversation with my Dad. I only recall words of correction and punishment, always delivered with frustration and disappointment.
As a very young boy I overheard violent exchanges between my dad and his brothers who were also his business partners. This undid me. I knew I could never involve myself in anything like that. I vowed that I would not. I watched a nasty ulcer which was likely enflamed by family stress significantly rob him of much sleep and quality of life. No, I could never, would never do the family business thing.
With my vows in the backdrop, exerting themselves subconsciously for the most part, I had followed a vocational path which had led me to the verge of fulfilling my life verses. I never had to leave my young family like Dad did because my place of work was in the town I lived in and ultimately in my home. My garage was a woodworking shop where I worked with my hands. My little cottage business was a sole proprietorship so I had no one to be at odds with (if we exclude God and my wife). In this cozy arrangement it seemed, at least to me, that God had set things up perfectly. Indeed He had, only not quite as I had expected.
One day I will record the details of the Monarch Millcraft / Heirloom FlagChest venture but today I will condense things to say that on the verge of succeeding in my ambition of a simple lifestyle, the rug was suddenly pulled from beneath me. The problem arose from my theological vantage point which placed God at the scene of this crime as either the agent of cause or, at the very least, a party of interest.
In the aftermath of this shaking, the violent oaths being exchanged were not between my Dad and his brothers, they were between God and I. The demise of Monarch Millcraft, which was not an isolated heartbreak, was the final straw between God and myself. Final straw sounds like tough talk but I really did not have any energy left to fight with. Nor did my theology provide a Plan B. In my heart I knew it was with Him whom I had to do. In simple terms, I concluded I was being intentionally and lovingly broken.
In my heart where peace might be ruling there was a war raging. My soul was not like a weaned child within me. Like Jacob, I was in a serious wrestling match with God. And although I was angry as a hornet with God the only resolve I had left was simply to not, if at all possible, allow this season of pain to pass without discovering just what it was God was up to in me. Although I hadn’t figured it out yet, I now understand that he was simply answering my most frequent prayer….
Search me, O God, and know my heart; Try me and know my anxious thoughts; and see if there be any hurtful way in me, and lead me in the everlasting way. Psalm 139:23-24
This prayer was the third of my three life verses. (1 for 3. That’s not too bad.)
I will forever by grateful to Paul Billheimer for writing Don’t Waste Your Sorrows and Destined For The Throne. In these books he assembles a redemptive framework for suffering. He explains how suffering plays into a believer’s destiny in a way that makes room for God’s sovereignty and our free-will. I believe my introductory course in “Mysteries” has equipped me to persevere at times when I might have chosen a more black or white cosmology, one that is either overly triumphant or fatalistic.
I have seen both in play in the church and even in my own life. The overly triumphant approach has the believer lying on the floor bleeding to death, singing, “I’ve got a river of life flowing out of me!” and the fatalistic view say’s, “Well, I’m dying. God’s will be done!” Elaborate theologies have been systematized to give supposed hard biblical proof for both positions. I don’t see either of these positions well represented in the new testament. I believe both the fatalist and the triumphalist are on ground which is apt to be shaken.
Since the time of these events I think I have a better understanding of what God’s point was and is. He doesn’t like our heart-schemes which insulate us from pain because they cripple our capacity to love and be loved. Nor does he like our theological schemes which implicate him as either a Santa Clause or a Hard Task Master. He is our Father. He wants to be our provision. He does not want us leaning on anything which might insulate us from him. Suffering is the place where we discover he alone is our life. For those who are serious about following Him, he is committed to demolishing every faulty foundation. He loves us too much to leave us in our unstable deceptions.
You may have guessed (or know), I did end up joining our family’s business. It has not been particularly simple and I have not worked with my hands much. However, in God’s infinite kindness (and sense of humor) He has permitted me to, more and more, make the same claim as David in Psalm 131, that my soul is at peace and is at rest in Him as a contented child in a mother’s arms. How amazing is God to permit me to adopt verses for the wrong reasons only to arrange for me to be the beneficiary of them in ways I could have never imagined nor managed!
For the record: In the years before my father passed, much healing took place in our relationship and through further divine agency, Jesus saw to it that my earthly father would come to know him. I am stunned at God’s patience and generosity toward my family and myself. Here is a humble and humorous man’s read on his life as he perceives it resting in God’s hands.
I’m easily fooled most of the time but nobody’s ever gonna dig too deep – We’re all in a hurry to somewhere else with distractions and too little sleep – Got a list of questions long as my arm and the only second chance I see, to live and die without permanent harm, is if God can outmaneuver me. (Verse 2 from Faithful, a song by Bob Bennett)
I too am utterly dependent on God to outmaneuvering me.
Father, help us to see your redemptive intentions in our lives which are made possible only by your sovereignty and kindness. Help us to entrust ourselves to you when we are hurting. Help us to lean into You instead of hiding ourselves away in some theological or heart delusion. Give us faith and courage to move forward in whatever trial we are facing, realizing we are staring you in the face. Amen.
by RobertCummins | Aug 5, 2015 | 31. Quieting
Most years I manage to take a week long fishing trip somewhere into the wilds and for those years I have failed I vow to repent. What an abundant collection of friends and memories this habit has generated over the years! This year’s adventure into Idaho and Wyoming were no exception! We fished little waters and big waters, waters in woods and waters through vast meadows. All these waters were chock full of aquatic life providing a feast for both eagle and angler.
Speaking as an angler who has cast into the hallowed waters of three countries, I was asking myself (after seeing the Henry’s Fork) why I ever left this one! The fishing was unsurpassed! The fellowship with my son Daniel was precious! But there was something even more going on. With each cast I became conscious of a question taking shape, even beckoning me; “Rob, What accounts for the deep pleasure you are experiencing?” And while they were good indeed, I knew the answer was more than just fish and fellowship.
As one who credits glory to God for creation it was only natural to consider the aesthetics of all I was taking in as the source of my deep pleasure but even then, there was something considerably more that was escaping me. So, I did as I often do, I just let the question meander around among my thoughts.
Questions, to my mind, are no strangers. In fact, I am concerned they are accumulating faster than are answers! I typically let a question simmer, then I will stir it, modestly at first, then if warranted (as in this case), more deliberately….. Where was my deep joy coming from?
Was it the music? Maybe. Admittedly, Daniel’s playlist had been providing a sweet atmosphere on our drives from one wild place to another. It seems appropriate here to just pause and say, “I’m “Missing Ol’ Johnny Cash (and for that matter, Buck Owens) too.”
Each evening I had been reading about John Coulter so his forced marches through this landscape were prominent in my imagination. But…. if you have ever driven with a millennial you will know what a forced listen is. This is where conversation (even thought?) is suspended and one is prevailed upon by the customized audioscape of the 20 (or 30) something’s playlist. 🙂
I would categorize Daniel’s music as “Americana Glorifico” and I 90% love it. The scant 10% is best represented by the cool sounding Darius Rucker / Brad Paisley cover of I Don’t Know and I Don’t Care (which is now inconveniently stuck in my mind). I’m just sure there will soon be a movie produced called Millennial Cowboy with this musical declaration as its title song.
So, to contend with the 10% of the forced listen, I had to keep reminding myself, “I do too care and I darn sure want to know!” In particular, I still wanted to know what this visceral, almost palpable pleasure was that was haunting me. My answer came together as I was watching Daniel on the Yellowstone River. Here is my diary entry from that day (with minor editing)…..
We drove for an hour to get from Little Firehole Creek to the Yellowstone River where I set up with a hopper and Daniel with a big golden stone fly imitation. This section of the river (just a few miles below Yellowstone Lake) looks like you could wade across is. This is an illusion. We waded as far as we dared which was just above the waist. (Go further and you become a bobber moving downstream at roughly 5 mph). From here our best casts might reach mid-stream. We learned the formula quickly though: In BIG waters…..
BIG casts (with BIG dry flies) + BIG mends = BIG rewards!
Within 2 hours I had hooked 4 big trout (20” or better) and landed 2. So did Daniel but he hooked and landed a monster. Our guide, Matt Murphy (Murph) had worked in Yellowstone and fished this river extensively. He had also guided here for several years. When he first saw Daniel’s fish coming at him and his net, he convulsed, “OMG!, That’s the biggest Cutthroat I have ever seen in the Yellowstone!” The fish measured 25” and had a huge girth. A true elder of these waters, Mike Lawson confirmed: “25 inches is about as big as a Cutthroat will get on the Yellowstone River. Wow!
It is impossible to put into words “the magic” of what I had witnessed. (Thank God I captured most of this on video!) Lot’s of people try and fish the Yellowstone. Most leave empty handed. The smaller easier-to-catch Cutty’s, (Mike Lawson confirms) have mostly all been eaten by the Lake Trout upstream.
The Yellowstone is “big” water and it’s just flat out tough to fish. Daniel’s conquest began after a beautiful long cast and at the end of a long 50 to 60 foot drift. It was a solo hook set, meaning no guide yelling, “Hit him!” (If you have fished with guides much you will know “this” is a moment to be savored since “Hit him!” can eventually feel like the end of a whip if you happen to have missed some hook sets.)
There are so many things that can go wrong in fly fishing. Daniel’s 25” cutthroat did not just voluntarily attach itself to his hook. It required some mastery of fly casting to have even delivered the fly to the place where this fish lived. It then took mending skills to keep the fly drifting with the current so that it would appear as a legitimate meal to the trout. The hook had to be set very quickly with this much line out. The line then had to be be kept taught; Any slack at all at any time would release the trout. The fish had to be reeled in at a pace that honored both the fishes efforts to escape and the strength of the 5x tippet connecting the fly to the fly line. If just one of those things go south the fish will not be joining the fishermen in the shallows with high 5’s and OMG’s. But on this occasion Daniel and the stars were in perfect alignment. It was a privilege to witness this communion of skill, circumstance and creation merging into something sacred.
Nature had become his pulpit and my son had become my teacher. His sermon on this bright Wyoming afternoon provided the answer as to why joy was crowding in on my thoughts. It was communion; What I had been experiencing and was now watching was communion, not the Christian ceremony where bread and wine are consecrated and shared but communion where God is sharing himself with man.
It was to no mute stone Daniel’s fly had beckoned, “Rise!” His fly was taken by the eldest Cutthroat in the Yellowstone River and after seeing him yield (very reluctantly) it was a joy to release him back to his tribe. What we had experienced had, in its own way, been overlaid with gold and silver. Everything we beheld was bursting with breath and for certain, the Lord was in His holy temple. And, with the exceptions of the Yellowstone’s murmurs (and our own gasps of delight) the earth was silent before Him.”
With ospreys and eagles patrolling overhead, with buffalo and bears literally over the next hill, with geothermal power pulsating beneath us and the Yellowstone river itself coursing with life, I was watching a dance. Created things were being drawn together into the deeper rhythms of God. What I was watching was deep calling unto deep. Communion was the backstory to my joy.
Father, may we apply the lessons learned in the Yellowstone Sanctuary in the daily affairs of our own uniquely wild places. Even where we do not perfectly hear your symphony or have not yet mastered our step, teach us to risk entry into this dance into which you have certainly invited us. Amen.
by RobertCummins | Aug 4, 2015 | 31. Quieting
Mark 1:29-39
I would like to have heard Jesus preach. How do you think His message would be received today? He had no building, no public address system and I sure can’t picture him using notes. Stranger yet, his gospel did not directly contain Himself as one who had been crucified or raised from the dead. What were listeners supposed to do with Jesus’ gospel of the kingdom which did not mention Himself as One who must be invited into the heart? What was the “good” news Jesus was preaching? Well, we know what those privileged to hear Him thought. My NAS translation says,
They were amazed….., for He was teaching them as one having authority…“.
Everyone there was incredulous, buzzing with curiosity, What’s going on here? A new teaching that does what it says? He shuts up defiling, demonic spirits and sends them packing! (Message)
The saying and the doing were perfectly aligned in Christ’s life and the result was Jesus having the upper hand over demonic powers and illness. If they would have had print media, the headlines of the Galilean Times would have read; THE WORD HAS BECOME FLESH; Demons Silenced and Evicted in Jesus’ Presence”. So,..the sense of amazement was not just a response to His excellent sermons; it was their response to the powerful manifestations of God’s Life as it was being displayed before them.
We have great communicators and communication technology today that are assisting in the gains being made in our mission to preach what we have come to understand as the gospel. I have wondered though; if the earth today were exposed to Jesus’ version of “good news” would we be as dependent on media? The results-oriented gospel that Jesus preached was doing pretty well without the power of public relations. The scriptures tell us that, when Jesus ministered;
Immediately the news about Him (who He was in word and deed) went out everywhere into all the surrounding district of Galilee.
Scripture tells us Jesus came into Galilee, preaching the gospel of God, and saying,
The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand, repent and believe in the gospel.
We may not know the exact content of all His messages but we do know, (because of His deeds), the kingdom of God was at hand. It was accessible and in it, there was a “now“-authority over the powers of darkness. I believe this is an element of the good news we have somehow lost. Without the now-ness of the kingdom, we are left with only a then-ness. How much of the fruit of our indifference can be traced to this root? What a powerful demonic strategy; get the called-ones to adopt a “then is the day of salvation“ attitude.
I know I have read the Bible with a “that was then, this is now” mindset. While I may confess with my lips a fuller, more powerful gospel, I too often live complacently as if the kingdom will be “then” at hand with a “then” authority rather than live responsively toward the kingdom as a “now” reality. So today, as I hear Jesus say, “repent and believe in the good news“, I believe He is telling me to repent of my blasé attitudes about His “now” kingdom and His “now” authority and my fatalistic projections of where I perceive the trends of an evil society are taking us. Yes, the trends do seem obvious; hopelessness is in the air we breath but, scripturally speaking, where there is evil is not grace to abound all the more?
Did Jesus say it was better that the Holy Spirit come and indwell us just so that He could collectively affirm (by our absence of power) a dispensation of Christianity focused on buildings, programs, or on our knowledge of the Bible, or the further refinement of our character? Is the Holy Spirit contentedly residing quietly inside us, as we halfheartedly (or whole-heartedly) embrace a Christianity that is lean (or completely barren) of kingdom authority?
I can only explain the relative impotency of my Christianity (and that of my generation in the west) by considering that the demonic spirits have not yet been silenced nor have they been sent packing. They are still present. Here in western culture they may not be flinging as many of their writhing victims into fires but they have woven their lies into our cultural narrative, encouraging unbelief within and without the church. As to the effects of Satan’s agenda, there is certainly evidence of much writhing within the collective soul of society. I suspect it will be a shock one day to discover that in our accommodation to these lies we have effectively flung ourselves into the fire.
Father, may the renewing of our minds include an upgrade in our perception of Your kingdom government which we know will continue to increase until You place all your enemies beneath Your feet as a footstool. Please impart to us a righteous indignation where the kingdom of darkness is outshining the kingdom of light. Amen.
