The Church, Not Man Made

I love this quote from Austin Sparks (Life in the Spirit) which in my opinion clearly re-presents what and who the church is!
Not some man made intuition much like what Abraham did out of the sheer energy of his and Sara’s flesh desires to have a son apart from trusting in the one who delights in making something out of what we call nothing.
Ishmael was the best that man could do, and yet man wanted and still desires to have God bless his fleshly works which unfortunately he still refuses to acquiesce to.

Rich

Now the Holy Spirit comes and constitutes the Church, and the believer, upon that basis, so that the Church and the believer become the embodiment of that truth, that Jesus is alive; not something merely to be announced as an objective fact, but to be represented in a vessel. 'How do you know He is alive? You have never seen Him'. 'It is by faith'. 'Oh, well, faith is surely an abstract thing; how do you prove it?' 'I am the embodiment of the fact'. 'Oh, that is egotism, that is setting yourself up to be something'. 'All right, I will live here on that basis, and we shall see'. The Lord will deal with you on that basis. He will break your natural life, He will break natural resources, bring them to an end, wind up natural knowledge and wisdom, until there is nothing left; and then He will do things on a basis which can take the strain, which can produce that work. That is the testimony, that Jesus is embodied in the believer and in the Church. That is God's thought for His Church. What a long way the Church has departed from that. The Church was intended to be the testimony of Jesus embodied, worked out. It was like that at the beginning. God chose such as in themselves could not stand up to this world's wisdom, this world's power. They in themselves were altogether at a discount, and should they have had a history in this world, such as that of Saul of Tarsus, which made them something amongst men, the Lord when He got hold of them took all that from them, and brought them to the place where they despaired of life, and had the sentence of death in themselves, that they should not trust in themselves, but in God who raiseth the dead. He did it again, and again; and they were the testimony, the very embodiment of that testimony.

You see the departure. You see what God must have. That is spirituality. Spirituality is not being occupied with the high truths, advanced teaching. Spirituality is, by the Holy Spirit, the embodiment of Christ risen, and Christ glorified. Meet that, and you meet the indestructible.
This is a testimony to the heavenly Man reaching from the ascension to the return of the Lord, marking the dispensation, and that is spirituality. The Holy Spirit has come to constitute us according to Christ on the basis of His resurrection and His heavenly life, so that there is expressed by us the fact of the resurrection of the Lord Jesus by means of His risen life in us. Spirituality is that you and I are marked by the risen life of the Lord.
We have said that this is a crisis and a process. The crisis is that of being born again; the process is that of the increase of that life, and our coming more and more to live by the risen life of the Lord, and less by our own; and then, with that intelligence concerning Christ, the knowledge of Christ growing. What a tremendous fullness there is in Christ in heaven! We shall ever go on learning what Christ is as expressive of Divine thought in a Man. Spirituality is to be progressively taking Christ as to what He is according to God, and making Him our life.

Misinformed Christ

In light of the One who is the author and finisher (developer) of our faith, Christ Jesus, the one who said, I will build (establish) my church, why is it we need so many prefixes added to that reality?

One of the latest buzz words is “organic” in relation to church. Why didn’t Jesus get it straight right from the get-go? Was he misinformed? Should there have been room for these allegedly much needed addendums or prefixes such as, organic, missional, emigrant, generic, no-name, new improved, et cetera?

To my way of thinking so many have mistakenly confused what man has initiated from the loins of his carnal fleshly madness and called it the ‘church’, from what Jesus said he was going to establish is nothing short of a bad dream gone insane!
I see it much like Abraham begging God to forfeit His planned intention to bring Isaac (the promised one) into the forefront and establishing his purposes and instead begging God to do it through the fruit of his fleshly lunacy packaged in the person of Ishmael the son of his flesh.

Father in Jesus name, like the blind man that Jesus touched and asked, “What do you see” the man replying, “I see men walking about as trees.” Jesus knowing that there was a vast difference between men and trees touches the man one more time, causing him to clearly distinguish the difference!
Give us eyes to see the difference between what the flesh has birthed and what you have done from before the foundations of the earth.

Rich

The Church!?

Isn’t it where ever the Life (Spirit) of God is allowed room to define us humans, maybe that is at that moment, the ‘church.’
We hate the seemingly ambiguity of a description like that, we want to bag and tag it, have control over it, heck I think I just might have described how the religious mind would try and define it.

Rather than by His grace staying open and malleable to His life in us, the father of lies and religion is always present to get us to heed his lies and to be conformed to this present age.
It’s interesting although according to Scripture; “He has delivered us from the power of darkness and has translated us into the kingdom of his dear Son,” and our once being by nature children of wrath, sons of disobedience, the subtle covert tactics and lies of our enemy Satan, is still very able to speak into our thoughts soliciting our voluntary consent to him and getting us to set out on a course of establishing church life.

Of course this depiction of so called ‘church life’ is a mutated fabrication rooted in nothing more than an outer form where self can freely worship Satan disguised as us through our fleshly thinking.
Long before there was ever an outer expression, or building representing what has become known as a ‘church,’ it was already formed in the heart and imagination of the fleshly minded man.

In my opinion the true church Jesus is establishing is so very free to move unimpeded amongst this world filled with dead men walking, because it is for all intents and purposes totally unobtrusive, it has no ulterior or hidden agenda to solicit any fanfare or self recognition, there is no longer any need for personal validation. Talk about flying in the face of all that would masquerade itself trying to be acknowledged, passing itself off as the ‘church.’

The continued glorious and amazing work of grace within the inner sanctuary of the motives and heart intents, inside those who see themselves no longer restricted to the box of organized religion, are being awakened to see that the father of lies has not relinquished his determined strategy of trying to keep us bound to the Matrix of religion until we go to be with the Lord.

My hearts cry is for continued sobriety, the wind and breath of His spirit dispelling within us that which we are unknowingly ready to act upon and trying to establish just another religious form, sadly called “the church!”

Rich

The Naked Church

The Emperor’s New Clothes

I’ve started reading The Naked Church by Wayne Jacobsen, what a wonderful book so far. I hope to comment on things that stand out to me as I go. Hopefully it doesn’t turn into one of my epistles, God forbid.

From what I can see, Wayne is using the story of The Emperor’s New Clothes, a story by Hans Christian Anderson, as a metaphor for the uncanny parallel of the institution called, ‘the church’ of today.

My daughter was home for a few days from University and said she bumped into an old high school friend last night and in the process of catching up on life, she (my daughter) discovered her friend and her husband were Christians, but they had come to a place where the one size fits all no longer held their interest.
I realize what I am saying here is and has become a high octane, highly flammable, volatile, combustible topic, but I’m jumping into the pool whether the sharks have been feed or not.

I want the folks who only want to hear what they think they are hearing, just another ‘church’ bashing idiot, to listen up, please!

One of the things that I stand amazed at in coming to see and know Him, my loving Papa and seeing an ever greater need to see and know Him, I can’t get enough of Him!
In this moment by moment transformation of grace, what astounds me is that in sharing Him plus nothing, you would swear I was the anti-Christ.
I have NO interest in the right verses the wrong way to do anything, such as water baptism, speaking not speaking in tongues, worship-full blown doing your cardiovascular worship or sitting quiet with NO instruments, having not having the Lord’s supper, tithing or not, titles, positions, badges, buttons, red carpet verses blue carpet, woman allowed to be seen as well as being heard, etc. etc.!

Jesus will always represent a threat to that which knowingly or unknowingly has become a substitute for Him in my life or yours.
I want to say that as a result of the knowledge of good and evil being ever present in our lives we have devised a clear cut and proper solution, meaning, it all boils down to doing things “the right way” verses the “wrong way, right? What about His Way?
The Way, Truth and Life is a moot point if it is not seen/experienced in the context of a Person. Jesus said, “I Am the Way-Truth-Life of the Father, this is not mere ecclesiastical doctrinal intellectual warm fuzzy talk.

Without His spirit transforming us from within our soul, the best any of us has is the Letter, which bludgeons-kills, but, the life quickening spirit breathing His breath into that letter is Life.
I am going to rap this up here, I realize I haven’t even shared any thoughts yet from what Papa is speaking to me from Wayne’s thoughts from his book, but stay tuned, they're coming.

He, Jesus is building His Church, the body which IS His Church, and He does not need your or my help, He may be the Ancient of Days, but is fully able to perfectly perfect that which HE initiated in each of us!

Rich