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.

Birth Pangs

It stands to reason that any level of understanding of a realm so completely different (foreign) from our own requires a total rethinking of our view of reality. Further, a plane of existence that is so different from our own experience is completely beyond our full understanding. We can only have the level of understanding of this realm we have been called into that the Father chooses to reveal to us. “No one can receive anything except he receives it from heaven”. Please read some earlier thoughts that have flowed into these from here.

As I ponder on what I have said here, what comes like a piercing arrow to my thoughts is much akin to the total all consuming display of wonder and delight on the face of Lucy who in one moment before standing in one realm and then in the next step blown away as she stepped into the realm of Narnia.

“Therefore if you have been raised up with Christ, keep seeking the things above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God. Set your mind on the things above, not on the things that are on earth. For you have died and your life is hidden with Christ in God.”

This past Saturday I was invited to attend in a (gathering) conversation with Wayne, that being with Wayne Jacobson. This gathering was being held at the Fletcher residence, parents of Janna, and Paul LaFrance, just east of Toronto Ontario. What a day it was for us all, I traveled there with a good friend and brother, Ron just for the Saturday, as we could not make it for their first get together Friday evening.

I am still basking, soaking in so much that was graciously poured out in our mutually time of listening and interacting. As a side note I was reacquainted with a brother and his wife from our former city we use to live in, it had been 18 long years since our last time together, what sheer delight to see and hear his heart song and deep love affair with Jesus!

What I believe I am being exposed to over and over from different angels, different siblings in Christ is a distinct and more in focus understanding of the blue prints for the church, Christ said he is building. Without a plan, blue print, the Lord building the house, the labourers are building in vain.
As there were succinct and exacting definitions, descriptions, within the blue prints handed to Moses from God regarding the building of the tabernacle (tent of meeting) and all that pertained to the worship of God which needs to be seen here and now but a mere shadow of something so much more permanent and eternal!
I’m talking about the blue prints given to our brother Paul when he was caught up in the unfolding revelation of the ascended and glorified Christ.
Let me tell you right up front, these heavenly designs were not about forming or establishing the home church movement, or the organic or missional movement or anything to do with man’s poor limited rendition of trying to bag and tag what Christ alone is doing!

Like our brother Paul, I see there being so many other siblings living but for one purpose, to see His Church coming into plain view, and Wayne being but one of the many.
There is so much exploding within my heart about all of this, but I will try to wrap it up shortly here.

Within our flesh there is madness, a perverted sickness that lust’s after a “methodology” that can be implemented to bring forth that which only comes into being as a result of the Spirit of truth breaking the encrypted code of Christ in us the hope of glory! Ergo the need of the re-birthing, but that in and of itself apart from the continued work of His spirit can soon become something detached from Him.
What has and is being offered to us is NOT a method, but a message, one God the Holy Spirit is in charge of in deciphering, this has nothing to do with loading us down with more academic ego bloating, but is in fact a transmission, a transmitting of revelation knowledge of who is in us as us! This knowing is not available to the wise or prudent scholars with a parade of letters before or after their names, but is only available to those who are secure in the utter weakness ergo, “thank you father that you have hidden this message from the wise guys and made it known unto the children.”

It was during the Saturday gathering that I freshly observed some observations I hope to share in additional thoughts in another blog entry, dealing with some observations that dawned on me, simply watching and observing the looks on many different faces as they were listening, hearing, maybe some for the first time, the message of pure 100% unconditional love and grace.

Rich

You Can’t Imagine Grace

The Second Coming

William Butler Yeats

TURNING and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.

Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: somewhere in sands of the desert
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.
The darkness drops again; but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?

My daughter is home with us from University and in our catching up on life, she delighted me with this rich living nugget of truth.

These scriptures speak of such violence, such wastefulness, His love and grace lavishly offered freely to us.

“Truly, truly, I say to you, he who hears My word, and believes Him who sent Me, has eternal life, and does not come into judgment, but has passed out of death into life.
Truly, truly, I say to you, an hour is coming and now is, when the dead will hear the voice of the Son of God, and those who hear will live. For just as the Father has life in Himself, even so He gave to the Son also to have life in Himself.”

What a wonderful invasion, not just 2,000 years ago in our space, time and history, but He snatched up my dead carcass and invaded me with Life.
Talk about an awakening!

Rich

Sticky Issues

Mark Twain once observed, “ A lie can get halfway around the world before the truth can even get its boots on.”


I have been wondering about a few things and thought I would pose these thoughts and questions here for others to ponder on as well.

I am one who loves reading, I super enjoy listening to pod casts etc, but as good as all of this is, that which is readily available to us, what would happen if all of this fine stuff were dropped?
I’m going to be pointing out something here that ties in with my question above, and in so doing I will be pointing to an individual that my heavenly Father has communicated through and greatly encouraged me in my own personal ongoing journey. That would be Darin Hufford. I have been listening on a regular basis to his pod casts and have just about finished his book, “The God’s Honest Truth” and like I said, I’ve been wonderfully encouraged. So what’s the deal then?

Here is a link to his membership page, and a quote from that page; “So you want to help spread this message?

The best way for you to help spread this message is to become a part of The Free Believers Network and sign up to give a monthly donation of $20.00 or more. At this amount, you may not even notice it’s missing! In return for your generous support, we will make available to you, everything that this site has to offer. Our products section has literally thousands of dollars of teaching materials available for purchase. We will give you monthly access too ALL OF IT if you become a part of this network. If you believe in what we are doing and you want to help us spread this message around the world, please consider helping us out with your monthly support. “

As I said, I have No bone to pick with him at all, just asking questions, please hear me!

It appears to me that if I am willing to avail myself of that which is there free for anyone accessing his site, such as the pod casts and his blogs then I freely partake, but if I want to get into the Holy of Holies, then based upon my financial monthly gift I will then gain access and be permitted into much greener and richer pastures of spiritual insights.

Here’s where it gets sticky, is this revelation of the father’s love something we can obtain without having to rely upon Him alone, are there short cuts to obtaining it and growing in His love? Is there actually in fact another mediator between us and our Father other than the man Christ Jesus?

Are we really willing to settle for how and what Father has made real in another’s heart and life and try to tap into it by simply listening to another’s revelation of Him?

In my opinion, I wonder if we would all become, (those who haven’t made their financial contribution) like fish suffocating, fish thrown up on the shore, trying to live outside our natural element?
Is there no hope in heaven of there being any remote chance or possibility that we could have a thriving, vital, growing, experiential relationship with the Father of our spirit, by being cut off or shut out from this vast plethora of secret knowing?

Is it Him we want, done His way in the ‘asking, seeking and knocking,’ becoming eye witnesses of Him, as in Jesus’ question then and now, “Who do you say that I AM” or is it simply settling for parroting what others have actually seen in their close up encounters with Him?

Rich