Monthly Archives: September 2014

The God Who Is . . . Here

23 Tuesday Sep 2014

Posted by in Discipleship

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DamascusSunriseThe hushed stage waits, a heavy and darkened shroud separating audience from actors. Undefined shapes loom in the dim troposphere, insinuating only indeterminate outlines, silhouettes suggesting detail, form, texture to emerge.

It is the perpetual cycle of morning, day, twilight and dark, always followed by morning and day, twilight and then dark again.

The first lilting strains of the dawn chorus have yet to penetrate the musky atmosphere as morning bird senses the coming day and feathered choir assembles while the heavens perform their persistent transformation.

Night sky softens, starlight fades, cloud and clear, new-morning brothers, share ethereal space as earth awaits the daily verdict. A corporate quickening of breath and heart signal the symphony’s commencement; a new day born, unlike any other since the dawning of life, hidden by eons of time.

Yet the eternal drama plays out to a sparsely occupied auditorium. Most of the children of men yet slumber; perhaps a few stir and even fewer rise to accompany the great Conductor’s composition. But for those who join the awe-struck assemblage, no performance issuing forth from human spirit, mind or heart could compare with the majesty and mystery of these precious few moments of time, as what has been and what will be are suspended, held aloft by an invisible Hand and captivated by an undetected yet ever-present heart. The heart: The great Heart.

The God Who is there, here, the God Who is everywhere displays for those who will have eyes to see, the magnificence of His mercy, the greatness of His grace and the overwhelming, life-altering offering of His love. All of it displayed with irresistible

All of the Character and Nature and all of the combined Essence of God is displayed and borne on wings of mercy and conveyed to the sons of men to enable, to endow us all with life.

abandon, all of it displayed and borne on wings of mercy and brought, conveyed, transported to the sons of men to enable, to endow us all and all of us with life.

Knowledge declares, He IS there. Wisdom shouts, He IS here: Yesterday, tomorrow, today.

What sure and terrible thing has laid hold of us, taken us that cannot, by His goodness be overcome? What monstrous opponent breathes out threatenings and slaughterings that cannot be shortly and completely eviscerated, conquered, concluded if He, the very Author and Artist of the universe is for us?

And He is. For us.

Sing, songbird! With beauty, descant and lovely strain, let heaven and nature join as one in celebration and delight and Sing!

Parade across glen and sky, new dawn! March as conquering soldiers come.

Lift high on icy wind eternity’s sweet melody, ripe with salvation’s song.

He is. For us.

He is. With us.

He is. In us.

He is!

 

Victimized By . . . Ourselves

16 Tuesday Sep 2014

Posted by in Ekklesia

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ManinChurchHave we, the Church of Jesus become victims of our own success in our relations and interactions with God?

Looking with some twenty years’ perspective since the first Toronto stirrings indicated a fresh move of God’s Spirit in the earth, some painful possibilities exist. Many of us among the people of God had by the 1990s cried for God to refresh us, to revive His work, to visit us with His intimate presence, His person! “Church as usual” was no longer an option for hearts thirsting for God’s close fellowship and love. We cried for Holy Spirit to come, to visit us, to make His habitation among us, and He did it!

And when He came He showed us that lots of the formality of our religious experience was worthless. We discovered that God was not impressed with our man made spirituality. We got down off our high spiritual horses and became real with God and with one another. And God blessed. God came. Oh, how He came into our midst! Lives were transformed; not just adjusted or amended, this was no season of “soul-tweak” but lives were changed completely, totally, fully. Lives were healed of longstanding pains of physical, spiritual and mental abuse. What years of conventional counseling and praying and hoping and waiting could not deliver, God did in moments.

For those who recall those days (and many long, yet too brief nights) this was the apex of our experience with heaven. And then, so soon we became accustomed to Him. The extraordinary became the ordinary. We discovered that familiarity does breed contempt. No longer were we awed by His presence when we came together to worship. We could sing to Holy Spirit, we could worship God with one hand and hold our coffee cup with the other. We could drink in His presence while we drank down our coffee.

And at some point we lost the preciousness, the pricelessness of His presence. We lost the glory of His touch, we lost the awe of His communion, the intimacy of God’s heart with our hearts: We. Lost.

And so, as countless generations before us have done, we attempted to manufacture what we could not create – the holy, awesome, life-changing, intimate presence of the living God walking among us, touching our lives with His grace, transforming whole churches from mere places of worship to centers of mission and purpose.

And as I ponder these painful truths, the question arises, “Can we recover what we have lost?” Can we?

Certainly our times call for a supernatural church to confront a dead and dying world filled with the philosophies of meaningless and death. And if the times call for such a church, we ought then to cry out to God once again to come to us, to forgive us, to dwell among us, to sweep us, one more time into His arms of love and safety and protection and to there infuse us with His Spirit that we might be, in the midst of desperate times, the full representation of the hope of the world, even Jesus.