BE FEARLESS AND FRUITFUL
15/02/24 13:49
The dilemma of the avid conservative is that he is so strangled by the past that he cannot do anything meaningful in the present. Fear and paralysis is the domain of the hoarder of things and ideas. And stagnation the result. But to stagnate is eventually to die, either from social rigor mortice or from the disasters precipitated by our inaction and folly.
PARALYSIS
This dilemma is apparent in contemporary society where in some circles a manic obsession with maintaining the status quo leads to a swamp of stagnant thinking, public stupidity and preventable disasters. This non-thinking and un-mindedness prevents the adoption of creative strategies for multiplying wealth, well-being and preserving the earth. And there are creative solutions aplenty. It can be done without making the sky fall in.
STAGNATION
This kind of mental block and anaesthetised intransigence exists in significant parts of the church where there is a vested interest in religion as it is known and theology as it has always been done or misinterpreted.
I speak of the general ignorance of the new covenant and the specific ignorance of the incarnation as the engine and foundation of the new creation. Fragments of heaven may invade earth with signs like healing and spiritual gifts. But heaven invades earth in intensity and en mass when those who believe live in what is theirs. The triune God manifest as you and I. This is the engine of the new creation. Healings, gifts and preaching exist to draw us into this already present reality. But as things in themselves and done independently as religion they are a red herring.
NEW CREATION
We must cut to the issue and live from our rootedness in the being of God.
Stephen Morrison, elucidating Thomas Torrance writes, “Not only has God’s Word reached us in our actual humanity but, from within the depths of our existence, God has found true reciprocity. Jesus Christ is the one true mediator of God and humankind, mediating both the cause of God to humanity and the cause of humanity to God.
CHRIST AS US
The incarnation was not a one-sided event, God alone speaking to human beings, but includes the Son of God as a human being acting on our behalf before the Father, receiving and responding to God’s Word in our place. The Son was not merely the Word proclaimed to us but at once the human response to God’s Word. In this we discover the mediation of Christ, both on the side of God and of all humanity.” (1)
We are drawn into God and God becomes one with us in real time and in our being. This is the meaning of the vine and the branches and Jesus’ urging, ‘Realize that I am in my Father, and you are in me, and I am in you’ John 14.20.
HEAD IN SAND
Some might say, ‘We already know that’ and continue right along living their life at several removes from God in layers of religion when they could be LIVING IN ONENESS WITH THE VERY BEING OF GOD.
Christ has not farmed out His presence to the church, to pastors, clerics and institutions. His presence in us is direct. So direct and actual that God becomes you and you become God’s daughters and sons. Religion, even as Christianity is sleep-walking.
THE ADVENTURE
Incarnation means we are the expression of the trinity in personal uniqueness and as the community of the church. This is not to dispense with pastors and institutions. It is to say that they would be very different as a manifestation of the incarnation intentionally lived out by we Believers.
Your union with God. Your union with Father in your being and God’s being is your inheritance and your NOW POSSESSION.
OUT OF JAIL
For those who have been socialised into mere religion, you are at once liberated from it and at the same time empowered to be a son/daughter of God whereever you are in your everyday living. God is not contained in the rabbit burrow of ‘holy places’ and holy days. He is in you and you are His expression. The anointing and the gifts are rooted in this fact. For those who have been schooled in the law, you can live in the fact that school is out. Reality is Christ and the law is not reality. Christ is in you and manifests as you. This is incarnation. The main manifestation of the Holy Spirit is you.
(1) Morrison, Stephen D.. T. F. Torrance in Plain English (Plain English Series Book 2) (pp. 123-124). Beloved Publishing, LLC. Kindle Edition.
