July 2024
JUST LIVE IN THE SPIRIT
19/07/24 12:35
THANKS FOR YOUR LIFE, RON. YOU DID IT WELL
17/07/24 21:00
Vale Ronald J Allen. Brother of mine and minister of Jesus Christ. July 11, 1947 - July 16, 2024. We will see him again.
A PERSONAL MEMOIR
Signs of the Times and portents of Ron were manifest before Ron came among us in the guise of himself. Showering under our house in Wynnum, Brisbane, I espied Mum’s large belly. Asking Mum the meaning of this ‘size’ she said ‘A man hit me.’ It was not until later in life that I realized what this meant.
We began life together at Coorparoo. Ron had a blue and white toy truck that he pushed up the hall saying gudda, gudda, gudda. There was a steam roller that paused at the front of our house wheezing and puffing.
On the corner of the hill just up from us, a lavatory truck capsized and spewed its brown load all over the road. Ron was agog as was I. But ‘Every poo has its day’, you might say.
TIME IN MORDOR
Our time in Rotorua, New Zealand saw us on the floor with Ron playing with his giant toy Spitfire. I was glad to sit with him on the floor as this allowed me to hide from the mountains, which as you know in NZ, are morose and likely to be aggressive. Ted Allen, our Dad, took us for walks in the mountains nearby which had trails with gaping fissures that emitted clouds of steam and grunted like Godzilla.
LIFE IN THE GARAGE AT 29 ACACIA AVENUE
Following Ted’s death in 1949 we lived with Mum and our grandparents in a garage at 29 Acacia Avenue, Ryde. Mum prayed over us each night and sang a child’s hymn to us in the light of a kerosene lamp on top of the wardrobe. This must have been a time of pain and grief for Mum. For me it was a child coming to terms with a dad who was no longer there. I cannot say I knew Ted Allen all that much as I was five when he passed on. But it gives me pride to know that he belonged to a line of Allen’s who ministered the life of Jesus Christ. Ron and I find our identity/ purpose in spreading Jesus’ Life.
TRANSITION
Mum sought comfort by spending time with her late husband’s family. This meant stints at Orange with Uncle Edgar, Aunty Jean and Gwendoline. It was while in Orange that mum met Locky Roberts at Vernie Robert’s place – a cherry and stone fruit establishment called Glen Garrah (?) Orchard.
Some time later Mum married Locky in the rooms above Gordon and Aunty Vesta Meritt’s Café at beachside Terrigal NSW. Thus began our transition from Ryde to Mumble Peg.
CHANGE OF LIFE
Ron, unlike myself was becoming an able farmer but left to do what he believed was a higher calling. I still remember Locky, Trevor and Ron weeping as Ron boarded the ute to drive to Cooranbong to begin life at Avondale. This was one of the most emotional experiences of my life.
Ron began the ministerial course which led to our family on the farm receiving a ‘grace shock.’ We were at first appalled, thinking he must have ‘lost the plot,’ our having been raised in a culture in which one earns Christ and salvation, rather than living in the Truth that Christ has earned you. To this day there are those who do not get this truth, which raises the issue of whether their beliefs are actually Christian. Ron was never a lackey of institutionalism and suffered much reproach from those who could have known better had they not been addicted to their own ‘gospel’ in place of Christ’s
THE FACES
Ron was a very funny person. Before he went to Avondale he often sat at the back of the Narromine church poking outlandishly funny faces. These distortions had such comedic power that our mother who might be giving a homily at the front of the church would collapse in laughter in the kind of shudders Mum called ‘the sterics.’ Mum and her sisters were particularly good at the sterics and clearly passed it on to our family as an ‘evangelistic tool’.
THINGS PROPER
Thankfully Ron gained a loftier conception of ‘things proper’ as he made his way through the ministerial course. Once doctor McDowell rebuked the college at Chapel Service for making light of ‘things proper’. Ron and I returned from the chapel to our room mutterings, ‘Slowly the guilty pair made their way back to their room’. But Ron never confused morbidity with holiness.
SNAKES ALIVE!
One summer day, Locky sent Ron and I up to a Noogoora Burr patch beside the river to do a stint of burr cutting. Not having a passion for this task we sat down in the grass, electing to spend some time effecting to be busy while sitting rather than cutting. But our ruse was shattered by Ron’s cry of ‘SNAKE! THERE’S TWO OF THEM!’ We leapt in the air and kind of levitated away making our way home having touched scarcely a burr. The uncharitable might say this was a judgment upon us – or at least a warning!
LAKE LOUISE AND CANADIAN ROCKIES
In 2006 Ron and I met in Banff. We drove back through the Rocky Mountains to Vancouver. This was a day of excellent fellowship and striking scenery.
Before Ron became ill we had assignations at homely pubs. Along with C. S. Lewis we knew the holiness of ‘good eating’. One of these highlights was an excellent meal had on the veranda of the Macksville Pub by the river. Macksville not only had good pub meals. Macksville High was also the alma mater of my poetic friend of wit and charm, James Ward.
The day Ron passed, Meredith, and I went to Spenser’s Café at Gembrook as a way of mourning. We drove through the bush, had a good meal and did so, to celebrate Ron. Ron was a fun person, fun to be with and serious about being an agent of Jesus Christ and His Life. Many years ago I read a little book entitled ‘Living God’s Joy.’ Joy was Ron’s life.
THE LIVING WORD IGNITES YOU
15/07/24 08:16
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THE EXPRESSION OF CHRIST AS YOU
11/07/24 15:13
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YOUR FOUNDATION IS UNION WITH GOD
11/07/24 10:49
THE JESUS LENS DISTINGUISHES BETWEEN RELIGION AND LIFE
07/07/24 12:47
KNOW THE LIFE THAT IS YOURS
07/07/24 12:44
APOSTLES DOCTRINE - CHRIST’S LIFE AS YOU
04/07/24 09:19
An enjoyable discipline of our life in God is learning to live in the reality that is Christ while casting off the encrustations of religion. These may be encrustations that have no life and which are adept at insulating us from the direct life that is ours in the Christ who is mediated to our being by the Spirit. Some encrustations are outright lies, while others are the self stymied by a limited atonement and a less than fulsome grace.
NOT OVERTLY DEMONIC BUT COVERTLY SO
‘False Christ’s’ are the product of distorted gospels. These gospels are not always obvious but can disguise themselves as ‘our perspective’ or the remains of truths that have been subverted by time and the human instinct to substitute Christ’s salvation for elements of our own work.
The original lie that led to the seduction of Adam and Eve and the separation that we call The Fall was less a full-on contradiction of their life in God and more a derivation and subversion of the narrative of life in God. A dilution by a subtle substitution of facts for fictions. Thus, today one of the signs of ‘other gospels’ is a reliance on fictions instead of the acts of God and the Word of God. The decision to rely on our own perspective rather than God’s provision is the essence of sin.
APOSTLE’S DOCTRINE
In our time the Gospel of Jesus, the apostles and Church Fathers is being recovered and we do well to understand what it is and align our lives with their truth. Our union with God and God’s presence in us is more real than many know. “Torrance speaks of the believer’s real participation in the divine nature, and not just of fellowship with God … By participating in Christ there is an ‘importation of another’s personality into him; the life, the will of Christ has taken over what once was in sheer antagonism to it, and replaced the power of sin by the forces of a divine life”. (1) We are in this life because Christ is in us and we are in Christ. Not because we have ‘kept close to Jesus’ or have an anointing by the Spirit but because God in Christ has created this reality of union with God for us, in which to live and be ourselves as sons. This is your ‘riches in Christ’.
We can if, we are remiss, suffer from emotional disease all our lives even if we operate in the gifts because the gifts are not the foundation of a healed life. Our union with God in Christ is the foundation and source of the healed life. The Bethsaida of a healed soul and re-awakened spirit is your present union with God. This is a reconciled oneness with God that is yours in Christ.
RECONCILED
“Reconciliation thus refers to the real participation of believers in the divine nature made possible by the dynamic atoning union of Christ. Torrance contends this is atonement in effect. As a result of the incarnation, humanity is united to divinity in the hypostatic union.” * (2) We are in this union because God in three persons has reached out to us in Christ to draw us into the Communion that is God. We are in this union when we believe we are. But not in spirit when our mindset is one of law and separation. This is the curse Paul warns against.
OUR INHERITANCE
“In the Church of Christ all who are redeemed through the atoning union embodied in him are made to share in his resurrection and are incorporated into Christ by the power of his Holy Spirit as living members of his Body…Thus it may be said that the ‘objective’ union which we have with Christ through his incarnational assumption of our humanity into himself is ‘subjectively’ actualised in us through his indwelling Spirit, ‘We in Christ’ and ‘Christ in us’ thus complementing and interpenetrating each other.” (3)
SEIZE YOUR TREASURE
Our union with God has nothing to do with the law or the keeping of it and everything to do with our saying ‘yes’ to the life of Christ that He has already drawn us into.
We are in Christ and in God because God has made it so in His Son. We are one with God by relationship, not by performance. Because we could not be righteous or keep the law even though it only had ten points, God gave us Himself. He is our grace, our forgiveness and much more. We are graced by being enfolded in the trinitarian communion that is God. This life is in us, making us alive and agents of the new creation.
* Hypostatic union – the oneness of Christ and the Father having the same nature and the personal union of Christ’s two natures.
(1) Habets Myk, Theosis in the Theology of Thomas Torrance. P 102
(2) Ibid. P 106
(3) Ibid. P 106
NOT OVERTLY DEMONIC BUT COVERTLY SO
‘False Christ’s’ are the product of distorted gospels. These gospels are not always obvious but can disguise themselves as ‘our perspective’ or the remains of truths that have been subverted by time and the human instinct to substitute Christ’s salvation for elements of our own work.
The original lie that led to the seduction of Adam and Eve and the separation that we call The Fall was less a full-on contradiction of their life in God and more a derivation and subversion of the narrative of life in God. A dilution by a subtle substitution of facts for fictions. Thus, today one of the signs of ‘other gospels’ is a reliance on fictions instead of the acts of God and the Word of God. The decision to rely on our own perspective rather than God’s provision is the essence of sin.
APOSTLE’S DOCTRINE
In our time the Gospel of Jesus, the apostles and Church Fathers is being recovered and we do well to understand what it is and align our lives with their truth. Our union with God and God’s presence in us is more real than many know. “Torrance speaks of the believer’s real participation in the divine nature, and not just of fellowship with God … By participating in Christ there is an ‘importation of another’s personality into him; the life, the will of Christ has taken over what once was in sheer antagonism to it, and replaced the power of sin by the forces of a divine life”. (1) We are in this life because Christ is in us and we are in Christ. Not because we have ‘kept close to Jesus’ or have an anointing by the Spirit but because God in Christ has created this reality of union with God for us, in which to live and be ourselves as sons. This is your ‘riches in Christ’.
We can if, we are remiss, suffer from emotional disease all our lives even if we operate in the gifts because the gifts are not the foundation of a healed life. Our union with God in Christ is the foundation and source of the healed life. The Bethsaida of a healed soul and re-awakened spirit is your present union with God. This is a reconciled oneness with God that is yours in Christ.
RECONCILED
“Reconciliation thus refers to the real participation of believers in the divine nature made possible by the dynamic atoning union of Christ. Torrance contends this is atonement in effect. As a result of the incarnation, humanity is united to divinity in the hypostatic union.” * (2) We are in this union because God in three persons has reached out to us in Christ to draw us into the Communion that is God. We are in this union when we believe we are. But not in spirit when our mindset is one of law and separation. This is the curse Paul warns against.
OUR INHERITANCE
“In the Church of Christ all who are redeemed through the atoning union embodied in him are made to share in his resurrection and are incorporated into Christ by the power of his Holy Spirit as living members of his Body…Thus it may be said that the ‘objective’ union which we have with Christ through his incarnational assumption of our humanity into himself is ‘subjectively’ actualised in us through his indwelling Spirit, ‘We in Christ’ and ‘Christ in us’ thus complementing and interpenetrating each other.” (3)
SEIZE YOUR TREASURE
Our union with God has nothing to do with the law or the keeping of it and everything to do with our saying ‘yes’ to the life of Christ that He has already drawn us into.
We are in Christ and in God because God has made it so in His Son. We are one with God by relationship, not by performance. Because we could not be righteous or keep the law even though it only had ten points, God gave us Himself. He is our grace, our forgiveness and much more. We are graced by being enfolded in the trinitarian communion that is God. This life is in us, making us alive and agents of the new creation.
* Hypostatic union – the oneness of Christ and the Father having the same nature and the personal union of Christ’s two natures.
(1) Habets Myk, Theosis in the Theology of Thomas Torrance. P 102
(2) Ibid. P 106
(3) Ibid. P 106
OUT OF FALSE CONSCIOUSNESS INTO REAL LIFE
03/07/24 12:26
THE IMPOTENCE OF ANYTHING NOT CHRIST
03/07/24 11:08
LIVE YOUR SONSHIP
01/07/24 10:44
Rather than identifying yourself as an Anglican, Baptist or Catholic, you would do better to identify yourself as who you are: A son/daughter of God. Read More…