DELUSION UNDONE
24/08/24 10:18
In C. S. Lewis’s tale of The Silver Chair, there is a knight in a cave under a spell. A spell in which he is constrained in an enchanted state of non-being (a curse) except for brief interludes in which he experiences himself as his real self. A self in which an enchantress has told him is an illusion.
Aslan gives Jill this task. “Far from here in the land of Narnia there lives an aged king who is sad because he has no prince of his blood to be king after him. He has no heir because his only son was stolen from him many years ago, and no one in Narnia knows where that Prince went or whether he is still alive. But he is. I lay on you this command, that you seek this lost prince until either you have found him and brought him to his father’s house, or else died in the attempt, or else gone back into your own world.” (1)
OPEN DOOR
From time to time a door opens to reality as a result of a change in normal life events or a direct intervention by the Spirit of Truth Himself. George had a remarkable experience while undergoing an operation in the surgery. He experienced a vision in which Jesus filled the room and filled his person. Jesus said to George, ‘what you are experiencing now is what is invisible, yet real in your everyday life. Your theologians call it incarnation. John called it Christ come in the flesh. Paul called it Christ your life. ‘You should know’ said Jesus, ‘that your ministry would be far more productive, if you lived from this Reality rather than the activities you call ‘religion.’’
LIFE MINISTERS
The task of every minister of God is to act for Christ to set captives free from lies, from the theft of their inheritance as sons of God and from veils of misunderstanding and deception sown by marketers of constraint and captivity.
‘He has made us competent as ministers of a new covenant--not of the letter but of the Spirit; for the letter kills, but the Spirit gives life’ 2 Cor 3.6 NIV.
MINISTERS OF HEALING
Leanne Payne writes, “We become ministers of God’s healing love and power, therefore, as we learn to invoke the mighty Presence of our Lord, and as we learn to become the vessels through which He ministers in our midst. He can then begin to love the world through us, for we have made ourselves available to Him. His “divine energy,” moving through us who believe (most often when we are the least aware of it), brings life where before unbelief and death have been at work. “To this end I labour,” said St. Paul, “struggling with all his energy, which so powerfully works in me” (Col.1:29).
“To know the spiritual power that St. Paul speaks of is to know the Presence of God among and within us, bringing us into relationship with Himself and that which is other than the self-in-isolation.”(2)
FOR ALL
This ‘presence’ is not for super-saints but for all, for all who believe and step into that which is already here. Without this, the most sincere efforts suffer ‘die back’ and the gifts wilt, because they have no root. Oneness with Christ is the force of the new creation in the post cross age. Incarnation – Christ in you is your real life as a king/priest as a minister of the new covenant. We can enter this or accommodate ourselves to the Enchantment/torpor of seeming normality. Many need to decide if they are going to live in their learned version of the. Knowledge of good and evil or live in the incarnation of the trinity in themselves.
BURST OF LIGHT
There are Christians who are bound in the cords of a bent gospel seeded into them from childhood. “Quick! I am sane now [said the knight]. Every night I am sane. If only I could get out of this enchanted chair, it would last. I should be a man again. But every night they bind me, and so every night my chance is gone. But you are not enemies. I am not your prisoner. Quick! Cut these cords.” (3)
1)Lewis, C. S.. The Silver Chair (The Chronicles of Narnia, Book 6) (pp. 22-23). HarperCollins Publishers. Kindle Edition.
(2) Payne, Leanne. The Healing Presence (pp. 35-36). Baker Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.
(3) Lewis, C. S.. The Silver Chair (The Chronicles of Narnia, Book 6) (p. 157). HarperCollins Publishers. Kindle Edition.
