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The Door to the Future is in our Past
Allow me for a moment to challenge your perspective, your concept, your
understanding of the word “church.”
For
most people, “church” has come to mean either a building, a denomination,
or a program. I believe God has something else, something greater in mind
when He uses the word.
A
while back God began to talk to me about changes that the church needed to
make if Christians were to make a viable difference in the world we find
ourselves surrounded by.
As
my understanding of those changes developed, the Holy Spirit brought a truth
to my
heart that I didn’t fully comprehend: He illuminated this statement: “The door to the future is
in your past.” Immediately I thought of “the church of the Book of the
Acts.” That’s what we often refer to when we talk about a true, New
Testament church. We examine Acts 2:42-47 to discover the ingredients of
that church and try to apply them to our own experience and then wonder
what we’re doing wrong when we don’t see three thousand or five thousand
people born into the Kingdom in our meetings.
Part
of the reason we can’t find the success we seek is that we tend to look
for patterns, for systems and programs, for concise mathematic equations
whereby if we do “A”, “B” and “C” we will get “D.” There are church groups
that tell leaders "Develop a first class children's program, produce first
class music and preach no more than fifteen minutes on positive subjects
and your church will grow." Unfortunately and all too often, our
definition of "growth" differs greatly from God's definition. God cannot be reduced to a
formula or a recipe. What worked for one generation didn’t work for the
next generation. Look at the history of the church: Each generation was
required to find God for themselves and to discover His direction and to
hear His voice for themselves and for their unique generation..
As I
contemplated that statement - “The door to your future is in your past” I asked
God for understanding. He said, “You have to go all the way back to Genesis to
understand.” I turned to Genesis chapter one and read,
In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. The earth was
without form, and void; and darkness was on the face of the deep. And the
Spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters. Then God said,
"Let there be light"; and there was light.
(Gen. 1:1-3).
Allow me a brief commentary:
?
In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth... All that
exists around us, and every law and principle that provides for all things
material and spiritual to exist were created by God. Man had nothing to do
with any law, principle, truth or reality that enables the physical world
to function. All things, everything inclusively existent were made by God
without the assistance or the existence of man.
?The
earth was without form and void...
In order for God to “rebirth” or “restore” His church, we must come to a
place of complete and total reliance upon Him. Any idea we have, any
vision or concept of what the church is must come directly from God and
not from our own experience, education, or from our own minds or souls.
God must be the single source of direction, counsel, instruction and
illumination if His Emerging Church will indeed be the church Jesus said
He would build. We must offer ourselves to Him “without form and void.”
?
And the Spirit of God was hovering over the face of the
waters.... It is the illumination and the inspiration of the Holy
Spirit that gives life. We have relied on tried and true methods; we have
learned from the examples of previous generations; we have absorbed the
teaching of college professors but we have so seldom emptied ourselves of
ourselves, regarded all our earthly understanding and learning as “dung”
and with the Apostle Paul declare
“this one thing I do, forgetting those things which are behind, and
reaching forth unto those things which are before, I press toward the mark for the prize
of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus.”
?
Then God said, Let there be light; and there was light. “Then God
said...” it is up to the Father and His timetable to arrive at the “Then”
moment of time when we will understand the nature, the make-up and even
the purposes of His church, this “New Wineskin” of which Jesus spoke. We
cannot determine the timing; we can only move when heaven’s timepiece
rings. “Then God said, “Let there be light...” Only when God reveals the
light do we see. There is no artificial light source; no earthly beacon
that can shed light on and uncover what cannot otherwise be seen. Until
God turns on the lights, there is darkness in the house. But when God
speaks forth His command, light appears; understanding comes;
comprehension is made easy.
We
are moving into a new, untrod realm of experience in Jesus and in the
church. God is not finished with the church, but He is finishing with His
cooperation with pseudo-church, the bastion of religion and the mixing of
the fleshly with the spiritual. He is not only demanding, He is enabling a
generation to “come out from among them and be separate” and to inhabit
and comprise “a
glorious church, not having spot, or wrinkle, or any such thing; but that
it should be holy and without blemish.”
This is the church
that I see emerging from the counsels of heaven; this is “the church of
the Latter Rain, the
Temple more glorious; the
church of the living God against whom the gates of hell cannot not
prevail.”
God is calling out His people; a remnant who desire more than religious
atmosphere and high, holy-sounding rhetoric. God is assembling an army of
warriors who will storm hell’s gates and prevail against the enemies
schemes. Heaven is sounding the trumpet call for volunteers to join that
army and become the church that will stand, faultless around His throne,
a Bride adorned for her Husband, Jesus.
The doorway to the future is in our past; all the way to the
beginning; the Genesis of it all. Emerging
Church 5 |
