No Ordinary Thaw

I was absolutely floored to find out today that buried in some of Martin Luther’s writings, as far back as 1526, he was of the opinion and thought that the only real church was that which was not publicly celebrated where any pagan off the street could come in and “participate” and “go through the motions” and no one would ever know.

But instead, Martin Luther advocated the same kind of life for those living in his 14th century as what was practiced in the 1st century. That is, as in Acts 2… “Daily in public and from house to house” where everyone was bound together by sacred oaths and who had no need of pomp or fluff or traditions of men where a “religious show” was put on. But rather that men would gather together spontaneously, on their own (because they truly were born a second time and weren’t merely responding to en event on the calendar where anyone can “show up” for a few hours and “look good” — but an actual kind of life that not only would allow those truly born from above to recognize the merely religious and the pretenders, but that they should do something about them.) A place here men were taught to “obey all that [Jesus has] commanded” and not just passed along “information” about God.

He said that the only reason he didn’t follow through on living that way was (1) he didn’t see the kind of leadership (ie. Ephesians 4 giftedness) to pull it off, and (2) because, like in today’s world… he didn’t see anyone around who really wanted to live that way.

Check this out. Some comments are in order since the translation into English is a little archaic and the idioms don’t quite carry over:
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Recently revealed, personal thoughts of a once super rich and famous person, “adored” the world over:

I know there are a million people worse off than me [and] that I should do all that I can for them, but at the end of the day I have to live with myself [and] emotionally at the moment I am upside down [and] confused (so boring for those around me) [and] putting on this act is desperate, but if it keeps people off my back then surely it must be worth it. (emphasis mine)

Just an interesting perspective when the enemy uses all the electronic media at his disposal to “convince” us that the grass in greener if we were just rich or famous or a movie star or… This person had everything at his/her disposal, practically, and anything he or she could have ever wanted. This person’s desperate death in a desperate search for love while running from way more than the people who were chasing him/her at the time proves otherwise.

Always good for me personally to hear, so I thought I’d pass it along.

I was shown this full page ad today that someone recently took out in a New Zealand newspaper:

Dear Christians: I am a Christian, and I am going to be real with you.

Brothers and sisters, “Christianity,” as our experience and history show, is a lie. [He simply means that what we commonly call "Christianity" today... isn't. Not that the Truth of Christianity itself is a lie, but simply how it's being expressed and represented as God's Heart and Mind... is a lie.] Jesus’ kingdom is not of this world, and He prayed that all His followers would be One. God answered Jesus’ prayer… but since Acts something’s gone seriously amiss. Jesus said a divided kingdom would fall. Christianity’s history proves its nature: competing for members, money, power and prestige using worldly methods and systems and measuring success against worldly standards. This is not Jesus’ Kingdom any more than its 10,000 schisms equal One Faith. This is not “one love, one mind, one heart, one accord.” This kingdom is Babylon and her daughters. King Jesus isn’t schizophrenic.

The Old Testament foreshadowed our times. God raised up many saviours to Israel: Joseph, Moses, Joshua, David, Solomon, Hezekiah, Josiah, and Zerubbabel; but upon each of their deaths the people fell away. The apostles of Jesus guided their generation, but upon their deaths the people fell away. For those with ears that hear, the last eighteen centuries correspond to Israel’s Babylonian captivity, at the end which God called His people back home to Jerusalem. He is calling His people home again today. That stirring energy deep inside — if you feel it — what is it?
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From a recent email encouragement and book excerpt:

What was the “church life” like in AD 30-70? It was identical, really, to the “disciples’ life” during the last three years of Jesus’ physical existence. That experience of intimate fellowship had simply been transplanted geographically to the cities and villages of the Roman Empire.

According to Luke, the gospel that he wrote described what Jesus “began to do and teach” (Acts 1:1). The book of Acts, then, was what Jesus continued to do and teach, after His ascension. This time He was “doing and teaching” through His people, the ekklesia.

First century believers, then, saw themselves as continuing the life that the earliest followers had enjoyed with Jesus on the hills and highways of Galilee and Judea. They were still His spiritual family, “seated in a circle around Him” (Mark 3:34). They still hung on His every word. They still built their lives on the foundation of putting those words into practice. Acts 2:42-49 is really only a description of several thousand people putting Matthew 5-7 into practice together.

The “religion” of Christianity is in truth only meant to be the “religion” of Jesus. It is nothing more — and certainly nothing less.
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If nothing else, you should see the incredible video attached to this at the end, but…

I’ve been contemplating a thought for a while now. Deeply disturbed for years at the prevailing views so easily foisted upon us by the enemy — so quick we are to cry “foul!” and to approach so many things with a “What’s the big deal?!” posture… Surely we are not to live anxiously or with some kind of unhealthy paranoia. But yet at the same time, a more healthy suspicion of our world would go a long way. The problem really seems to ultimately lay in the cost that is associated with sacrifice which our flesh inherently detects and rebels against.

For those interested in antidotes against these kinds of things — “[we fight] with weapons of righteousness in the right hand and in the left” stated Paul (2 Corinthians 6:6 NIV) — I’d like to offer one: Eternal Perspective. In fact, the context of that entire passage in 2 Corinthians 6 is all about Eternal Perspective because there is no way Paul nor anyone else would undergo all of what is mentioned in that passage without it.

Eternal Perspective is one of the greatest weapons against what the enemy throws at us. What is Eternal Perspective? It’s essentially seeing things just as God sees them. From the perspective of time, God is able to stand back and look down on time. He sees the past. He sees the present. He sees the future. According to Ephesians 2, “we’re seated with Christ in the heavenly realms.” Anyone who sees and experiences this as a Spiritual Reality is properly positioned to see time as God sees it. We should be able to “step back” and view past history applied to the present with some discrimination and see the future with anticipation and hope as a result of how we view the past and the present.

What does this mean? What’s the application? For one, it should help us with many things that the world, which has been “blinded by the god of this age” cannot see nor if they could would they accept. The picture that Hollywood paints is accepted. The “cultural norms” of today — and this could be any of a myriad of things concerning dress, modesty, morality, what is called “arts and sciences,” what is presented to us as “professional” or “expert,” etc. — are generally accepted as they are presented. What was considered immodest in 1920 is laughed at today. What is considered normative from the standpoint of celebrations, holidays, shopping, books, entertainment, games, technology, etc. is always presented as right and okay and innocuous.
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The “Letting Go” or “Let Go” theme has been a major emphasis in my personal life for the last year and God has worked in huge and “hard” ((to the flesh) ways all year long on this. I got this in my inbasket just as I was about to pull out the book Let Go and read a little bit more from it this afternoon before some chores. I don’t know if God could highlight something any better even if He came down and spoke audibly to me. Just slapped by it:

I do set my bow in the cloud, and it shall be for a token of a covenant between Me and the earth. (Genesis 9:13)

It is the Will of God that human beings should get into moral relationship with Him, and His covenants are for this purpose. Why does not God save me? He has saved me, but I have not entered into relationship with Him. Why does not God do this and that? He has done it, the point is — Will I step into covenant relationship? All the great blessings of God are finished and complete, but they are not mine until I enter into relationship with Him on the basis of His covenant.

Waiting for God is incarnate unbelief, it means that I have no faith in Him; I wait for Him to do something in me that I may trust in that. God will not do it, because that is not the basis of the God-and-man relationship. Man has to go out of himself in his covenant with God as God goes out of Himself in His covenant with man. It is a question of faith in God – the rarest thing; we have faith only in our feelings. I do not believe God unless He will give me something in my hand whereby I may know I have it, then I say — “Now I believe.” There is no faith there. “Look unto Me, and be ye saved.”

When I have really transacted business with God on His covenant and have let go entirely, there is no sense of merit, no human ingredient in it at all, but a complete overwhelming sense of being brought into union with God, and the whole thing is transfigured with peace and joy.

-Oswald Chambers (emphasis mine)

The whole history of the Church is one long story of this tendency to settle down on this earth and to become conformed to this world, to find acceptance and popularity here and to eliminate the element of conflict and of pilgrimage. That is the trend and the tendency of everything. Therefore outwardly, as well as inwardly, pioneering is a costly thing.

-T. Austin-Sparks

Here’s a very small excerpt of something I read 22 years ago while in college that literally changed my entire life.  And therefore the lives of our entire family.  It totally changed how we viewed “church,” God, Jesus, His Will and Purpose for our lives and the lives around us…  We’d never really considered that the pattern of “the early church ‘did this’ so we need to ‘do this’” or “monkey see, monkey do” was not anywhere CLOSE to what God wanted.

Here’s something to think about: You can study what other people have done for years, but that doesn’t make you who they are. Painting the picture of some city or country far away from here doesn’t put us in that country. To be able to paint a portrait in the minutest detail of what the city of Jerusalem or the landscape of Galilee or any other place looks like doesn’t mean that we’re there.

This is the dilemma we face as we pursue the nature of the Church. To study in great detail all that they were, to know what they knew, even to believe in what they believed in, does not make us the people that they were. The people of God’s Church have substance, integrity, and a pure attitude of the heart. They are characterized by a unique perspective and priority system. Our lives are either hidden in Christ — or we just “know about” being hidden in Christ. We are either full of the Holy Spirit and wisdom, or we simply study people who were.
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This Psalm has been making the rounds lately. When Susy showed it to me the other day, I thought it was breathtaking:

1 I will sing of your love and justice, Lord.
I will praise you with songs.
2 I will be careful to live a blameless life –
when will you come to help me?
I will lead a life of integrity
in my own home.
3 I will refuse to look at
anything vile and vulgar.
I hate all who deal crookedly;
I will have nothing to do with them.
4 I will reject perverse ideas
and stay away from every evil.
5 I will not tolerate people who slander their neighbors.
I will not endure conceit and pride.

6 I will search for faithful people
to be my companions.
Only those who are above reproach
will be allowed to serve me.
7 I will not allow deceivers to serve in my house,
and liars will not stay in my presence.
8 My daily task will be to ferret out the wicked
and free the city of the Lord from their grip.

Psalm 101 NLT

I think sometimes we think that Jesus was “so accepting” of everyone. “Jesus didn’t hurt any feelings.” Wow. Look at what David wrote. Think of some of the situations he probably put himself in by living that way as expressed in Psalms 101. Do you think he ran across “well meaning” people whom he ended up rejecting because they in the end didn’t want to give up some perverse way? Jesus didn’t go around coddling people’s feelings either. I’m writing none of this to say we need to be “mean” to anyone. Jesus wasn’t a “mean” Person either. But He was serious about some things. He was serious about sin and leaven and He asked us to be too. David… a man after God’s own heart… was serious about sin. He was serious about what he allowed his eyes to see and his hears to hear even to the point of pre-determining the kinds of people he would even allow in his presence. This wasn’t a “good ol’ boy” who just “got along” with everyone. Do you think that had anything at all to do with God saying, “Here’s a man who mirrors my own heart.”

There’s a lot to consider here. :-) I know I’ve been considering it. There’s some cleaning up here to do. In work relationships, for example. I’m going to do it.

And CHECK OUT how David decides he’s going to be spending his energy in verse 8… WOW. Sounds a lot like Matthew 6:33 and Ephesians 5:8-14, doesn’t it?! Crazy good, breathtaking stuff.

Another quick “your time is your most valuable asset” thought I saw on another web site today. Just a simple thought, but goes right along with how much this is making an impression on me lately per a recent Tweet. Seems like a thread God’s got me on lately:

Act Now!

Now! Now is the time. It’s the only time-block within your control. The future is too big to get your arms around. The past is over. You can learn from it, but you can’t change it. All your opportunity is centered in the NOW. With the very next block of time you have in front of you, you can store up treasure in Heaven. You can make a vertical heart connection; or a secret, unseen, non-flashy act of kindness for a brother or sister. Now is the time to act. Your Now is the ONLY time you can act. You can’t do anything tomorrow, yet. : ) You can ONLY act now. “Today is the day of salvation” (2Cor. 6:2).

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