Healing in a Christian world of disarray
Man was made to live in God’s presence, in the Garden of Eden, and ever since Adam and Eve were ejected, independently minded and fallen mankind has been trying to make do.
God made us to be dependent upon Him, to walk in divine health, not be sick, or depressed, or sad, or know death, strife, grief, turmoil. Through Israel He proposed a covenant whereby if they would hearken diligently to His voice, He would make them a showcase people, a model nation, and great and abundant blessings would come upon His people as a testimony to all – and as an offer to all to come join them, and thus join God.
God is so good! He is love. He cares for us. He knows how He made us, and it is not His will that we should be out of sorts in an environment for which He did not make us.
Just as an eagle would be unhappily out of its element if its wings were clipped, and it had to forage in the mud for bugs and small things it could catch, or a lion would be if forced to live in a zoo, and fed only vegetables, so is man forever out of sorts until he comes to God.
Today the church is the expression of God’s best environment for humans. That is, the church Jesus would build, based in the fullness of the apostles’ model – which itself is solely dependent on Christ Jesus by His Spirit to lead, and empower each member.
As members, male and female, our holy calling – and it is also an honor and privilege that the Most High God would give us such grace – is to find out who we are in His Son, Christ Jesus.
God created diversity of life, diversity of roles between the sexes, and functions, and each person stands to bring glory to Him, and is by this glorified with His glory, and it is God’s good pleasure that this should be so.
In the absence of a Spirit-led church in the fullness of Jesus’ mind’s eye, even sincere Christians are forced to make do. That conditions exist of compromise, defeat, lovelessness, faithlessness, darkness posing as light, and mediocrity are not God’s will. They are certainly Satan’s doing, who millennia ago and to this day set men to using their intellects above revealed truth, and not holding fast to the Head, Jesus.
Under such sub-optimal conditions, the best we who desire all of God can do is allow God to do what we might call damage control. It is plan B, not plan A. God’s plan A was that the fullness of the meaning Jesus had in mind when He said “I will build my assembly.”
As individual sheep, we are called to die to ourselves. Jesus is the solution to our many woes, and indeed a dead person cannot be hurt in ways that one who is yet walking in the vanity and self-serving of the natural man.
But this is not the end-all, be-all. A sheep is made to be in a sheep shed, with like-minded friends, love, other things God knows, and the Great Shepherd known, and over all.
God also made us to fellowship one with another. Each of us was to have the same Spirit residing within – tempering our thoughts, desires, behavior, aspirations, and all.
Heb 8:10-12 For this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, says the Lord: I will put My laws in their mind and write them on their hearts; and I will be their God, and they shall be My people. 11 None of them shall teach his neighbor, and none his brother, saying, ‘Know the Lord,’ for all shall know Me, from the least of them to the greatest of them. 12 For I will be merciful to their unrighteousness, and their sins and their lawless deeds I will remember no more.”
Of course, God being love, would shed abroad His own love in us, that we could finally fulfill the command to “love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind, and with all thy strength,” and “thy neighbor as thyself.”
In the absence of that, we sheep yet suffer lack. We as God’s creatures are still not in the proper environment that God foresaw when He said He would build His church marked by love and unity, and all good things as a bulwark against darkness.
So to be clear – if we yet feel sorrow or pain under such things is it only because we yet covet, or are in idolatry, or have not yet died to self? Maybe. That is possible, but even if one has died to one’s self, equally possible is we suffer lack because we yet do lack in God’s estimate!
Matt 23:37 – O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, thou that killest the prophets, and stonest them which are sent unto thee, how often would I have gathered thy children together, even as a hen gathereth her chickens under her wings, and ye would not!
The old testament foreshadowed the new, and Jesus – who asked “when the Son of Man returns, will He even find faith in the earth?” – knew even those in the New Covenant era could so falter.
It grieves God’s heart! He gave His all for us. He gave us His best!
What will be the excuse at the Great White Throne Judgment for neglecting so great a salvation?
God did not make men and women to be alone, isolationists, free agents, independent, but calls us to lose ourselves in Him, and love one another as He loved us.
He also did not call us to have “a form of godliness that denies the power thereof” which is an insidious and sneaky counterfeit of Satan.
Many know this. Many lament over it. Many think they know what God’s remedy is. In general, they may know much truth, but the actual specific remedy starts with obedience to the voice of God. God’s revealed will is in His Word, rightly divided, and His own direct leading which will be in harmony with what was already written.
God’s mission today is the same: that the Bride make herself ready, that every joint supply, that Christ have the preeminence in all things, no matter how confused people are, or how willing to settle short they are in their blindness as they insist they see.
To we who want all of God and live in these sub-optimal conditions, we are yet called to embrace what we can of God’s revealed will. We ought to pray, and pray, and pray, and let God refine us despite less than ideal conditions of division, worldliness, carnality, and imitation spirituality.
We also may serve as God leads in Christ’s Spirit as those dead to self, and our own hurts – some of which are not invalid. For indeed, God made us for more than to be doing spiritual triage in a bombed-out desolate war zone giving glee to Satan, and grieving the heart of Love.
Here is a principle: Obedience will never be fulfilled by disobedience. God, who works in all things, will yet work according to His overarching mission as He sovereignly sees to form Christ in us.
2 Cor 10:6 – and being ready to punish all disobedience when your obedience is fulfilled.
The above verse is less often quoted in the famous verse of Second Corinthians on spiritual warfare, and casting down strongholds. Paul is more often remembered for saying he prayed and his “weapons of our warfare” were not carnal but “mighty in God for pulling down strongholds, 5 casting down arguments and every high thing that exalts itself against the knowledge of God, bringing every thought into captivity to the obedience of Christ,”
Yes, obedience and not holding to “thoughts,” or “arguments,” or worshipping high places even in ignorance are needed, said the apostle to the carnal Corinthians. When their obedience was fulfilled, he said God was “ready to punish all disobedience,” and otherwise set things right.
God made life. He made us a certain way. We each must find out who we are in Him as new creatures, and embrace that as our very life, and ultimately, as in service to the Lord who loved us, gave Himself for us – and to whom all obedience is due.
To those who are wise, may you seek the Lord by His Spirit, and know He has given you all things that pertain to life and godliness.
He has not left us orphans. You are not alone.
John 10:10 – The thief does not come except to steal, and to kill, and to destroy. I have come that they may have life, and that they may have it more abundantly.
This is God’s will. May we obey in all things by His grace that God’s full will may be accomplished.
He alone is the builder of the house. Our job is just to let Him work through us.
May the Lord bless you!
