Spend the Oil

In Second Kings chapter 4, there’s an interesting story about one of my favorite radical prophets:

2 Kings 4: A certain woman of the wives of the sons of the prophets cried out to Elisha, saying, "Your servant my husband is dead, and you know that your servant feared the LORD. And the creditor is coming to take my two sons to be his slaves." So Elisha said to her, "What shall I do for you? Tell me, what do you have in the house?" And she said, "Your maidservant has nothing in the house but a jar of oil." Then he said, "Go, borrow vessels from everywhere, from all your neighbors — empty vessels; do not gather just a few. And when you have come in, you shall shut the door behind you and your sons; then pour it into all those vessels, and set aside the full ones." So she went from him and shut the door behind her and her sons, who brought the vessels to her; and she poured it out. Now it came to pass, when the vessels were full, that she said to her son, "Bring me another vessel." And he said to her, "There is not another vessel." So the oil ceased. Then she came and told the man of God. And he said, "Go, sell the oil and pay your debt; and you and your sons live on the rest."

The oil is of course the anointing of God, and we are enjoined to do whatever we can to make room for a whole lot of it: we’re to get many jars, gathering them from the whole neighborhood, and be filled in private before spilling out into the public.

I was at a gathering of believers recently, and we were praying – in response to the prophetic word – for an outpouring of oil, of anointing; the prophet had used this story as an illustration. I was as eager for the blessing as anyone else, and as I stood there, I had a vision of four glass jars standing empty. When they were filled, they would have held at least a gallon of oil each, but they stood empty. Then I saw them from below, as if they were on a glass table, and I saw the empty bottoms of the jars. Then I saw that they were actually resting on top of a large, a huge glass jar, one that would hold thousands of gallons of oil, and it was this jar that was being filled, and The Lord spoke to me that He’s not opposed to filling individuals, but He’s more excited about filling His Body, about filling the Bride of Christ, the Church gathered. The individual anointings might have to wait.

I hear the Lord speaking this to us today, and I hear a couple of specific assignments.

1. I believe that His preferred place of pouring out in this season is on the community, not on the individual. You’ll notice that it wasn’t until all of us “clay pots” came together that the anointing was poured out. It’s not that He’s unwilling to pour anointings on individuals anymore: no, He still loves that. But He’s more eager to pour Himself out on his people gathered, on the community of believers. If we come to Him together, not just as a flock of individuals gathering together in one building on Sunday mornings, but as a community, then we’ll get more of His stuff, and we’ll get it sooner. He wants to bless community. The day of the big guns is over.

2. The prophet gave three commands for what to do when the anointing was poured out:

2a. “Go.” We may get filled up in the private place, but the next command is to go, and that means get out of the private place; given the context, this had to be the marketplace (where else do you sell oil?). We are commanded to go.

2b. “Sell the oil and pay your debt.” The Western church is pretty deeply in debt: we’ve received boatloads of blessings, both material and spiritual, and we’ve not paid much of that investment forward. We must release the anointing to others to pay off our debt. That may mean healing the sick, feeding the poor, or proclaiming the gospel to the lost. Remember how Jesus announced his ministry: he announced how His anointing was to be spent:

Isaiah 61:1-2: The Spirit of the Lord GOD is upon Me, Because the LORD has anointed Me To preach good tidings to the poor; He has sent Me to heal the brokenhearted, To proclaim liberty to the captives, And the opening of the prison to those who are bound; To proclaim the acceptable year of the LORD…

2c. “…you and your sons live on the rest.” We were meant to live to live on the Lord’s anointing. We were never built to live in debt, never designed to live on our own meager resources. We were intended to live on and in the anointing of God.

My advice is to find brothers and sisters to gather with. I don’t think that Sunday mornings – as Sunday mornings generally have been, anyway – qualify for this outpouring. But find people whose heart is like your heart, who share your passions, and gather with them.

And then, in that context, ask for His outpouring, ask for the oil, and look for it: what is He anointing? And when His anointing comes, take that anointing to the marketplace: give it to the people in the neighborhood, in the marketplace, and live on the rest. Find out what’s on God’s heart for your neighborhood, and pour the anointing of God into that move.

And have a blast doing it!

Selah.

Some Thoughts on Regency and Marriage

The church has been aware for some time that God is calling us, His church, out of a slave mentality, and into the fullness of our inheritance as sons, heirs, co-regents with Christ. Some of the scriptural foundation include:

Galatians 3:29 And if you are Christ's, then you are Abraham's seed, and heirs according to the promise.
Ephesians 1:20:…He raised Him from the dead and seated Him at His right hand in the heavenly places, 21 far above all principality and power and might and dominion, and every name that is named, not only in this age but also in that which is to come.
Ephesians 2:6: …and raised us up together, and made us sit together in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus.

The current common understanding is that the time is nearing when we the church will not be begging God as if we were servants, and not persuading him as if we were friends, but speaking to the mountain and commanding – not requesting – that it be hurled into the sea. We’re seated with Christ on His throne at the right hand of the Father, above all of the demonic garbage and all the circumstances that plague us. Our job – the job of anyone on a throne – is to accomplish the purposes of the kingdom we represent by issuing decrees, judgments and proclamations in the name of the King.

This is a world-shaking paradigm shift, really. For centuries, the church has held on to the perspective that the Lord is our master, and we are his servants, that we wait for Him to reveal His will and we submit to that will. Yes, there is a measure of truth in that, but it is stunningly incomplete, and in this season, God is re-emphasizing the royalty of His bride, not her servanthood. (I’d go so far as to say that who we are is royalty; what we do is servanthood.)

The new metaphor is that when we’re joined with Him, when we’re seated on that throne with Him, when our hearts have become one, then He is as interested in our will as much as we’re interested in His. We’ve been waiting for God to take initiative. God waits for the church to take initiative.

Several years ago when the prophets began speaking of this, it met with some resistance in the believers; not so much now: we’re beginning to understand that even if we aren’t there yet, that’s where we’re headed: we’re co-regents with Christ.

(If you aren’t on board with this point, you might as well stop reading now, and go back to whatever you were doing; my whole article today depends on this: we’re moving beyond servanthood to co-regency. We may not be living it out very well yet, but that’s our destination.)

Recently, I became aware that this has significant implications on the “Christian” concept of marriage. Ephesians 5 has been a key passage for defining and understanding the relationship of husbands and wives:

Ephesians 5:22-24: Wives, submit to your own husbands, as to the Lord. 23 For the husband is head of the wife, as also Christ is head of the church; and He is the Savior of the body. 24 Therefore, just as the church is subject to Christ, so let the wives be to their own husbands in everything.

For the last several generations, the church has looked at her paradigm of “Christ is the master; the church is the slave” (or “Christ is the master, and I am the slave”) and applied that to the relationship of husbands and wives: “The husband is the master; the wife is the slave.” We men have softened the blow by declaring that the husband’s job is to serve and raise up his wife through sacrifice, as Jesus did, and it’s true, but we’ve missed the point.

Just apply the new metaphor of co-regency to the relationships between husbands and wives, between men and women in the church. If Jesus really is looking for a Bride that will join with Him in ruling the Kingdom, then we have completely misinterpreted and misapplied Ephesians 5 to the marriage relationship. If Ephesians 2 is true that we’re seated with Christ, then Ephesians 5 would declare that the wife is seated with her husband (not underneath him). And if Ephesians 1 declares that both of us are seated with Christ – no, in Christ – at God’s right hand, which means men and women are both part of the regency: we’re both rulers.

We could go further: we’ve already discussed how in some measure, Jesus is staying His hand, waiting for the church to take initiative. That would suggest, if we will follow His example, that husbands need to step back somewhat in order to encourage the emergence of our brides into the forefront, that male church leadership needs to shut up, and cheer on the women apostles and pastors and prophets as they rise up and take their place. This bride wears army boots: get out of her way, brethren!

The practical implications of this are substantial in both the Christian marriage and in the leadership of the body of Christ. Fortunately I think most of the church has already begun to let go of the old (and occasionally well-intentioned) theologies that kept women out of leadership roles, out of full participation in the family and in the church. Maybe it’s time to become more forceful in laying aside old religious baggage in favor of following God into His purposes for our generation.

So, bottom line: it's time for the women to step out of the shadows and into the limelight, and it's time for the men to help them do that.

In the Gardener’s Care

In Luke 13, Jesus tells a parable of a fig tree. The parable is a warning that we need to be fruitful, and I’ve written about it before. I need to revisit the topic.

It strikes me that Jesus uses the parable to evaluate a single detail: are we bearing fruit? There are probably several ways to measure fruitfulness, but the issues is that either we are fruitful or we are not. (Some people measure fruit in souls saved, baptized or discipled, and others measure fruit in terms of character – the Fruit of the Spirit. I’m not picky: either one is good; the lack of either one is the problem we’re addressing here.)

Let’s think about our fruitfulness. If we aren’t fruitful, Jesus is promising help:

Luke 13:8 “Sir, let it alone this year also, until I dig around it and fertilize it. And if it bears fruit, well. But if not, after that you can cut it down.”

I see three options here:

1) no fruit with fertilizer,

2) no fruit and cut down, and

3) fruitfulness.

Let’s look at each.

Option 1: The Stink of Fertilizer

If we aren’t producing fruit, we can expect a bunch of fertilizer dug in around us for an extended season. I have a vegetable garden, and my wife has several flower gardens. We fertilize those gardens fairly regularly. I don’t know of a single fertilizer that doesn’t smell bad, and some of them are really awful.

Let’s think about first century fertilizer for a minute. They don’t have Lilly Miller or DuPont to make chemical fertilizers. Fertilizer comes from the cows, the camels, and the donkeys. When Jesus digs into your life to plant fertilizer, He’s inserting a bunch of crap into your life. He’s bringing people and circumstances that stink into your life. So the next time you’re thinking “I don’t have to take this sh*t!”: well, yes you do, if you want to be fruitful.

Think about the fruit of the Spirit.

Galatians 5:22-23 But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, longsuffering, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control.

Where do these grow best? Where, for example, does the fruit of the Spirit of longsuffering come from? Doesn’t it grow in places where we have to suffer long? Doesn’t peace grow in places where it’s real hard not to worry? That’s the same for all of the fruit of the Spirit: they grow in circumstances where Jesus has dug into our lives and shoveled in a bunch of crap. Let’s be thankful for the crap in our lives, and for the fruit that it produces.

Because if we don’t develop fruitfulness during the season of crap, our fig tree is cut down and thrown away:

Option 2: Complete Destruction

If we continue not bearing fruit when we’ve had our season of fertilizer, then we get cut down.

I’ve learned something interesting about fig trees: cutting down a fig tree does not kill it. If you need to kill of a fig tree, and you take a chainsaw to it and burn if for firewood,, then next spring, you’ll have sprouts coming up. In fact, the experts say that the stump – even if you cut it down to ground level – will “sucker profusely,” and any one of those suckers can, if pruned carefully, grow into a new fig tree. Any of those suckers can be grown into a new tree, or they can be cut off and transplanted (carefully) to produce several more trees. The process is sometimes called “Rejuvenation pruning.” (“Rejuvenation” means “to be restored to a former state; made fresh or new again.”) This kind of “prune it to ground level” is very drastic, but sometimes the new growth is more fruitful than the old tree was.

If you really want to kill a fig tree, you have to do more than just cut it down. So when the Lord is threatening to cut down the fig tree that is me, He is not talking about killing me, or writing me off, or anything that smells like He’s giving up on me. (This is the guy that said, “I will never leave you or forsake you,” remember?) When Jesus cuts our tree down, he’s allowing complete destruction to come to our life, in order that we ourselves may be saved. This is not a foreign thought to Him: He’s willing to sacrifice anything in order to rescue us.

If I resist bearing fruit, even when Jesus digs into my life to bring the manure of circumstances and relationships that bring fruit, then He allows complete destruction to come to my life, as a last resort, so that I can start over again, and this time, maybe I can be fruitful.

Option 3: Pruning the fruitful branches

As I read this parable, I thought to myself, “Well, I’d better be fruitful if I want to avoid all that nasty stuff.”

John 15:1,2: "I am the true vine, and My Father is the vinedresser. 2 Every branch in Me that does not bear fruit He takes away; and every branch that bears fruit He prunes, that it may bear more fruit.

Sorry. Not gonna happen. If I am fruitful, then I will be pruned. If the tree – or in other parables, the branch – that is me is bearing fruit, then Jesus promises to prune me. Technically, the term is “Pick Pruning”, where each branch of my life is evaluated: should this one be cut or not?

The goal of pruning a fruit-bearing tree is twofold: The first is to produce more fruit, and the second is to improve the quality of the fruit produced.

I live in Washington, famous for growing apples: lots of them, and really good ones. When orchardists prune an apple tree, the goal is to remove the branches that aren’t bearing fruit so that the fruit-bearing branches can produce more apples. The tree consumes resources (water, nutrients, sunlight) to produce more apple tree. Those resources are consumed – in some measure – by every branch on the tree, fruit-bearing and non-fruit-bearing alike. If the tree that is me is spending a portion of those limited resources on non-fruit-bearing activities, then the removal of those less valuable activities leaves me with more time and energy to produce fruit.

Fruit happens in seasons, in our lives, just like in the apple orchards or the fig tree in the garden. There are seasons where the only thing going on is deep inside, like fruit trees in winter. And there are seasons where it’s reasonable to expect fruit. The goal is not to be producing fruit every day, but as we make our way through the seasons of life, we have regular seasons where we’re producing fruit.

Choices, Choices

We could look at it this way: if I’m fruitless, I get His spade, digging His fertilizer (which I call “crap”) into my life. If I continue in fruitlessness, I get a chainsaw. And if I choose to be fruitful, I get Heaven’s pruning knife.

So make your choice: do you want a sharp knife working in your life, or a spade full of manure, or a chainsaw?

Personally, I’m beginning a season of fruitfulness right now. I like it; it’s certainly more fun than the dead of winter. But because I’m making fruit, I can look forward to a season of pruning, and I’m really looking forward to it. I feel like my life has way too much stuff in it, much of which takes energy away from the fruit of making disciples and the fruit of character. I’m looking forward to the Wise Master Gardener examining each branch in my life and making a judgment call: does this one stay or does it go? I need some stuff to go.

Heart’s Desire

It would be easy enough to look at this as “something God’s doing to me in order to accomplish His plans for me” and feel backed into a corner. Most of us (the healthy ones among us, anyway) prefer to avoid pain when we can.

But think about it: who among us aspires to meaninglessness? Who wants to look back from the end of their life and boast, “I had absolutely no effect on anyone!”? If we were to look at fruitfulness as God’s issue for us, as His plan for our lives, that would be correct, but it would be correct only because it’s really our own heart’s desire. One of the most desperate searches of any human being, and that would include you and me, is the search for significance; God is – yet again – making plans to fulfill the deepest longings of our heart.

How Do I Avoid Troubles?

So given that we’re facing three painful options, how do we go about avoiding hurting in this process?

The short version: Give up. You can’t. Any way I live my life, I’m going to find that God is doing something toward the goal of making my life count for more than it does now. If I bear fruit, I get pruned to bear more. If I haven’t borne fruit for a while, I get manure dug into my life so that I can bear fruit. If that doesn’t work, he cuts me off at the ground and takes one of the branches that grows up from the roots in the spring to train into a new tree, and the process starts all over again.

It seems to me that the “pruning” of fruitfulness is a lot less troublesome than is “cut it off and start over” of fruitlessness. But that’s not really the main reason I want my life to be fruitful: I have a Master Gardener who loves me. I want to please Him. I want to introduce others to His faithful work. I want Him to say, “Well done, good and faithful servant” not just to me, but the ten thousand wild fig trees that I’ve introduced to His masterful care. And I want the fruit from my branches to feed thousands of others who need nourishment.

Oh yeah, and His pruning knife hurts less than the chainsaw. That’s good too.

Growing in Authority

I’ve been thinking recently about some of the various levels of authority revealed for believers in the New Testament. I’ve found three: Servants, Friends and Sons.

· Servants beg favors from their masters. They have confidence that their master has the capacity to answer, but often have serious questions about whether the master has any inclination to answer.

· Friends make requests of their friends. They have confidence that their friend can meet the need, and they know that if properly encouraged (or nagged), the friend will stir themselves to meet the need.

· Sons issue commands from the family’s authority. They have confidence in their authority, and in their ability to back up that authority with power if necessary.

For years, most of the church has approached God from the perspective of servants begging favors from their master. We’ve begged God to answer our prayers, and like Dorcas’s friends, we try to justify our requests. “You need to do this for them [or me or us] because they [or I or we] have earned it.” We very seldom put it in that vocabulary, but that’s been the way we’ve prayed. “It would be so great if Suzie got saved because she could ….”

We know how to approach God as a servant. We’ve practiced servanthood, extolled servanthood, and prayed from a servant’s perspective for centuries. We’ve preached servanthood, and I think it’s been appropriate: we are not born as servants; we’re not born again with a servanthood instinct.

A servant’s life is pretty much without responsibility, doing whatever comes to the master’s mind. The servant is the guy that hides behind the curtain waiting for the master to snap his fingers and command him. Servants often love their masters, and certainly we’ve had a Master who is easy to love.

But servanthood is not where we belong today. It was a good revelation in times past, and it was necessary. But we learned that lesson. We need to move on.

We followers of Christ have talked about the fact that – theologically – we already are sons; we just need to exercise that authority. That’s true, but we don’t live in that revelation yet: I don’t know a single person who walks in the authority that our big brother and example Jesus did. Sonship is still a theory, albeit a good and true theory, and it really is where we’re headed.

But we’re not there yet. We’re on the road there, and we can see it around then next bend, and we’ll be there soon. We are right to look forward to it and to talk about it, provided that we don’t miss the place that we’re passing through now.

Right now, most of the church is just beginning to really walk in the friendship mode with God. A friend (where we are arriving) is not the same as a son (where we’re going ultimately), and it’s also substantially different than a servant (where we’ve been).

Jesus, of course established this friendship relationship: “14 You are My friends if you do whatever I command you. 15 No longer do I call you servants, for a servant does not know what his master is doing; but I have called you friends, for all things that I heard from My Father I have made known to you.” (John 15)

The friend takes a measure of responsibility in the relationship; a servant does not. A friend takes personal initiative as well as responding to his friend’s wishes. Friends don’t always drop everything when their friend says, “jump” like a servant does for his master. A friend may help us do the things on our heart, or they may try to talk us out of it, though they care deeply for their friend’s needs.

As a friend, we might say things that a servant never would. Things like “Hey, let’s do this. David did that. So did Mary. Sometimes, our friend might say, “Nah, let’s do this instead.” He did that to Paul.

A brief rabbit trail: since God is not a single personality, but three, I believe that we’ll find that we’ll have three relationships: our relationship with Father will be different than with the Son and different still than our relationship with the Holy Spirit. Personally, I find that my relationship with Father is (surprise!) a fathering relationship: comforting, affirming. My relationship with my Big Brother Jesus is a challenging one, like relating to my Captain or to a mature apostle who knows and likes me. I rather enjoy my relationship with the Holy Spirit the most: perhaps because I can’t figure Him out I have the fewest limits on what I expect in that relationship. I don’t know. I do know I relate to them differently.

So how shall we respond to the friendship of God? I offer three suggestions:

1) Acknowledge the friendship. Talk with Him as a friend. Talk with each aspect/person of God. Share your hopes and disappointments with Him. Find ways to have fun together. (Yes, that’s allowed!) He loves your time together more than you do, you know!

2) Take initiative. Make suggestions. “Hey, Jesus, somebody ought to do this. Why don’t we do it?” “You know, Father, I’ve always wanted to try this. Do you think we could do it together?”

3) Listen to Him. Ask Him what’s on His heart? What are His hopes and disappointments? What would He like to do today? Does He have a better idea of how to do that thing you’re thinking about? Real listening usually involves asking a question and waiting for your friend to answer. Yeah, I know: it sounds “religious” or “fake”. But just because other folks do it wrong, doesn’t mean you have to be weird about it.

Now one final warning before I wrap this up: we are not leaving the place of servanthood behind as we move into the place of friendship. We take it with us. We are His friends, and we need to live like it, but we are still servants of the Most High King. And when we begin to inhabit the place of sonship, we still won’t give up the place of servanthood, nor the place of friendship.

But it’s time that we stop living as if we were only servants. Let’s build a friendship with Father, with Jesus our Brother, and with the Holy Spirit. And then let’s let our friend reveal to us what it means to be a Son.

Pastors and Other Consultants

I think by now we’ve figured out that it’s the saints (that’s us) who are responsible for doing “the work of ministry.” We all have the responsibility of continuing the work that Jesus started before He left.

Does that mean we’re all the same? Heck no. The Bible certainly recognizes different gifts and even different offices. Individuals with different gifts are instructed to use those gifts. Individuals with different offices have a different instructions. (Watch out: the apostle Paul is famous for run-on sentences, and this one’s a doozie!)

Ephesians 4:11 And He Himself gave some to be apostles, some prophets, some evangelists, and some pastors and teachers, 12 for the equipping of the saints for the work of ministry, for the edifying of the body of Christ, 13 till we all come to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to a perfect man, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ; 14 that we should no longer be children, tossed to and fro and carried about with every wind of doctrine, by the trickery of men, in the cunning craftiness of deceitful plotting, 15 but, speaking the truth in love, may grow up in all things into Him who is the head — Christ — 16 from whom the whole body, joined and knit together by what every joint supplies, according to the effective working by which every part does its share, causes growth of the body for the edifying of itself in love.

There are five offices: apostles, prophets, evangelists, pastors and teachers; sometimes they’re referred to as “the five-fold ministries” simply because there are five of them. Look at the job description of this group:

· Equipping the saints for the work of ministry.

· Edifying (building up) the body of Christ

· Bringing us all to unity in the knowledge of Christ

· Bringing us to maturity, etc.

Some preachers point to their sermons as the fulfillment of this passage, and indeed a good sermon can both equip and edify a congregation. But wait just a doggone minute: who’s supposed to do the “work of ministry”? It’s the saints! That’s you and me! The job of the pastor (and the rest of that team) is to equip you and me to do the ministry. Think of the Fivefold (pastors and prophets and the rest) as consultants, not as the “ministers.”

Some years ago, I worked for a medical company. We were growing pretty quickly, and the medical field was changing fast, so we invited a consultant in to help us develop the business in light of the changing circumstances. The consultant never did do any of our work for us, but he did help us to prepare for the work that we needed to do: he taught how to do it better and more efficiently, he showed us how to make sure that what we were providing was what the community needed and the insurance companies were willing to pay for.

The five-fold ministries are like that consultant: they don’t do the ministry, they equip us to do it. It’s not the pastor’s job to do the ministry, it’s his job (or her job: we’re not sexist here) to equip you and me to do that work. His job is consulting. Our job is ministering.

(By the way, some groups have been teaching that apostles and prophets went away ‘way back then, with the canonization of scripture or something. Get over it. First, they’re here until “we all come … to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ.” I don’t see that happening just yet. And if apostles were supposed to be gone, then so are pastors and teachers.)

I don’t care if the person with the title is on the payroll of the church organization or is just (“just?” as if this were less??) the leader of the home group. His job is to equip and edify you and me. It’s our job to do the work.

That means it’s our job to visit the sick and imprisoned. It’s our job to teach the young believers and to discipline the rebellious ones. It’s our job to collect the offerings from the saints and distribute it to the needy. It’s our job to discover, develop and deploy our gifts.

This might be “preaching to the choir” given the radical nature of those who read this blog, but it’s still worth reminding ourselves of. If we have a title, an office, then our job is to train others. And whether we have a title or not, it’s our job to do the work of the ministry.

So let’s be careful to stop looking to leaders to do our work for us. Let’s look around and pick up the work that He’s put before us!

A Season of Grace

Many times recently, I have seen people in ministry (and “in ministry” may mean senior pastors, or it may mean believers who encourage other believers) who are motivated in ministry by serious character flaws. I’ve seen people wounded in the realm of rejection and fear of failure take leadership positions. I’ve seen people wounded in insecurities ministering in intercession and resentment manifesting in worship and “hands on ministry” applications.

Often there’s been this flavor of “I’m going to make up for these feelings of insufficiency by taking a leadership role where I can be in control!” Or “I want to make sure I keep my position because when I have the position, I’m a somebody.”

That’s never (well, hardly ever) the whole story. Usually, there’s a sincere “let’s expand the kingdom” motivation in there with the misguided stuff.

And yeah, those are wrong motivations. However, I believe that this is a season where God is emphasizing grace. I see His grace showing in leadership issues, in holiness or purity issues, and in relationships.

In leadership: I have seen this pattern over and over recently: His leaders, His servants have flaws showing, and yet He tenderly covers them, cuddles them, and still uses them to the degree that they (we) are able to be used. So it’s not like He’s rejecting the wounded, He’s covering them and using them and inviting them to be healed.

In some ways, this reminds me of Noah, after the adventure of the Flood.

Genesis 9:20 And Noah began to be a farmer, and he planted a vineyard. 21 Then he drank of the wine and was drunk, and became uncovered in his tent. 22 And Ham, the father of Canaan, saw the nakedness of his father, and told his two brothers outside. 23 But Shem and Japheth took a garment, laid it on both their shoulders, and went backward and covered the nakedness of their father. Their faces were turned away, and they did not see their father's nakedness.

We have a complicated role here. On the one hand, we are to act as Shem and Japheth and cover the nakedness of our leaders: it is not our job to point out their failings, but to fill in where they’re weak. At the same time, it’s not appropriate to excuse sin, or to be content with immaturity. We need to call each other to a higher level of …, well, of God-likeness. We need to encourage ourselves and each others to be more like God, more like Jesus, than we have before.

In purity and holiness: I believe that right now, God is extending a grace to see His people healed. There are believers – both long-time and new believers – who have had wounds in their soul or their spirit, and God is healing those.

There are people who have wrestled with sin – whether pride, control, pornography, gossip, or addictions – and I believe that right now, God is open for business right now to heal those besetting sins, to free us from those bondages. It’s not like He’s unwilling to do that in other seasons; He’s just emphasizing freedom right now.

One of the key areas where He’s setting people free in this season is in the realm of freedom from religious bondages. There are a lot of people who are deciding that “enough is enough!” and are moving out of “churchianity” into a real relationship with Jesus; some are having to leave their churches to do it.

In relationships: I believe this is a season when God is offering healing in relationships as well. It will require as much humility as any thing else (which is to say, a lot), but if we are willing to pursue Him in this, we’ll find healing in our marriages, in our working relationships, between church leaders and the flock being led.

That last one is worth emphasizing: too often, we’ve settled for inadequate or inferior relationships in the church. Too long, we’ve been willing to tolerate manipulation, or leaders who need to control, or who need constant affirmation that they’re valuable. It’s a season where God is granting a greater grace on healing those relationships.

This “greater grace” is not about, “God’s going to fix it while I sit here like a bump on a log.” The grace He’s giving is to approach the “unapproachable topics.” It’s the grace to “speak the truth in love” as we go to people and offer to help them through the tough things that they think they’re hiding, but the whole rest of the world can see. It’s the grace to receive gracefully those who come to us about the plank in our own eye that we’ve never recognized.

My encouragement is to take advantage of this season: firstly, as we examine our own lives. What is there in my life that I need the grace of God to heal? Then, after we’ve examined our own lives, we can go to our brothers and sisters, and ask, “can I help you with this?”

Assumptions

Assumptions
When we look at a problem – heck, when we look at anything – we make certain assumptions. But which assumptions I make are determined by who I believe I am, and who I believe God is, and my choice of assumptions will very substantially affect my life and my trust in God. I need to be aware of my assumptions and I need to make careful and intentional choices with them.

For example, if I have lived with poverty all my life, then when I find $20 in a pair of old pants, then I’m likely to find a $20 want and spend it on that. I know other people whose first assumption is “Cool! Who can I give this to?” And there are people, or so I’m told, who immediately deposit the money in the bank. (I don’t know many of those people.)

And when I look at a problem – take my family budget for example – I make assumptions, but I have a choice which assumptions I make God. I have a couple of sets of data, and sometimes they disagree. I need to be thoughtful about which set of data I believe, which data I assume to be true.

We can look at the numbers on the paper (or in the spreadsheet, or in the checkbook….) and we can accept those to be the definition of reality. And certainly, there’s a level of reality there. Sometimes, though, that data, that view of reality, conflicts with another reality that I say I believe. The other data includes statements like “And my God will meet all your needs according to his glorious riches in Christ Jesus.”

And thus the war begins.

Looking at my bills, I can see that I have certain needs, and looking at my paycheck, I can see that I have certain resources to meet some of those needs. But this new set of data, the data from Heaven, say otherwise: God promises to meet all my needs. But my paycheck promises to meet some of my needs. Which one is true?

That’s an easy question to answer in theory. “Of course the Bible is true.” But so often we live as if the Bible’s truth is limited to “spiritual subjects” or “under certain conditions” or “for those people over there,” or some other limitation. Sorry. Not allowed. Either the Book is true, or it’s not.

This is exactly what I mean by “assumptions.”

We often assume that the problems are true, and therefore if the Book doesn’t line up with that “truth,” we make excuses for God. I think that’s a mistake. I am coming to believe that God is true even though the data that I see with my eyes doesn’t line up. In other words, I’m coming to believe – and this is a great and terrible shift for me – that God is more true than my experience. It’s a battle of worldviews, really. Which view of my world is real?

So I look at my financial need, and I look at the promise of God, and one or the other has to give. I must challenge my own assumptions about my financial need. In this example, the first assumption might be about what is a “need” to me. The second might be how I have handled the provision that He’s given me. (The phrase “Don’t eat your seed” is beginning to make sense to me.)

Another illustration: The book says, “By this all men will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another.” So if “all men” can’t tell that I’m a disciple, then we have another battle of worldviews. It has to be one of three things: either a) God’s word doesn’t really mean what it says, or b) I’m not living up to “love one another” properly, or c) I don’t know how to tell whether all men know that I’m His disciples.

I’m going to simplify this: these are those 3 options, stated as principles:

a) God is a liar and His promises are not true (let’s not sugar-coat this one!), or

b) I haven’t fulfilled the conditions: I’m not holding up my end of the bargain, or

c) God really is doing His part, but I am not seeing it right for one reason or another.

But we live in a fallen world, not an ideal one, so there are actually two more options, but they’re hard to deal with:

d) things happen that are not God’s will (they're someone else's will), and

e) “I don’t know.” (That is a valid answer, you know.)

Let’s get option D out of the way quickly, and I need to be direct here, because there’s a spirit of stupid that gets on us sometimes: Not everything that goes on in this world is God’s will. I hear people tell me in times of difficulty, “Well, it must have been meant to be…” It makes me want to scream, “Do you really think that the God who sent His only Son to die for you would give your child cancer? Engage your brain, you yahoo!” Let me say it again: a lot of what you and I experience is NOT God’s plan for us.

So if my experience doesn’t line up with the promises of God, there are five possibilities. Option A above – that God’s promises are not true for us – is the one that so often we think of first. Since that is the explanation that is has been whispered into our ear since Genesis chapter three: “Did God really say….?” We assume that our experience is true, and if that is true, then anything that disagrees with our experience can’t be true. That, of course, is unbelief in full flower, and it seems that it requires a fair bit of pride for to declare that my perception is more valid than God’s promise.

It seems that when I encounter stuff that doesn’t line up with what I believe God has said, that I need to ask two questions that come from the book of Acts: “What does this mean?” and “What must I do?” And if we’re serious about the questions we ask, we need to be willing to hear any kind of answer in reply. It’s hard to lay down my assumptions and approach the challenge with an open mind, but it’s necessary.

An illustration: I was part of a church planting team in Canada years ago, and we were experiencing strange things in the church when spring came, so we went to prayer. “God, what does this mean? What are you up to? What do we need to know?” We heard Him saying, “Get ready for great change this summer.” Unfortunately, we didn’t know to ask “What do we need to do?” so we went with our assumptions: God will finally answer some of the prayers for growth. That assumption fit the facts that we knew but it was not reality. That summer, the church fell apart and died, and we left the country with our tails between our legs.

One of the most difficult aspects was that we had expected such great good, because of our assumptions, and what we encountered was a great trial: seven years of brokenness. Looking back at that season, it was very easy to say, “God, you failed us!” (option a) when the reality in this case was options c, d, and e: We weren’t seeing it right (I can’t tell you the blessing He brought through this), we were the victims of some activity that was NOT God’s, and ultimately, we really didn’t know the whole story, and we still don’t, and that’s OK.

So back to the family budget. When my checkbook challenges the truth of God’s word, I have a choice: I can accept the assumptions that tell me to believe my checkbook, which is leading me to be anxious and worry. Or I can assume that God’s word is true; it tells me that He is my provider, and that I can trust Him. (It never promises, however, that I’ll figure out all of His ways!) I choose Him, even if it means that I must not believe my own experience.

I choose to believe Him, especially when I want to believe me!

So here’s a suggestion: Pray this prayer: “By virtue of my authority as an autonomous human being, made in the image of God with a free will, I choose to never (insofar as I am able) assume that God is a liar or that His promises have somehow failed me when I don’t understand my circumstances. God, please help me to see the truth of each situation I’m in, and to recognize Your hand in every circumstance.”

Imaginary Entities

We deal with a number of people and institutions that don’t really exist. I’m sorry, but it’s true.

Think about the emails that you may have received from Nigerian princesses needing help getting a few million dollars of their money out of a corrupt African economy, and they needs your help and are willing to share their wealth. I hate to be the one to break the news to you, but there is no wealthy Nigerian princess in such dire straits. That’s a hoax.

Or what about Santa Claus? Millions of American kids write self-centered letters to Santa and leave cookies and milk by the Christmas tree every year. But regardless of how “real” he seems to them – or to the toy advertisers who sponsor his TV shows every winter – there is no jolly, overgrown, philanthropic elf with flying reindeer living at the north pole. It just isn’t real.

There is another imaginary entity with whom most of us relate. These groups can be found on a map, and you really can visit their offices or call them on the telephone and they will explain in patient detail how real and how important they are in your life. And unlike Santa Claus or Nigerian princesses, these groups do have legal status under our government (which in my case is American), but they seem to have no legal status under their home government (which is not American). But despite their protestations to the contrary, these, too, are not real.

I’m talking about your church. But then, I’m talking about my church too.

For clarification, I am not talking about the Body of Christ on this planet, or in this community, which Jesus referred to as His Church: His Church has a legal foundation in Heaven, which is its home government. The Church (capital C) was established by Jesus who called it “My church”. He seems pretty proud of it.

The Bible acknowledges (and therefore authorizes) the Church in many places, fifteen in the NKJV. Maybe half of the time, the Book acknowledges “the Church of God” but the rest of the time, it’s talking about the part of the Church in a city. I live in a city called Olympia, so from Heaven’s perspective, there is a “Church of the Olympians” or “the Church of God in Olympia.”

But here comes the challenging part: I’m not convinced there is any heavenly authority behind the autonomous congregation or the Christian denomination. There is no heavenly acknowledgement of “First Baptist” or “the Second Church of the Sunday Brunch” or any other local congregation. From Heaven’s perspective, there are no congregations, no denominations: just His Church. (By way of acknowledgement, there is likewise no heavenly foundation for other “Christian organizations”: missions agencies, or Christian radio stations, or “Evangelistic Associations”.)

I am absolutely not saying that any of these groups are ungodly or unbiblical. Most are not. I am also not saying that such organizations are evil; in fact I am very happily a member of a couple of these imaginary organizations. I am just saying that I’m becoming increasingly convinced that these organizations are not established by God, or by Heavenly authority. (Yes, I’ve heard the stories about God helping someone establish this group or that work; that’s not what I’m talking about here; there are exceptions to every generalization, and I am aware that I’m making generalizations; please read them as such.)

In point of fact, I believe that many churches (and many other Christian groups) are very much good things: they are tools to facilitate the work of Heaven. Human beings have from time to time, over the last couple millennia, looked at the very daunting task laid upon them by Divine mandate. And then they’ve panicked and they have cried out to God and come up with tools to accomplish those goals, and it’s wonderful how God helps us with those tools. People gathered can always accomplish more than individuals scattered.

(Have you ever wondered why there are so many “First Assembly” and “First Methodist” churches, and so few “Second Presbyterian” or more honestly, “Ninth Baptist” churches?)

But when we make the transition from “This congregation is a tool to help us as leaders to shepherd the people of God” to the perspective of “If you’re not part of a local Sunday morning congregation, then you are outside of God’s will,” or worse, “If you’re not part of this congregation….” then we move at least into error and perhaps into heresy. When we declare, either verbally or by our attitude, that “Members of this group are better [or “more spiritual” or “more biblical” or whatever] than Christians who are not members of this group,” then we are in danger of judgment. I’ve even met congregations and denominations that say, “If you’re not part of our group, you’re not even saved.” I’m sorry, but no.

Is there a benefit from being part of a gathering of believers? Absolutely! Heck yes! But that doesn’t necessarily mean I must be part of a “Sunday morning church” gathering. Whether I’m part of a church congregation, a home church, a “parachurch” group, or whatever, there is much benefit for me to gain from associating with the gathered Church. Christians gathered are God’s plan; Christians isolated are part of the enemy’s plan, like a wolf isolating a particular sheep. My goodness, Christians gathering together is even commanded. Heaven acknowledges no such thing as The Lone Christian (“Hiyo Silver Away!”).

Think of it this way: in the OT, the entire nation of Israel was blessed. Every tribe carried the blessing of the nation. It didn’t matter if you were in a big tribe like Judah, a little tribe like Benjamin, or a special tribe like Levi: if you were a part of a tribe, any tribe, you were part of the blessing. We need to be in a tribe to get all of the blessing God is giving out. Christians must gather together in order to function properly. Don’t let this article be an excuse for you to cut and run!

But that doesn’t mean that the gathering that we call “my church” is any more valid than any other gathering of believers in our city. That’s true whether “my church” is a country church with 50 people, a mega-church with 10,000 people, a denomination with several million adherents, or a Thursday afternoon gathering of four like-minded saints praying together at the coffee shop. We are the church, and wherever we gather with other believers is church, and mine isn’t any more holy, or any more recognized in Heaven, than yours. (I’m not talking about places where the people who you’re hanging out with happen to be believers; I’m talking about us gathering – as believers – for the purpose of being the Church gathered.)

The Book is clear that those who have been redeemed, those who know God through the work of Jesus, are first “the Church” and second are “saints.” (Have you noticed that “saints” is pretty much always plural? Ever wondered why?) We’re still “the Church of Olympia,” not “First Glory Pentecostal Methodist Church.” If I don’t consider the First Glory Methodists as much my brothers and sisters as my own home group leader, then I’m believing in things that Jesus doesn’t believe in, and I’m excluding people that my Father welcomes and loves as much as He loves me. Big mistake!

I probably should point out that I don't aspire to tell the whole story here; sure there are other perspectives on the subject. But over the last several centuries, we've told only one side of the story. My goal is not to find the ideal balance between multiple perspectives and declare it; I don't want these articles to be that long or complicated, and frankly, I don't think I'm qualified to say, “Thus and such is the right balance.” My goal is just to push the pendulum the other way a little bit. “Balanced” is not my goal; maybe “counterbalance” is.

My point is this: a local congregation – as separate from other believers in my area – is not a concept that Heaven has particularly authorized, not a concept that Heaven has mandated or supports. It was at best a tool for Christian leaders to shepherd a flock that’s too big (or too unruly), and at worst, it’s an abuse of Jesus’ beloved fiancé.

This is a big paradigm shift for us, and the implications are significant, but they’re beyond the scope of this conversation. Right now, I just want to wrap my mind around the concept that I am part of this thing called The Kingdom of God. I am part of the Church in Olympia, and we represent Heaven here! My membership in a particular congregation or a home group or any kind of gathering of believers is strictly a convenience to help us – the Church – carry out our responsibilities for expanding the Kingdom.

I’m part of His Church. I like that.

Which Covenant Are You Under?

Christians would tell me, “Don’t go in that store, it’s evil!” like any evil of the place would jump out and grab me or something. Admittedly, the store in question was making good money promoting witchcraft and druidism and other things that are completely contrary to the gospel. But their wide-eyed “Don’t go in there!” unsettled me. I’ve been trying to understand.

First, I needed to come to grips with a truth that I have sometimes overlooked: sinners sin. The proprietor of the shop (I’ll call him James) is a nice guy, and he plays the didgeridoo better than anybody I’ve ever met. He doesn’t know the love of God, though he has told me, in all seriousness, that he’s “pledged his troth” to Thor. He’s a nice sinner, but he’s a sinner. So it shouldn’t surprise me that James is drawn to sinful things. He makes a good business off them, so I assume that there are a number of folks in our town who are also sinners, and who also sin. That's what people do when they don't know forgiveness. Let's deal with it.

There is room for the question, “What is the appropriate response of Christians toward sinners?” but I digress. I want to examine the concept of whether the “evil” of James’ shop is a danger to me, a saint of God.

The Old Testament teaches me that there are a bunch of ways to become unclean, and one of them is to touch anything or anyone that is unclean. For example, did you know that being dead makes you unclean, and anybody that has to touch your dead body will be unclean for a week. Leprosy is another example: You catch this, and you’re unclean for life. (Unless you get healed, but of course, nobody hardly ever got healed of leprosy.)

Worse, if you’re unclean, you can’t minister before God. If you ever do, you “shall be cut off from my presence” declares the Lord. Uncleanness is a big deal: God is holy, so we need to be holy if we want to hang around Him. It’s not like we’re going to make him unholy (ha!), but more that we’d get blown up if we showed up in His presence when we’re unclean. It’s a big deal, and the command is not just for our good, it’s for our survival!

So my Christian friends were trying to protect me when they warned me not to visit James’ shop. They were afraid that I’d become unclean from contact with the uncleanness of his store. Well, I appreciate their concern, but I’m not sure I want to live under that particular covenant. Those are all Old Covenant arguments, and are very important for someone living under the old covenant. I’m not living there.

Jesus was the embodiment of the new covenant. His words are words of the new covenant, His actions, actions of the new covenant. So if evil can get on me from unclean things, then I should be able to see that principle at work in Jesus, right?

So what did Jesus do when He came upon a dead person? He touched them and raised them to life. He touched them! How about the lepers? Same story: Jesus touched them and healed them. The pattern is repeated in the apostles. And unlike the OT, in the NT, I’m commanded to come into His presence!

So there is a huge difference between the Old Covenant and the New Covenant, and the New is better. In the Old, when a godly person touched an unclean thing, the unclean trumped the godliness and godliness did not overcome evil. But in the New Covenant, the presence of God in me trumps evil.

So what does that mean for my life?

First, it means that I don’t need to be afraid to visit James’ shop. I’m not going to get jumped by the spirit of witchcraft on his sacred herbs or whatever. Heck, Jesus hung out with sinners, didn’t he? Did that make him unholy?

More, I see this as a New Testament extension of an Old Testament (or Old Covenant) promise: “Every place on which the sole of your foot treads shall be yours.” So now, I carry the presence of God with me, and everyplace I go, godliness trumps darkness, light shines in darkness and necessarily overpowers it. When I visit James’ shop, I leave footprints of the Kingdom of God behind me. When I visit with him, I leave something of the presence of God with him.

Now for the sake of clarification, this does not mean that I should be spending my time hanging out at porn shops and liquor stores and dens of iniquity. Specifically, if I have had trouble with porn, I’m not going to be submitting myself to the strongholds there; if I’m a recovering alcoholic, I’ll avoid the bars, not because I’m afraid of being touched by the uncleanness there (though the uncleanliness of their kitchen may be an issue), but because I’m not going to submit myself to temptation.

So no, don’t go looking for sin, don’t get cocky about darkness. But neither be afraid of darkness; someone else’s sin is not going to be a danger to me unless I’m not walking in the Presence of God. Let’s live holy and invade the darkness! How in Heaven’s name will they learn about the light if we don’t bring it to them?

Lessons From Philemon.

The book of Philemon (the last page before Hebrews) is a short letter with a big lesson for God’s revolutionary leaders today.

A little bit of background: Philemon, the guy the letter was written to, was a fairly wealthy Christian in the city of Colossae two thousand years ago. The book is a letter to him, from the apostle Paul, and about someone else: a slave named Onesimus.

Onesimus had belonged to Philemon, before he ran away from his master, which was a capital offense in those days. The moment Onesimus left, Philemon had the legal right to kill him as an example to the rest of the slaves in the household, so returning home was pretty much not an option for Onesimus: he’d burned his bridges; if he ever went home he’d be heading to the gallows.

Some time later Onesimus was arrested in Rome and thrown into jail, where he met Paul and of course Paul introduced him to Jesus. Onesimus gave his life to Christ, and Paul began – in the Roman prison – to teach him about the ways of the Kingdom. And as Onesimus grew in his understanding of God and His ways, he understood that he needed to go back to Philemon and make things right, even if it cost him his life.

Paul is a Onesimus’ spiritual father, and Onesimus is really helping him. Roman prisons are pretty ugly places (think medieval dungeon) and Onesimus – who was out of prison by now – is serving Paul, bringing him meals, relaying messages from believers outside, and generally making life bearable. But Paul sends him back to his rightful owner to resolve the issue of his crime of running away.

This letter went with him, a greeting from Paul to his brother Philemon, and it included some instruction for Philemon for this reunion. In the midst of that teaching, Paul reiterates how useful Onesimus has been, and he instructs Philemon on how to receive Onesimus (“…that you might receive him forever, no longer as a slave but more than a slave—a beloved brother.”). But he leaves the ultimate decision to Philemon. “I could order you to receive him, but I’m leaving the decision in your hands.”

There are two lessons here for today’s Christian leaders. (Please understand that I’m not talking about professional pastors; I’m talking about believers who lead or influence or mentor other believers, though that will include professional pastors.)

1. The people that minister with you or to you are not your people. They belong to another Master, and we need to be completely free with them; we must welcome their service and we must release them freely when their Master calls them to another place, regardless of what it costs us. Hopefully, we’ll send them to their next assignment as more equipped and able servants than when they came to us.

2. There are times when we know the answers better than those whom we’re mentoring; we understand what they need to do better than they do. And sometimes, we could functionally order them to do the “right thing.” But we must resist that! We must give them the freedom to make the decision for themselves, even if (even when) their wrong decision could hurt them and us. We can advise them; we can instruct them, but we cannot – we dare not – make the decision for them, else we make them dependent on us, not on Him. And woe unto us if we make someone dependent on us!

This was a tough lesson in Paul’s day. You can tell he really wants Philemon to make the right decision; Paul calls Onesimus “my own heart”; he really loves this guy, and he knows that he’s putting Onesimus’ life into Philemon’s hands, and if Philemon chooses what his world demands, what is legal and expected, Paul will lose a good friend, and the Kingdom of God will lose an important leader. But still Paul leaves the decision to Philemon. He still sends Onesimus back.

The Bible doesn’t tell the rest of the story, but church history does: Philemon did receive Onesimus back, and he went beyond forgiving him, and he freed Onesimus from his slavery. And Onesimus went on to become the apostolic leader over the church in the city of Colossae.

We can trust people to make the right decision, but even if it’s difficult, we still must make that choice: it’s their decision, let them make it, even if they make it wrong.