New Wine, Old Garments

It's a Revelation, not a Seminar!

I was reflecting on a memory from the past today; when I was still in the institution, I remember one Sunday morning going to my pastor after he had finished teaching and saying, “Jerry, I think it would be wise to consider that not everyone who is able to hear your voice and what you are sharing/teaching even understands grace.” He replied, "thanks Rich, you’re right, good point, I will do a series of teaching on that very subject of grace."

I am not sharing this to slight, or defame my brother, he (although the pastor) like all of us simply didn’t see any better than those like myself who had been taught by the ‘blind leading the blind’.

I know confession is good for the soul, even better than chicken soup. While in this vain of thought here, I love how Father has spelled out and made His grace available in the horizontal, relational setting, perhaps an availability to a dimension of grace that will establish us in an increased vitality of mutual love for Him and one another. See here.

I mean no disrespect or wish to be vulgar, but I am so thankful I am NOT a ‘bastard’. The proof of the father’s love is His loving but firm correction, and that is something that cut into me deeply today as I read further into Wayne Jacobsen’s book, ‘The Naked Church’. The following quote is one of many that has my heart in a vice right now.

From page 56 and 57, “Reality demands effectiveness. If we are going to say that salvation in Christ offers people a personal relationship with God, then we had better see them through to it, since this doesn’t just automatically happen. I know many people who have gone forward to receive Christ and who yet continued under a deep weight of guilt, or else they admit that their spiritual life is empty. Abstraction tells them to just press ahead, ignore their feelings and accept their new relationship “by faith.”

Reality cannot accept such a misapplication of theology. How can the King of Glory ride into someone’s heart unnoticed? When I meet someone like that I usually assume that Jesus hasn’t entered his heart-yet!”

It dawned upon me how true this is, when a new born child moves from its warm comfortable house within its mommy’s tummy, being born into the visible world, usually through what must feel like a great violence, there is usually some tell tale sign that it is alive, and that spelled out in crying.
If this is a natural human expression in the physical birthing of a new born child, why should it be any less real in being‘re-born’?

On the heels of Wayne’s wording here, “How can the King of Glory ride into someone’s heart unnoticed,” How can the spirit of God the Father invade our lifeless spirit, infusing it with His life, and there being NO evidence of that reality apart from some person saying, ‘you simply have to take it by faith, you are his.’

The scriptures clearly and succinctly say, see here and here.

I am slowly seeing, discerning, that what has happened from since the beginning of the church’s birthing, that mere mental assent, form, has always been a viable substitute for the reality of knowing Him, the substance of all that is meant to BE real, Him in us as us!
If ever there was a time to evangelize those thinking, believing they are ‘saved-born again’ is today.
I want to dive into so much more that is in plain sight regarding appearances verses substance in later thoughts.
I look forward to hearing from others as well that are seeing what IS real because of the veil having been rent/torn from top to bottom.

Rich