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I loath labels, tags applied to anything pertaining our relationship with God, but for conversation sake I will have to use them.
One of the things I see that have been more and more visible is man once again getting his grubby itching fingers all over what God alone is doing. Some might refer to this new understanding of our Father’s heart activity as a “grace awakening” unfortunately I see the same old thing, the naïve, gullible believers being seduced and funneled into a cause, a movement, rather than simply allowing the Father to BECOME the ruling reigning true parent to these being awakened to his grace!
Haven’t we all had enough of being brought up under the tutelage of surrogate and foster parenting?
Wasn’t it a very similar scenario with Paul in his broken heartedness over the church in his time, “Who has bewitched (charmed) you.”This staring out was the direct intervention of God almighty in their re-birthing and then slowly and subtly drifting away from their birth-right to continue to grow in the grace and true knowledge of their loving caring Father. Their true heart felt affections were being redirected toward religious mind sets beginning to once again carefully observe the rudimentary elements of touch not, taste not, and so much more.
The religious mind is convinced that without their assistance simply allowing God the Holy Spirit to reveal and make Jesus Christ real to them is much akin to believing in magic or osmosis.
I’m convinced that anyone messing with His own is about to experience the wrath of His grace, and when and where it will be applied, please understand it will as in all things BE for their own personal freedom as well.
Rich
4 comments:
Oh, my goodness, no! I would not want to be the one caught doing the messing!
Richard, I think the problem is, the "naive, gullible believers" are institutionalized. We all were, and still are on some levels. Do you remember The Shawshank Redemption? The old prisoner finally gets released and promptly offs himself. He was institutionalized, just like us. He couldn't make it "on the outside."
I spoke with a woman in her fifties this past summer at a friendly neighbourhood barbeque. She is "in ministry", has grown up in the church, and truly loves Jesus. She made a comment at one point in our conversation that she had peace about her "wayward" son, who wants nothing to do with God, because she realized that God has already chosen who will follow Him and who will not and there's nothing she can do about it.
I waited until she was about to head out and then stopped her to say, "can I just challenge you on something you said? You said that God has already chosen who will say "yes" to Him and who will follow Him. I don't believe that's the truth at all..." to which she replied, with tears in her eyes, "but that's what we've always been taught."
The terror of the perceived darkness that lays beyond the walls of the institution is sufficient to keep the majority of believers tucked safely inside. There is only One big enough and loving enough to coax them out the doors.
J.
Janna,
I appreciate your thoughts here very much, thank you.
One of the first things that came to mind in reading what you said was, how many times did Jesus say, "it has been said, or you have heard, but I SAY unto you."
Apart from all of the religious trappings, take that all away, where is He in relation to us as his sons?
What we call (and I have written extensively about this)institutional organized church or any number of well meaning descriptive words are but a shadowy verbage that never goes to the root of what and who that is pointing to imo!
IN all of us, in our flesh lies the father of lies-religion, long before there was any sucking us into any form of religious activity, he the liar was there in wait, slowly continuing to groom and seduce us all into having at best but a form of godliness, but missing the power of His experienced Love and life apart from any and all performance based activities!
As a matter of fact as a side note here Margi is in the thick of writing her first book dealing with so much more of this subject matter. It has much to do with the Jesus-freaks-Jesus people which we were a very real part of, and how she sees what happened to us all then is happening allover again today in light of what many are dubbing 'the grace movement.'
This is a conversation that I longingly look forward to in having with others not as a pet theory or project, but trusting that our Father will do what He does best out of being loved, continue to set and make us free as he lovingly exposes our own hearts. Freedom is a revelation of the One who is calling us out of that which looks like freedom, but in fact is just a cage!
My last 2 entries on my blogs touch on this in more detail, I am very interested in hearing from those Father prompts to want to delve into extended thinking out loud.
Janna,
Another thought that came to mind in processing this conversation is this, The Grace of Wrath, it is an article from Christianity Today, can't even remember now how I came across it, but it imo ties in with our conversation.
http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2008/may/23.64.html?start=1
The truth Christ Jesus said, "if you continue to follow me, you will know the truth, and the truth (Christ and His love for us) will set-make us free."
The truth isn't mine or yours or any of our so called truth unless it is embodied in Christ the Truth Way and Life of the Father!
Apart from revelation none of us will know or experience that reality, but his invitation is open to who ever will.
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