Part
2 of this series details how Satan gets us to believe lies about
ourselves, our purpose, our life, how his lies become truth to us, and
then how to un-believe those lies. This includes how the enemy gets us
to do things we don't want to do, the process of agreement with the old
thoughts or with God's thoughts, the comfort zone known within those old
thoughts and risk of thinking new thoughts, and how to bring thoughts
captive to the obedience of Christ. It is about the time involved in the
process of becoming transformed by renewing the mind, and how to walk
it out in victory! (2 cd/MP3, $12/set or MP3 $10)
There are new recordings online from Johns conference this fall. He
teaches on ways God speaks to us, as well as a Q & A time about
house church.
You
may manage your subscription (change email, un-subscribe, etc) by
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Hi all,
"We love you Americans, we really do. But you're all a bunch of liars!"
I
was shocked to hear this from the wife of one of the international
Bible school students, her husband nervously standing by with a roll of
his eyes that said 'Oh please be quite dear let's go' in his eyes, but
her tone wasn't condemning, more like frustrated. She had baited me so I
bit: "What do you mean?"
Softly
now, to make her point: "We admire the American way of life, your
freedoms, you know - conquer the west, follow your dreams, be anything
you want to be - we can't do that in my country. But you are all liars.
You say 'I'll call you next week' or 'Let's get together for lunch' or
'I'll call you', but you never do!"
Looking for the right thing, but...
She
was looking for genuine relationships in church and had no idea that
just a little while later the Director of Music for a mega-church would
sit in my office and express the same desire using different words; "I'm
surrounded by people here at church, but I'm all alone. I don't have
any real friends and no one really knows my wife and I. What do I do? Is
there anyone real out there, without an agenda for using me or
manipulating me? Are there any genuine friends in church?"
Both
these couples, who became good friends of ours I might add, were
searching for something the structure of the way church has been done
the last 1700 years isn't designed to do: Promote relationships.
Why the IC (Institutional Church) is the way it is
Jethro
watched his son-in-law Moses, settle disputes and answer questions from
the people to the point of exhaustion. He told him in so many words
that he needed to create the infrastructure for the Federal Government
of Israel - the newest nation on the planet, born a few days earlier
when they had walked across the temporarily dried up Red Sea.
"Set up
captains over 1,000's, and 100's, and 50's, and 10's, and let them
handle the small stuff so you only have to deal with the upper leaders
and problems too big for the lower captains." (Exodus 18:17-26)
Moses
did that, and the Federal Government of Israel was born. In that same
time frame the priesthood for temple government would be established on
the same principle, with a High Priest who presided over lesser ranks of
priests, down to still lower ranked priests and eventually down to boys
in training to be priests. (Samuel, for example)
The church adopts Moses' Federal Government structure
Flash
forward to about 300 years after Pentecost - It is the year 313 AD, and
Emperor Constantine legalizes Christianity, calling believers out of
their home based meetings and into former pagan temples and their pews,
establishing the system of Moses for the new auditorium style meetings
of 'church'. The body stopped being the church and started going to
church. By necessity one gift became elevated, the pastor/priest, and
'captains' of lesser rank were established over the people.
Thus
the 5-fold, deacons (servers), helps, gifts of the Spirit, motivation
gifts like exhorting and giving and organizing and all the other
graces, were pulled out of the context of scripture which was the home,
and made it fit into the auditorium - and it has been that way for 1700
years. That's why there are so many books on this program or that,
because God designed home based meetings but man lifted it out of the
home and put it in an auditorium. Man has been trying to fit that square
peg in the round hole ever since.
What changed at Pentecost, and how church was for 300 years
In
Exodus 19 God came out of eternity and down to the mountain to talk to
Moses, then moved into the newly constructed Ark of the Covenant,
residing between the cherubs to commune with Moses there. Some 400 years
later David still knew Him as 'the God who lives between the cherubs'.
He then moved from the tent of David into Solomon's temple with such
glory the priests lost their strength as the bright cloud of His
presence filled the temple. (Exodus 25:21-22, 33:1-11, II Samuel 6:2, II
Chronicles 5:7-14; 7:1-3)
From
that point on God lived in the Holy of Holies in the temple in
Jerusalem - that's all Israel and the world knew for 1,000 years. That
is 1,000 years of knowing if you wanted to meet with God, you had to go
to the temple in Jerusalem, and you couldn't meet Him directly, it had
to be through one of His priests, the chosen few who were in ministry to
God. The rest had 'secular' jobs.
That
all changed on Pentecost, for that same God who came out of eternity to
meet Moses on the mountain, Who came off the mountain to live in the
tabernacle's Holy of Holies, who still lived between the cherubs 400
years later in David's time, who moved with glory and fire into
Solomon's temple when they brought the Ark of the Covenant and His
manifest presence into that building - on Pentecost He moved into human beings! Human beings became living temples of God!
Paul's revelation
Paul
'got it' that we are now the temples of God and wrote continually about
the realities of that fact, but nowhere is he more to the point that
Colossians 1:25-27:
"...God is revealing the riches of the glory of this mystery among the Gentiles, which is; Christ in you! - the hope of glory."
Christ in us!
When people became living temples of God, it made the temple
building irrelevant, not needed, an archaic expression of a previous
time. God had revealed a mystery - He couldn't move into people who were
sinners, so He had to recreate their spirit by His Spirit, then He
could move inside them and they could be walking, talking, portable
temples for Him, taking Him and the knowledge of Him and His ways over
the face and breadth of the earth!
The consequences of Christ in you
This is a major consequence of Christ in you: You can stop doing things to impress or move Him; you can now start walking with Him.
Christ
in you means no formulas are needed. He lives in you so you don't need
to shout - He is not hard of hearing. You don't need to pray for an open
heaven, Christ is in you. You don't need to put a specially anointed
square of cloth under your pillow for 7 nights straight and then send it
and your best offering to brother so and so he can pray for you.
You
don't need to drop $100 on the platform of x speaker to get God to
answer your prayer or give you that breakthrough you need. You don't
need to be afraid of the devil - not only is Christ in you, you've
received both the authority to use His name and also the power of the
Spirit as well - just command demons to flee, and they do.
It
means there are no special days of the week to worship on, for Christ
is in us 24/7, so every day is worship day. It means I can give freely
to those in need, to leaders, to help others according to how Christ in
me and my heart are directed.
It
means there is no such thing as sacred and secular because Christ in me
makes all I do and all I am, sacred. From my job to my home to my
computer - I take Christ with me to work, to play, 24 hours a day, so
all is sacred. We all have sacred jobs. We are all in ministry because
Christ is in us.
The other side of the coin
It
also means I am personally and instantly accountable to Him who resides
in me. It means I have part of His personality in me, and every other
brother and sister in the Lord have part of His personality in them,
therefore being in relationship with other living temples becomes my #1
priority in how I worship. I am so eager to see what He is doing in
others, to see Him in them, I love to be around them in real life,
through the ups and downs, the defeats and
victories.
It
means we are all equal, the apostle and giver of a cup of water to a
child, for we are all saved by the same blood - the only difference is
our function in life and the body of Christ. Christ in me means I am
free to be myself as I continually grow in Him, taking every challenge
in life and relationship to ask, 'How can I grow more in Him through
this?'
It
means - I can swim in the open ocean, no more tied down to an aquarium,
but schooled together with other 'fish' of the same kind, for Paul said
there is neither Jew nor Greek, bond nor free, we are all one in
Christ.
Righteousness
comes through faith in Christ, but it is unproven - anyone can say they
are a Christian. God has designed that the proof of our righteousness
be manifest in relationships, and those start in the home just like it
did with Adam, Eve, and the Lord in the garden - where 2 or more are
gathered, He is in their midst - why? Because He lives in them both!
And that raises the question for next week in a new series...until then!
Blessings,
John Fenn
Remember to use cwowi@aol.com for email to me
No, I’m not telling you to stop attending church.
I am not against “House churches.” I love house churches, and I love house church people.
