What Was God’s Original Idea?
As a followup to last week’s post I wanted to explore how God speaks of His Church in scripture and how different that Church is from the church concept of today. This concept, in my opinion, having been offered even during the times of Acts. The serpent was there in the garden, there’s always a serpent in the garden. So while God is building His Church, satan is feverishly creating the copy-cat to mimic God’s original idea and true vision.
The Church is The Body, Living and Organic
First of all, I’ve mentioned various times the scriptures indicating that no constructed building is the dwelling place of the Holy Spirit. But in fact, we are the temple in which the Holy Spirit dwells. (1 Corinthians 3:16) I’ve also shown that no man will build God’s Church, but that He will write His laws on our hearts, not in ritual form and formality that humans undertake as religion.
The Holy Spirit also testifies to us about this. First he says:
“This is the covenant I will make with them
after that time, says the Lord.
I will put my laws in their hearts,
and I will write them on their minds.”Hebrews 10.15-16
God is not Religion. He is a living being, the Holy Spirit is a Person, and Christ is the risen living King, the Son of God. His word is living and active. We aren’t dealing with a dead letter. So then, if He writes the living word on our hearts, in our souls, that living word transforms us and we become the Church. We don’t travel to church. Alas, everywhere we go the Church goes with us because the Spirit indwells our physical bodies.
In reality, we just can’t assimilate this so we outsource it to a building, push it away, we reason that God is in that church at the corner of Rose and High Street. Because if He is in me……what does that mean for how I act and think, for how I carry Him within?
Stealing the Basketball
Now if the Church then is within my heart and all believer’s hearts, and God dwells within me so that I am His temple, then there is no more separation. And this, in fact, is why Christ manifested, to rejoin, to reconcile God with man. Sin no longer reigns in our bodies but Christ has redeemed us and since we are now cleansed and have the righteousness of God in Christ Jesus (2 Corinthians 5:21), the Holy Spirit indwells us, not a physical temple constructed by the hands of men. Instead, we are the living, organic temple of God. We have His power not unlike how Christ had His power:
Truly, truly, I say to you, whoever believes in me will also do the works that I do; and greater works than these will he do, because I am going to the Father.
John 14.12
Which is easier to take from me? The basketball I’m bouncing in my mind, or the basketball I’m bouncing in this third dimensional space? Do you think the devil was going to let ‘Christ in you, the hope of glory’ just spread without any bounds? He had to contain what Christ unleashed on the Cross, to seize it and bring it back under his control. He’s referred to as the Prince of the Air. He couldn’t offer Jesus all the glory of the world and its riches if he didn’t have the ability to turn them over.
So he stole God’s original idea and brought it back into this world as a dead building. One which he could easily control if need be, just look into the life of Bonhoeffer and you’ll understand. Even during Covid lockdowns we saw how easily it was to close the doors on the physical church buildings and keep the Body separated. Let’s face it, it is easier to take a physical thing from someone than a deeply held thought or belief. And so we have Satan’s Cuckoo Chick in God’s Nest.
God’s Heart for the Poor
I just finished reading a book call God’s Heart for the Poor by Philippa Stroud. I had the privilege of hearing her and other prominent voices speak earlier this year at an ARC conference in London. The Spirit of God was present when she spoke, it’s like a reflection that is familiar, (My sheep hear My voice) and so I wanted to know more.
There are books that teach us and encourage us, books that challenge us, and books that wreck us. For me, this book was one of the most difficult I’ve read, not in the arrangement of words, but because it places you in the uncomfortable seat of the person who’s given up their life to God in the service of others. A surrendering of the will to something more important: God’s heart for the human race He created.
I wish I could describe it more poetically but it’s simply too difficult. To peer into this radical abandonment and surrender of ourselves in service to others is terrifying. The book lays out what the Church should be doing if we want to emulate Christ in the earth. It troubles me, convicts me and moves me to tears.
This book for me describes what God’s original ideal for the Church truly is. It’s not flashy and pretentious. Nor is it filled with glorious art and architecture or beautiful stained-glass. Its wardrobe isn’t the finest of garments with golden goblets shiny and clean on the outside. On the contrary, it’s what God’s glorious Church should be; helping those on the fringes of life, alcoholics, drug addicts, violent individuals, unkempt and often using foul language – the uncomfortableness of it all! This book wrecked me. What Stroud documented was the emulation of Christ, of our pursuit of God’s original ideal Church:
We started regular Friday night outreach meetings that October, and soon forty or so needy people crammed the kitchen at Clarendon Street – sprawled on the work surfaces, anywhere. Many were drunk, but they’d come to meet with God. We’d worship, do some teaching and pray for them. It proved an exciting place to be because God showed up. Excerpt pg. 48-49
David and I believe very strongly that caring for the poor has to be the responsibility of the local expression of the body of Christ. A strong dynamic comes into play when a local church works with the poor, because God longs for the disadvantaged to become radical disciples of Jesus. That involves being built into His body – being knitted together with those who love him. He longs for churches full of people who were once broken, whom he has redeemed and restored and who go on to bring his restoration to others. pg. 177
Is This Not What Jesus Did?
Jesus didn’t clothe Himself in the finest of garments expecting to be pampered, revered, and kept separate from the people. He didn’t show up day after day to put on rituals and formalities. He didn’t expect everything to be strictly ordered with no room or invitation to the Holy Spirit to have communion with His people. Many churches today set the whole schedule out in stagnant repeatable rituals. Why? Because it’s comfortable! It’s calm, peaceful and predictable. Dignified, like God is…..right? The Church is clean and polished and ordered, that’s God’s original idea for His Body in the earth, right?
I’m wrecked…
Everyday life proved chaotic. Disturbed residents often tried to damage or kill themselves, which is why we took all the locks off the toilet doors. (Live-in staff learnt to sing or pray loudly, or else developed bowel problems!) One night a female resident with psychiatric problems set herself alight in the garden. Emma and a couple of other female helpers managed to put out the flames and to get her back into the kitchen, where she started kicking the vegetable rack and throwing tables and chairs about. The whole house came running as the three of them tried to restrain her. pg 55
‘Philippa, get over here now, Gail’s in the office, drunk. She’s going to get me the sack!’ I bundled Gail into my car and set off for the Accident and Emergency, just in case she’d taken an overdose as well as too much alcohol. A few yards down the road she threw up inside the car. pg 122
God is Challenging, He is Relentless for His Church, for His People and for the Lost of This World
I have not read a more uncomfortable book, tears in my eyes knowing we have so much to do and we’ve shielded ourselves in rock solid ways against this kind of work, the work Jesus was actually doing among the people, not sitting quietly in a church pew enjoying the air conditioned sanctuary and our thoughts on lunch or whatever else we’d rather be doing.
My heart is broken, for the Church, for my own insufficiencies, our lack as a whole to come together and actual do what Christ instructed us to do. This is why I am angry, why my passion and zeal for God is more than I can manage. Maybe it’s what God is going to do to all His people until we stop what we are doing, all the empty vanities of what we call church, and listen to what the Holy Sprit is speaking to our hearts, however uncomfortable it makes us.
This book demonstrates the work that defines The Kingdom of God in the earth. This is only one aspect of what Christ was speaking of, but it is a most difficult one to bear. Not everyone is called to this type of work. Perhaps this call is only for a season, but it is necessary and one to be highly esteemed and admired.