Three applications for us as heirs of the Covenant and representatives of the King.

First, the covenant promises oneness. We are one with God. He is one with us. Daily we have the privilege of accessing this reality all it takes is time…

• Time to adore,
• Time to intercede,
• Time to meditate:
  • On Creation/ Creator,
  • On Sinful leanings already forgiven,
  • On God’s character expressed in accounts of Jesus words and actions and attitudes…
  • On the whisperings of Spirit to spirit… and as we spend time hearing from God we can record this in a journal of some sort…

Second, we can use the covenant’s promise of shared authority and power to extend the King’s rule…

• In our lives – By discussing with someone things we’ve been shown about our character vs. God’s character which need to change, and some steps involved in doing so
• In the lives of others

• By including them, as led by the Spirit, in our lives
• By praying for their felt needs
• Through direct prayer ministry like praying over them for healing or offering unbound prayer.

Thirdly, we can continually seek God for wisdom to know how to join Jesus in his ongoing mission as he addresses the injustices of our day to the orphan, the disabled, the poor, the neighbor in great emotional pain, those enslaved to sin, those enslaved by the sin of others, the widow, the international.

• To get a hint of which of these (or other) injustices Jesus may be calling you to invest in correcting, just prayerfully read the list while noticing which situations which come to mind cause you the greatest sorrow, pain or anger.

I’ve been thinking lately about how I’m doing as an enemy-lover. I want to share with you something about my process, and I’d like to invite you to consider making a personal examination of your own. In this time of increasing polarization, I’m watching Christians argue heatedly not only with non-Christians but with each other. But my concern here is not with divisive issues. In fact, I don’t believe it is necessary or even desirable for Christians to be in perfect unison as long as they are doggedly attending to their own consciences and loving one another (check out Romans 14). So my concern is with the heart posture that produces my thoughts and influences my language while I’m fighting the good fight.

The starting point—’love your enemies’, really?
My process begins with looking seriously at what Jesus said:

I tell you who hear me: Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who mistreat you… (Luke 6:27-28)

I want to take this word seriously because the stories I’d heard and read about Christians who radically and impossibly loved and forgave their persecutors were the very stories that first drew me to Jesus. So I want to pay close attention to whether I’m living it out. I don’t want to be found a hypocrite, and I want to keep my promise to follow Jesus. He did say, after all, that I couldn’t expect to be recognizable as his follower unless I’m loving my enemies:

If you love those who love you, what credit is that to you? Even ‘sinners’ love those who love them… (Luke 6:32)

Humanly impossible love served as evidence for me that something greater than flesh was at work—evidence that God had broken into the world and was restoring his image and likeness in people, cultivating in them a family resemblance to himself:

Then …you will be children of the Most High, because he is kind to the ungrateful and wicked. Be merciful, just as your Father is merciful. (Luke 6:35b-36)

Do I really have enemies?
Still, when I was young I thought that “enemies” was an awfully strong word, and I now realize that I took for granted that it would never really be applicable to any of my relationships. I saw myself as always good and kind to others, and I expected to go through life without enemies. But real life turned out to be a humbling experience in that regard. Not only did some people resent and, yes, even hate me despite my best efforts, but I’ve had to admit that I’m not actually as loving as I used to believe. My own capacity for resentment and vindictiveness, once masked by denial, is now apparent to me.

I was amazed at how the everyday chatter in my head, once I actually began to pay attention to it, betrayed the wickedness lurking in the corners of my heart. “I’m so glad I’m not as clueless as that woman!” “Doesn’t that guy know how to use a turn signal?” And dozens of daily emotional responses to people—at work, in town, in the news—that never surface clearly enough to form a phrase. My heart is a fountain of judgment and contempt, clearly un-Christ like, clearly in violation of Jesus’ command to love.

It was tempting to reason that the people I’ve alluded to—with the possible exception of the one who actually hates me—weren’t really my enemies, and that my inner chatter falls somewhere on a spectrum to which “love your enemies” isn’t strictly applicable. But I had to admit that that wasn’t the approach I saw Jesus take to such questions. (Remember that the one who calls someone “fool” is violating the command against murder!) Nor was it the approach that sat right with the Spirit in my heart.

Accuser or Advocate-who is talking?
I began to examine myself more critically. I figured that when I plead technicalities, chances are good I’m listening to the Accuser, not the Advocate. The truth is, the process of wrestling with my heart attitudes in prayer has fully convinced me that, for the purpose of understanding and living out this uniquely Christian command, the true definition of “enemy” is less “someone who is against me” than “someone I am against.”

When a relationship at work became so toxic that I found myself in a constant state of resentment and fear, I began to hear my thoughts in a new way. I was distressed by the vengeful thoughts that came so naturally. Months of dogged prayer gave me some relief from the more overt enmity, but then my flesh found another way to express it as I started petting myself, imagining my “goodness” convicting my enemy before the world.

At that point, I was on to myself. I actually became grateful, realizing that God was using this difficulty and that we were really working toward actual Christ-like enemy-love. Continuing to pay attention to all those inner responses in a normal day revealed that I am actually postured against an awful lot of people.

Loads of ‘enemies’
There are people I find intimidating, people whose lifestyle offends me and people whose opinions are nonsense to me. There are people who behave obnoxiously, people who have committed terrible crimes and people who have merely hurt my feelings. There are people who are against things that I am for and people who are for things I am against. There are people who have wronged my loved ones and people who are just in my way. There are people close to me who are hard to get along with and easy to walk away from. There are people distant from me that my thinking has reduced to mere symbols of their sins, hamstringing my capacity to realize that they are people.

Even the thought, ‘some of these people are Christ’s enemies’, doesn’t work to excuse a posture of enmity. This idea hit home in a new way when I recently observed a Facebook exchange over gun laws. Now, I can admit that Christians of good conscience can come down in different Scripturally legitimate places on the exact meaning of “Thou shalt not kill.” But when someone in the discussion asked the others to imagine what Jesus would have done had he stood between a crazed gunman and 20 kindergartners, some of them said, “There’s no way to know. The situation couldn’t have happened in those days, and there is no way to draw any conclusion.”

That response seemed grounded in defense of the flesh to me. The situation did exist, and Jesus did set us an example. He interposed himself, not just between his friends and Death but also between his enemies and Death, taking the bullet so to speak, and loving everyone on every side exactly as he had enjoined his followers to love, back in Luke 6. And, of course, we know that in terms of their estrangement from God by the sin from which all alike suffer, his friends were his enemies, too. I was his enemy.

No wiggle room
So I have no excuse. No wiggle room. My housecleaning must be thorough. My speech, thoughts and actions must be consistent with love, but even more my fundamental desire for my enemy must be mercy and not judgment, because that is, on the one hand, my fundamental desire for myself and, on the other, God’s active desire as well.

Even though I have been candid about my inner life, what I’ve written here has been mostly of a theoretical nature. Where the rubber meets the road, I have needed much more than personal conviction and reflection. The things I have done to help myself change on the inside as well as to behave consistently, are the stuff of another article. Stay tuned….!

Damian has taught all over the world and led people into a greater release of the gifts of the Spirit. The Lord has worked through him and those that he has mentored at such schools to heal many people. As we focus on expressing the Kingdom of God in all the places God has placed us, we are asking for a greater release of the work of the Spirit. Hopefully the Lord will use Damian and this weekend to answer that prayer.

Here is a short video regarding Damian Stayne.

A thought about the slide which shows us at the beginning of a new upswing: perhaps we’re being called to die to an old way of life in order to take up a new one. Times are changing, and it appears that God is calling us to move from a period of “lying fallow” to a period of more active service to the people around us. That’ll require changes to the lifestyles of many of us.

It’s too bad there wasn’t more time for the end of your talk Sunday. We need to give serious attention to your “serious questions” about what God is saying to us and what we’ll do about it. The needs around us are great, and they’re likely to become greater. I think God would like us to respond with Isaiah’s cry of “Send me!” We certainly need to listen for God’s direction, but I think we’ll be more likely to hear it if we’re eager to act on it. This might well be worth another talk or two in the future.

In considering how to act, I’m reminded of the story about King Saul’s son Jonathan considering how to approach the Philistine army. As you remember, he took one small step at a time, looking to see whether God blessed it and presented him with an opportunity to move further. Pretty soon the whole Philistine army was routed. I think that would be a good approach for the Community right now. We’re doing that already with our contacts with 3 Dimensional Ministries, the bike outreach, our Christmas celebration gathering, and the discipleship groups. I’m sure many individuals are likewise testing opportunities to see how much fruit they might yield. Still, it might be good to encourage people in the community to be more aggressive in this approach. I suspect strongly that God would like to use us more powerfully than we expect. If we were more opportunistic — and, perhaps, less analytic — we might be very favorably surprised at what we see.

God bless you!

John Whiting

A friend of mine challenged me to adopt—perhaps embrace—a Transcendent Pursuit for the coming year, something life changing, something I can bring to the world to make a difference.

Then I re-read the first chapter of Genesis. It felt like I was reading it for the first time, and I felt the nudge of God.

 The first thing I noticed was the creative artistry of God. The opening verses do not focus on God’s unparalleled power. Instead they reveal—and almost revel in—the beauty. After each creative act God doesn’t say, “That was powerful;” he says, “This is beautiful” (a better translation than what we are used to).

 Next I noticed that God sees potential where no one else ever could. God hovers over and looks into the chaos and void; he takes the raw materials of darkness and depth, and he creates light, and it is beautiful. As are the oceans and fields and skies.

 After observation and creation, God gives. He gives this unparalleled treasure of creation to man. The opening chapter of the Bible surges with swarming fish, teaming land animals, luscious vegetation, and a sky pregnant with stars.

 And God turns to man and says, “It’s yours. Take it. Care for it. Love it.”

 The opening of the Bible reveals a completely different God than any man has ever created. The opening of the Bible reveals God as an artist, seeing beauty, creating incomparable art, and giving it away. It is a radical image of God.

 I long to live like that artist

 Seeing God as the creator—not merely powerful but a creator of beauty—moved me. It makes me want to be more like him in a selfless giving of light, life, and joy. And then I read the next few verses.

God makes man in his own image. God revels (imagine a reveling God!) in this description of human design: “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness … God created man in his image … in his own image he made him” (Gen. 1:26-27).

 It is almost as if God needed an editor to say, “Uh, God, you are being redundant.” But God wasn’t writing useless repetition. He was being emphatic. He wanted us to know—he needed us to know—that his image is the blueprint of our design.

 God’s first act is to make us his masterpiece—his literal artistic crown of creation—and his second act is to make us artists as well. He animates his masterpiece, breathing into us a creative force to see beauty, create incomparable art, and give it away.

 When he puts us in the Garden of Eden—asking us to dig the earth, rule creation, and name the animals—God is inviting us to join with him as creative comrades. He enters into partnership with us as we artistically cultivate and nurture this world.

 What is the church meant to be?

 When God gave his creation to mankind, he said, “Subdue it and have dominion.” But these words do not mean to invade earth like a conquering king—God spoke these words before the fall. They don’t mean subjection, they mean cultivation.

 The church—God’s people on earth—are meant to be gardeners, maybe a guild of gardeners. We are here to create the Garden of Eden, to cultivate and nurture. To create an environment of peace and life, joy and light, and hope.

 How do we cultivate each other? We begin to see the unseen. We learn to spot beauty in each other. We become gardening treasure hunters; recognizing the raw materials of gifts and passion in each other and speaking it into life: “I see this in you; it is beautiful.”

 We are called to be an Army of Artists or Guerilla Gardeners. We win the world through the cultivation of a Garden. The church on earth is that collection of artistic gardeners who are cultivating the Garden of Eden, bringing light and beauty.

 The Christian life is joy, light, and creation in comradeship with the creator of all.

 Don’t confuse the Garden shed with the Garden

 Religious groups can frustrate me. I get sick of the same weekly board (or perhaps bored) meeting, or the memo to write, or the program to manage. I say to myself (and sometimes to my wife), “This can’t be God’s plan for his people! There has to be more!”

This week I realized my problem: I’ve been confusing the garden shed with the garden.

God’s people—this guerilla band of gardeners—are here on earth to cultivate His garden. But I’ve been tripping over the spades, hoes, pickaxes, and rakes. They are just tools. They are used to create the garden, but they aren’t the garden.

If my primary experience of God’s people is frustration, it might be time to let go of a gardening tool—that spade of board membership or that pickaxe of the program I manage. All our programs, plans and meetings are simply tools to cultivate the garden.

Sometimes I feel we cannot see the garden for the shed. When the tools are creating blisters, it’s time to lay them down. It’s the garden we are creating, not a tool shed.

Creation and re-creation

When Christ came into the world, scripture says of him that “a bruised reed he will not break … [and yet] he will faithfully bring forth justice” (Is. 42:3).

Christ came to earth as the ultimate guerilla gardener; he brought justice not through violent invasion but through violent gardening, through aggressive art.

After the fall of man—after we rebelled against his creative design—God again hovered over the dark void of the earth and saw what we could be if brought back to life. By sending his son, he again proclaimed, “Let there be light,” and it was beautiful.

I long to live my life like that Artist.

         Sam

Luke 10: 5-9 “When you enter a house, first say, ‘Peace to this house.’ If a man of peace is there, your peace will rest on him; if not, it will return to you. Stay in that house, eating and drinking whatever they give you, for the worker deserves his wages. Do not move around from house to house. When you enter a town and are welcomed, eat what is set before you. Heal the sick who are there and tell them, ‘The kingdom of God is near you.’”

Jesus did not send the disciples to people who most ‘needed to be saved’ or who were the hardest cases they could find. To paraphrase He said, as you go out, bless folks. If you find someone, or a whole town, who responds positively, stick to them. Give them what you’ve got – the good news, healing, the whole works. He goes on to say that if they don’t want to listen to what you have to say, don’t sweat it, move on and keep on the lookout for that ‘Person of Peace’.

God, and only God, does the hard part of evangelism – opening someone’s heart to make it receptive. That really takes the pressure off of you and me to say it just right, to have all the answers, to be sufficiently persuasive. What we need to do is go through our days with our heads up on the lookout for a Person of Peace. Talking with them about the Lord is easy because by definition they are people whose heart the Lord has prepared and they want to hear what we have to say. They are favorably disposed toward us, even willing to buy us a meal!

There is a critical point though. We won’t spot a Person of Peace if we aren’t looking and they won’t receive anything from us if we don’t engage with them. This is way of walking through life as disciples that most of us need to grow in, I know I do. That is why this summer we are opening up the community schedule a bit to allow for time to mix with folks ‘outside the box’ of our normal round of activities. Hopefully we will discover some People of Peace and start on some new Kingdom relationships.

If you have a story to share about how you encountered a Person of Peace, please drop me a line at phil@thewordofGodcommunity.org so that we can encourage one another.

Phil Tiews

People sometimes describe what we have been going through for the last several decades as a cultural earthquake, with good reason. Key aspects of life have been shaken, and many are collapsing or damaged. Institutions people relied on and landmarks they used for guidance such as marriage and family are gone. They now seem dangerous to return to. It is small wonder that we see so much disruption in lives and in society.

As it turned out, there was a navy ship in Napier harbor that day. There was no tsunami, so it rode out the earthquake in relative calm. As the choking dust cloud rose and the fires began to sweep through the town, the crew had a choice. They could remain in safety on their orderly ship, shaking their heads over the tragedy, commenting on the faulty building practices which led to so much destruction, and criticizing the rescue efforts … or they could act. Fortunately for the citizens of Napier they came ashore and joined in the saving many folks from the fires and the rubble. The ship’s radios also provided the vital link to help from outside as the means of communication from Napier had been lost.

As we look at the seismic upheaval all around us from the blessed safety of our life in Christ and His Body, what is our response? Let’s be like those sailors and go ashore to do what we can to recue. And let’s communicate with the One who is able to save, even though those in such trouble do not themselves have the means of such communication.

Our God saves — and He uses us!

Join us for Hosanna 2013 on Palm Sunday, March 24th!