The Current Context. - where we must stand.

Where we start. -

“I mean that the heir - as long as being a child - is no better than a slave (though being the owner of everything. They are still under a ‘guardian-ship’ and being managed by the conditions set upon them by the owner (the Father).

In this manner, we also were as children, were managed by both the elementary principles of this present world (order) until fulness came to us in our being clothed in the work of God in His only Son, who redeems us from being under the law.

True liberty, then singularly belongs to those He has adopted who truly are His children, who have His spirit in their hearts (thereby know Him as their true Father) and are therefore no longer slaves to any of the former things which bound them, but heirs of the Son, and therefore heirs of God!”  (Galatians 4:1-7).

Notice here the condition of those who are NOT free in respect to the actual inheritance of God - they are like children, without any true awareness of what is meant to be theirs, and are therefore compared to slaves, because they are actually still without what is necessary to be inheriters.

At present, they are very far from the actual riches which God is desiring for them. Our own natures and even the law in effect prevent us from seeing what is truly provided and leave us stranded in a place far from where the unmerited work of grace wants us to be.

We must, then, see the Church for what it is - the only save harder, able vessel, to deliver us safely from our certain demise and calamity to the shores of the new creation. If we determine that any other method or message must be pursed to give us clarity and purpose, we will entirely miss the singular means of rescue that the Father provides through His only Son.

The work of God alone takes us to safety - a confidence and living must be within the confines of that care alone.

I doubt many Christians would have felt at home most evenings in the smoke-filled lounge of the Kilns in Oxford during the 1950s and early 60s, where the likes of two brothers world sit most evenings smoking as they discussed everything from the news to the arts and science, and how to view life through the lease of what had been established by a man who had come some 2,000 years earlier, but anyone who has seen the film Shadowlands will know in that very context, miracles of all manner occurred, and God established a work that continues to endure and thrive nearly a century on. In my recent visit to that same house, I quickly recognised the telling divide between what we so often view as ‘vital’ to our religious frameworks and the true and profoundly deep work of God amongst His people - something which endures and is enhanced by the storms and troubles, and leans that these are indeed so often the very means that God introduces to lead us deeper and further into the unfathom-lall depths of His un-exhastive Love.

The arm of flesh is not our ‘aid’ - our working well must derive from a deeper and richer source than our own derived beliefs or intentions - true righteousness is the fruit only the cross and the life which grows from this in Christ’s resurrection.

The means God chooses to build His work so often appears futile in the view of the world. Who would chose the means of a man and woman naked in a garden as the method by which one day the entire order would become populated with a race that will be viceroys to express genuine might and majesty of the eternal Almighty. Who would judge it good that these same persons be allowed to truly choose their path and by their error, be clothed in an unwarranted mercy by their maker, who would ensure that their offspring would be made complete by simply trusting in the depths of that same maker’s unfathomable goodness.

True virtue is not some mechanised scheme that we can calculate and assimilate in some robotic manner - it is union and communion in a living relationship with a person closer and richer than our very own blood and scales.

The world we inhabit is indeed one inhabited by darkness and corruption because of the fall, and yet, time and again we learn that it amidst this very calamity that God sees fit to make His particular mark of unmerited mercy, using the very means that have been so marred to establish what will endure forever, and thereby write large the truth that His great redemption envelops all things - not merely those that our division-ist schemes define as acceptable and approved.

What begins as we meet in worship around the word and the supper, permeates out from there into every sphere and aspect of life - from sweeping the floor, to deigning a masterpiece of art - every facet of every area of life is ‘sacred’ territory’ which the Lord desires to make stamped with the mark of His presence and splendour, and we as His ambassadors are provided to the world to see that this is so - we fall so woefully shoot when we deny the vital nature of this goal.

The creed of true faith takes root in our entire dependance and communion within a norther - he who marries Himself only to us by being our Lamb, our food our sustenance and sufficiency that entirely satisfies us.

The church cannot be a place which merely echos or reflects what a lost culture rants as being vital - it must always speak from a calmer, deeper source of rightness and good care for all that is genuinely value.

Worship both stems from and leads us to a vision of the Lord that is holier and greater than the blindness of this moment, bringing a radiance that is as transforming as the moment when the Lord unveiled to Job that His was were more profound than a men could ever truly contain or comprehend.

This is the Lord with whom we have to do, and our beings, communion, giving of worship, service and Joy are all bound into His being Himself amongst us, however extraordinary and overwhelming that proves to be. The error comes when we seek to confine such marvel to the poverty of our impoverished desires or ambitions and thereby fail to allow Gods magnificence to find its true expression.

God must never be confined to the thoughts and ways of angry sinners!

Ours must always be a faith informed and energised by the Jesus of Calvary and the empty tomb - the God who has torn the veil from heaven on down to the earth, and there, raised the dead. The people He assembles have only come from amidst the precious shed blood of Christ, and thereby, on that Holy ground alone, give true worth and sacrifice in response to His giving all. No other ground, no other estate is worthy or acceptable, so let us be people who forever confess and express only that which He has declared good, for nothing but judgement is found outside those courts of true righteousness.

The Widow to Heaven is open - the Dove has brought the first fruits of a renewed world to us - feed upon the rock, and find true health, dear ones, in His eternal table.