As I began
talking with my heavenly Father this morning, I suddenly realized that I felt a
fearlessness in approaching him that had once been far from my experience. In
my early years as a child of God, I mostly focused on my unworthiness, and the
corresponding thoughts of how disappointed God must be because of my failures
to be as good as Jesus.
I now see
that God was totally accepting of where I was starting from because he was the
one who was doing the work of transforming me “into the same image from one degree of glory to another.”[1]
When he makes us like Jesus, we see his glory in doing so because we come to
realize we couldn’t make it happen no matter how hard we tried.
One thing
that really stood out to me in this feeling of ease in approaching God was what
it emphasized within me about engaging in relationships. God does not work in
us simply to do a whole bunch of behind-the-scenes work that we suddenly
recognize when Jesus returns and we become just like him.[2]
Rather, he works in us to establish, maintain, and mature our fellowship with
him through the Holy Spirit.
I do not know
when I first understood that one aspect of being like Jesus is to be like him
in his fellowship with the Father and the Holy Spirit. The very nature of the
Triune is that they are constantly engaged with each other in relationship that
Jesus called being “one”. He expressed his amazing prayer for the church like
this:
“I do not ask for these only, but also for those who will believe in me through their word, that they may all be one, just as you, Father, are in me, and I in you, that they also may be in us, so that the world may believe that you have sent me. The glory that you have given me I have given to them, that they may be one even as we are one, I in them and you in me, that they may become perfectly one, so that the world may know that you sent me and loved them even as you loved me.[3]
This oneness
of relationship is why the apostles spoke of us being in Christ,[4]
and Christ being in us.[5]
Paul’s imagery of the one new man[6] who
was to be filled with the Holy Spirit[7]gives
us a clear picture of the intimate fellowship God is working to create in the
church. As we see ourselves as “fellow
citizens with the saints and members of the household of God, built on the
foundation of the apostles and prophets, Christ Jesus himself being the
cornerstone,”[8]
and that this means we are “a holy temple
in the Lord… being built together into a dwelling place for God by the Spirit,”[9]we
join God’s work of enjoying the same unity and fellowship as is after the
likeness of God. Relationship is woven through everything.
This is why I
find myself often applying New Testament teachings to the fellowship of the one
body of Christ rather than only to myself. North American thinking hears these
exhortations as personal and individual, when they are primarily relational and
corporate. We are first to see how we do these things together in the body of
Christ, and then consider how we contribute our personal place in the body of
Christ so that our unique place and gifting contributes even more to the
corporate unity and wholeness.
Because of
how important it is for us to fellowship with God and his people in a
fully-engaged kind of way, I can see that Satan’s work of dividing and
conquering includes the strategy of getting people to disengage. He does things
so terrible that we disengage within ourselves. Our inner selves break into
pieces so our souls cannot unite to stand against his evil ways. He uses old
wounds and heartaches to keep people from engaging with each other, and
constantly stirs up trouble in the church to cause disengagement wherever
engagement had been working.
Our heavenly
Father’s call to unity,[10]
and for us to come to him in prayer, and supplication, and thanksgiving, laying
all our requests before him,[11]
is a significant part of our spiritual warfare, because it is a significant
part of being in the image and likeness of God. We unite because of God’s
unity. We exercise unique gifting because of God’s Triune distinctions.
Everything must work together because the Triune is always working together,
and constantly working within us to will and to work according to their good
pleasure.[12]
As I apply
this to how we work together in ministry, and how we avail ourselves of
resources provided by other churches and ministries, I understand why certain
resources work for some Christians and not others, or why some forms of
ministry work so wonderfully for those who first join God in such a work, while
others who follow do not experience the same results.
The fact is
that resources don’t work. Ministry that works for God’s glory in one church
and not another is often because the people who first join God in ministry are
doing just that, joining God in ministry. Others see only the programmed
description of what those people are doing, and seek to replicate the
programming. They do not experience the same spiritual results because they are
not in the same fellowship with the Spirit.[13]
God works in his
church in ways that release people to use their spiritual gifts in ministry.
All the variety of spiritual gifts in ministry are applied to a whole range of
experiences people are going through. The same gifts of teaching are applied to
teaching according to sound doctrine in all kinds of areas. One man teaches us
how to experience God in real and personal ways, another teaches us how Jesus
sets us free from anything that hinders us from experiencing God in those real
and personal ways, another man teaches how a church can so unite around prayer
that God does everything among us that he promises to do, and another teacher
shows the church how delighting in God saturates everything we endeavor in
Jesus’ name. No one person’s gift is expressed in identical ways, but the use
of the gifts is consistent throughout the whole body of Christ, all around the
world, throughout every generation.
Once we
accept that things, and resources, and even practices do not work, but it is
God who works, we will then focus everything on relationship with God. God will
bless us in our fellowship with him. Those who fellowship with God in
everything can meet in church buildings or home churches; they can use
resources or not; they can use the books that others have written, determined
to be just as filled with the Spirit as those who first discovered a way of
doing ministry, or can write books urging people to consider how to deal with
contemporary problems according to sound doctrine,[14]in
fellowship with the Holy Spirit, and in the unity of the Spirit bringing
together the people of God.
The main
thing is to live fully engaged in relationship with the Triune God, with our
own selves, and with the body of Christ, so that whatever we do in word or deed
is not only to the glory of God,[15]
but the fellowship with God that causes us to do our words and deeds is exalted
as the only reason we are able to do anything at all.[16]
© 2015 Monte Vigh ~ Box 517,
Merritt, BC, V1K 1B8 ~ in2freedom@gmail.com
Unless otherwise noted,
Scriptures are from the English Standard Version (The Holy Bible, English
Standard Version Copyright © 2001 by Crossway Bibles, a division of Good
News Publishers.)
[1]
II Corinthians 3:18
[2]
I John 3:1-2
[3]
John 17:20-23
[4]
Paul’s introductory paragraphs of Ephesians 1:3-14 are a beautiful example of
this emphasis on believers being “in Christ”.
[5]
Colossians 1:27
[6]
Ephesians 2:15 (Ephesians 2:11-22 as context)
[7]
Ephesians 5:18
[8]
Ephesians 2:19-20
[9]
Ephesians 2:21-22
[10]
Ephesians 4:3
[11]
Philippians 4:4-7
[12]
Philippians 2:12-13
[13]
I am in no way claiming that every difference in results fits this observation;
only that this is a significant problem among churches that rely on programming
and resources rather than on fellowship with the Holy Spirit who made the
programming and resources work in the first instances.
[14]Titus
2:1
[15]
I Corinthians 10:31
[16]
John 15:5; Philippians 4:13
No comments:
Post a Comment