Congregation of ONE vs. the counterfeit god

 “We are not human beings on a spiritual journey. We are spiritual beings on a human journey.” Pierre Teilhard de Chardin

On your human journey, who is influencing whom? Are you the influencer or the one being influenced?

Jesus  said, “They (the followers of Jesus) are not of this world, even as I am not of it.” (John 17:16)

We are sojourners, strangers in a strange land, ignorant of our reality until our re-birth conversion awakens us to it and the Holy Spirit quickens us to it, guides us and leads us until we go home.

Our adversary, satan, is the prince of the power of the air, the ruler of this world (at least for now, as God in His sovereignty orders it). As Christians, “we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this age, against the spiritual hosts of wickedness in the heavenly places.”(Ephesians 6:12)

In the end we will “overcome the accuser by the blood of the Lamb and the word (power) of our testimony.”(Revelation 12:11)

What is my testimony? What is your testimony? What is OUR testimony? It is NOT simply our conversion experience - it is our whole life lived-out for Christ as His witness on the witness-stand before the accuser who prosecutes us before his watching world. It is not just words, it is actions, reactions, responses, our disposition, our attitude. It is faithfulness to Him, for better for worse, in sickness and in health, in prosperity and in destitution – that is our testimony.

Does your testimony have power? Does it display the capacity to endure which is the essence of grace? When you suffer loss and disappointment and grieve, do you grieve as those who have no hope? (1 Thessalonians 4:13)

Who are you influencing and who is influencing you?

R.C. Sproul, in his book Willing To Believe, wrote this,

“There is a price to be paid for nonconformity; a severe cost for resistance to government and cultural mandates to acquiesce to the customs of paganism. It was a historical setting conducive to the practice of what Friedrich Nietzsche would later call a “herd morality”.

Adjusting to the customs and worldview of one’s environment is one of the strongest pressures people experience. To be “out of it” culturally is often considered the nadir of social achievement. People tend to seek acceptance and popularity in the forum of public opinion. The applause of men is the siren call, the Lorelei of paganism. Few are they who display the moral courage required for fidelity to God when it is unpopular or even dangerous to march to His drumbeat.

We remember Joseph (Genesis), who was treacherously sold into foreign captivity and spent his younger years in a prison cell, but who nevertheless remained faithful to the God of his fathers, to the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob (his Father). In Egypt Joseph was a congregation of one. Without the support of church or national custom, he resolved to be faithful to a God no one around him believed in except those converted by his testimony.” (R.C. Sproul, Willing To Believe, ©1997, Baker Books, Grand Rapids, MI ISBN 978-0-8010-7583-4 pp.14)

Wow! Where have you or I had to be a congregation of ONE? How about EVERY DAY!

Have you ever thought of it that way?

How often are we a congregation of one whether we like it or not at work or even in our home? That is when our testimony speaks loudest and profoundest. That is where the contrast of our light to their darkness is most apparent.

Don’t doubt for one minute that the “herd” of existentialist, relativistic conformists is watching. They watch with averted eyes lest they be caught in their herd conformity with a non conforming thought or notion. But they watch nonetheless with spirits that yearn for freedom from bondage and being tossed to a fro by every wind of doctrine, by human cunning, by craftiness in deceitful schemes (Ephesians 4). God has placed eternity in every man and women's heart (Ecclesiastes 3:11) – every heart yearns for truth.

How many have you or I converted by the power of our testimony and the example of our congregation of ONE? We attend church, maybe we serve there. By the power of the Word (preached or read) and the Holy Spirit we are WEAPONIZED there. we are the  "sent out" as it were. In what theater and in what formation do we sortie into battle and actually launch those weapons? Answer: Usually as a strike team of ONE.

Winston Churchill wrote, “Men occasionally stumble over the truth, but most of them pick themselves up and hurry off as if nothing happened.”

Most hurry off. What if “we”, as a “congregation of one”, picked those up and walked off with them from the battlefield?

1) If our body has now become the temple of the Holy Spirit, we, at an elemental level, first become a congregation of one and He is present in and through us where ever we are.

2) Whenever two or more are gathered in His name we are a local congregation and He is present with us. As the Body of Christ we are a congregation of all of us in His presence.

Our adversary.

He is a congregation of one at his elemental level - with a cowering host gathered in guilt-ridden submission around him.

Let’s call him by his proper name. His name is fear and fear is the tool and the fuel of his rule.

Some call him satan, lucifer, prince of darkness, seducer, the accuser, Beelzebub, but he is the essence of fear.

His fear is that he will be found out for the masquerading fraud that he is. So he lies, he accuses and he speaks from the shadows where there is no light that might expose him. 

The Bible says that God has not given us a spirit of fear but a spirit of power and of love and of a sound mind (2 Timothy 1:7). Those three remind me of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. Together, they are the antithesis of the other – fear.

Satan's fear makes him lie to hide his charade. He is the father of all lies because he is afraid of being exposed as the imposter that he is. His power is not from compassion but from domination. He dominates through fear. He preys on our fears. He stirs fear up into a chain of bondage and girds our hearts with it.

Satan never states a claim, he never declares a truth. Rather, he poses questions to cast doubt and rouse suspicion and fans the flames of fear that we are being robbed of our worth. All the time he is afraid.

Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote, “Fear always springs from ignorance.” The counterfeit god leverages ignorance mixed with doubt, regret and untruth to drive us like a herd of cattle into his stockyard.

A poet musing over the true state of the power of the Roman Empire wrote, “He who strikes terror in others is himself continually in fear.” The infamous Napoleon Bonaparte who plunged Europe into war in search of world domination might be classed as such a person who wished to strike terror in others and he is quoted as saying, “Men are moved by two levers only: fear and self-interest.” Are not fear and self-interest really the same thing in the end?

The counterfeit god knows this and uses it. He uses doubt and self-interest stirred up into fear to command our servitude.

The counterfeit god preys on the things to which we cling. He preys on our pride, our self-image, our fleeting fortunes, our health, our lives, our future.

 

The counterfeit god distorts the truth, offering bitter fruit presented as good that leads us to shameful acts that ensnare us as conscripts in an army headed to his destination - which is hell. There he will reign his counterfeit reign of misery, darkness and separation from the true and living God surrounded by the trembling host he has yoked with fear.

Yes, he is fear and he flees from one word of truth and he flees from one speck of light. He waits, fearfully in the shadows, whispering from the shadows, calling us closer to the shadows until he can once again cast his hook and reel us into his darkness.

The counterfeit god is a coward. Fear is his name. Fear is his reign.

Know your enemy. Be ready for they day that you are called to testify as a congregation of ONE.

Blessings,

Bill