“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.
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
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