סגלה (Segulah) One King, One Kingdom, One People, One Song, One Home
Makala Doulos August 16, 2020 Abba, Freedom, love, peace, power, The Kingdom No Comments
Give me one hundred preachers who fear nothing but sin and desire nothing but God, and I care not a straw whether they be clergymen or laymen, such alone will shake the gates of hell and set up the kingdom of God upon the earth.
~John Wesley (1703-1791)
But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for His own possession, that you may proclaim the excellencies of Him Who called you out of darkness into His marvelous light. Once you were not a people, but now you are God’s people; once you had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy. … Beloved, I urge you as sojourners and exiles to abstain from the passions of the flesh, which wage war against your soul. Keep your conduct among the Gentiles honorable, so that when they speak against you as evildoers, they may see your good deeds and glorify God on the day of visitation.
~ Peter, the pebble upon whom The Rock built His Church, in 1 Peter 2
OH BELOVED, IT IS TRUE.
If you have lived through the the last nine months, you can feel it.
There is something, or someone, seeking to insert hatred and division within the mysterious Body of Christ. The Adversary. The Accuser. The Father of Lies, appears to be launching myriad diabolical schemes (from the Greek: “διαβάλλειν – diabalein: to throw apart),” into our midst. And while God is The Great gathering force, the sin and schemes playing out before us is a strong scattering influence.
Our politics cut like knives. Our hearts are cold. We see so many as “them,” and not “us.” Life has gone from pretty good to pretty scary, pretty quickly.
And many of us, those who are called to be one in Christ; those for whom our Great High Priest is praying for unity, right now, have fallen for this. Our dialog is turning coarse. We are abandoning being salt and light. And instead, we have become acidic in our speech, with our ‘light’ being as disorienting as the flash-bang grenades that some law enforcement has had to use in our own streets of America.
Oh, this fool of a writer does understand. The West is on the brink of collapse. I have been writing about this for the last twenty years. However, many of us have just awoken to the nightmare that began brewing when ‘higher criticism’ of Biblical texts began to take hold in the German seminaries in operation during the 19th century.
We have listened to the oldest hissing of temptation from the Father of Lies: “Did G_d really ssssssayyyy?” We have looked away from the majestic and mountainous theological, scholarly and academic tradition that has continued since the Apostles (especially: Peter, Paul, and John the Beloved Disciple) finished the common canon of the New Testament. We have tossed out Scripture, and centuries of some of the most rigorous approaches to thinking and Christian spiritual living in the history of the world.
Chrysostom, Polycarp, Origen, Augustine, Ambrose, Jerome, Athanasius, Aquinas, Bonaventure, Anselm, Arminius, Calvin, de Sales, Owen, Knox, Luther, Ignatius, Milton, Wesley, Newman, Hodge, Spurgeon, Day, Barth, Sheen, Tozer, Lewis, Nee, Walvoord, Packer, Piper, Zacharias, Wright, Hahn, Barron…
Giants of the faith, who have firmed up the path of our understanding of how to Live out the Impossible Christian Life All of it; we have tossed aside a centuries-long tradition of recognizing transcendent truth… and replaced it with a ‘Disney theology’ that tells us to just look inside ourselves to find our own truth. And, as we can see, the results have been devastating. We are confused in our speech, in our genders, in our beliefs, and in our core identities.
We have made ourselves the king of our tiny little ghettos. And nothing is working. Death and division feel like they are going to tear down any of the structures that are left in our tattered world.
There is an Answer.
CAN WE SEE IT?
We are the answer. But, the ‘we’ that we are has nothing to do with our own opinions about how everyone else is running their lives. Neither does the we that we are, have to do with any earthly group to which we belong, or in which we believe. So, what is this ‘we,’ then?
If this writer could be blunt. Turn around. Look beyond the craziness in this world and look to The One Who is already in charge, and Who has already broken down the dividing walls of hostility that we seem so willing to keep trying to rebuild.
WE ARE THIS:
We are the particular possession and treasure of a King Who purchased us at the price of His Own Blood.
We are members of the court of this King.
We are subjects of The Kingdom of Heaven.
A Kingdom with only three rules, one power Source, and one overall guiding strategy: Righteousness, Joy, and Peace – in the power of the Holy Spirit, with all of this under the banner of His Great Love.
We are the conduits of the above graces of G_d to this world. We serve as priests of The Light, shining into the falling darkness of this current age.
We are the keepers of the song that He has sung into our hearts. We know that joy, and rejoicing in tough times brings untold strength to our souls – and to those around us.
But, beyond what we are: A treasured and joyous people in Christ, we are also citizens of real place that is being prepared for us by our King. So, we are not just happy in the midst of some exile. We are overflowingly joyful in our knowledge that in so many ways – we are already Home with Him, and seated alongside Him in heavenly places.
Beloved. Don’t be distracted by the storms of this world. Don’t let the evil schemes of the world freeze your soft heart into hardness again. Know who you are. Know Whose you are. And know where you are.
Tonight is your night. Don’t forget. You are the free-men, and free-women of the One Who has already won!
Sing aloud, O daughter of Zion;
shout, O Israel
Rejoice and exult with all your heart,
O daughter of Jerusalem!
The Lord has taken away the judgements against you;
He has cleared away your enemies.
The King of Israel, the Lord, is in your midst;
you shall never again fear evil.
On that day it shall be said to Jerusalem:
“Fear not, O Zion;
let not your hands grow weak.
The Lord your God is in your midst,
a mighty one who will save;
He will rejoice over you with gladness;
He will quiet you by his love;
He will exult over you with loud singing.
~ from Zephaniah 3
