The Perfecting Church

Peace is God’s gift to the believer, birthing His shalom in thisfractured world. As we celebrate this Advent season, may we embrace the fullness of this Divine essential and our role as sharers of Peace in every space we are dispensed.

God has hopes for us collectively and individually. However, His hopes don’t always align with our dreams or plans. Submitting to His will even when it may cause us personal harm or difficulty is critical to the ultimate fulfillment of the Kingdom of God.

Jesus preached and taught about the Kingdom of God as a central part of His ministry. He has given His life; that we might be restored to the Kingdom and find life as He intended it.

There is no greater evidence that we are children of God than our living together as family. We can not say that we have received and experienced the love of the Father until we’ve given ourselves to love one another. If we’ve been adopted by the Father, we’ve been called to adopt one another as family — The Family of God.Scripture(s):

If we are born-again, we’re joint-heirs with Christ — we’ve been made one with Him. We now live, move and we have our being in Him. No longer do we look to the fallen world as our source of love, peace, fulfillment and joy. We have found that in Christ — although we are in the world it is no longer our source. This life of “in but not of” brings with it suffering. But the suffering it brings isn’t worthy to be compared to the glory that is and shall be revealed. 

There is no greater distinction or identity that a human being can have than to be a child of God. We can make no greater contribution to humanity, to this world or to our families than to live as a child of God. But we can not make ourselves His, only Christ can do that — we’ve been given the work of agreeing with, what He says about us. 

We all have practices and values which come from our family of origin. But now that we are resurrected to life in the family of Jesus Christ, it is essential that we discover and practice these seven values of our heavenly family. Without them, we will be ineffective and unproductive in our earthly assignments.

When the Father restored us to Himself through the work of Christ — we were resurrected into new life. We now live from an entirely different operating system. Our new operating system is continually resurrecting us into new lives through the love of the Father. As we let go of and are delivered from our earthly horizontal past we find our true identity as the ones being resurrected by His love.

Adam and Eve rejected the Fatherhood of God. They decided dependence on themselves was more desirable than dependence on God the Father. This legacy of broken relationship was inherited by us all.  In Christ, we are adopted and restored to relationship with the covenant making, promise keeping Father. Our adoption and restoration is more than a future in the new heaven and earth. We’ve been resurrected into new life that we might usher in and experience and heaven on earth in the here and now. 

When we respond to the love of the Father with rebellion or religion, there’s a word for that — individualism. Individualism (rebellion/religion) is a result of the fall; it says we don’t need you Lord God we can do it on our own. We can do life on our own terms fulfilling our own desires. But resurrection life/to be born again through faith in Christ says the opposite. Resurrection life says, we need you Lord God and we have found there’s truly no life outside of the feast and celebration of your love.

This passage is titled the prodigal son. Prodigal is defined as having or giving something on a lavish scale or a person who spends in an extravagant way.  Author and theologian Tim Keller wrote a book renaming this parable The Prodigal God because there’s no one more extravagant and lavish in this parable than God the Father. This parable is ultimately about Him, His extravagant love and the ways His children respond.  Never having encountered a love like God’s, we all respond one of three ways — we rebel, we become religious or we are resurrected.  But none of us goes untouched by the love of the Prodigal God.

We can’t truly grasp what it means to be adopted and restored to the family of God without realizing all that was lost in the garden. Desiring to be gods to themselves — autonomous, independent, with freedom of choice — Adam and Eve rejected the Fatherhood of God. They concluded dependence on themselves was more desirable than dependence on God and Fatherhood was lost. This is the legacy inherited by us all.

Some of the top movies of the last decade are based on superheroes with superpowers — Iron Man, Captain America, Black Panther, Spiderman, Avengers are among the highest grossing movies of all time. We have an obsession with superheroes, superpowers and capes.  Hollywood, and the comics these movies are based upon, show us every superhero has unique powers and a unique part to play in the flourishing of humanity and keeping evil at bay.  We too have a unique role in the flourishing of humanity and keeping evil at bay — we all have a cape.

We will never know a voice, like the voice of God. He alone is omnipresent, omniscient and omnipotent. No one knows us, keeps us and has thoughts towards us like Him. We must prioritize His voice, His words, His thoughts over every other. There is no voice like the voice of God. 

God speaks in sign language.  He uses signs to warn, caution, direct and to confirm.  Signs speak even when we aren’t listening, so we can’t say we weren’t told.  But when we decide we want to hear from God, signs speak so loudly it’s as if we’ve entered another world. A world where God speaks through sign language.