I’m re-reading through a book I’ve read a couple years back. I believe it bears a rhema (right now) message for the Church. Essentially it’s all about becoming undignified and undomesticated in our pursuit of Christ. It’s about discarding the “prim and proper” of vain rituals and routines, for the life of the Holy Spirit. It’s about not studying “the good Book” for the sake of knowing theology, but rather for hearing His Voice, because Jesus said “My sheep know My voice.”
I liked this way the Author, Erwin McManus describes the way he hears God’s voice: “In my experience the voice of God is an intimate experience, not an audible one. Or at least it’s not a voice coming from the outside in, but a voice coming from deep within.”
I also loved the message of training up children to come into an experience with the Living God, rather than just to be raised in dull religion. He says, “So many of us put our hope in teaching our children about God rather than guiding them into an experience with God.”
He goes on to conclude, “Our goal must not be to populate the Christian religion but to bring people into a genuine relationship with God (Jesus). We must make a clear distinction between the religion of Christianity and the revolution Jesus began two thousand years ago.”
Of course, he’s referring to Christianity, but not necessarily what it’s become in the West: a sort of Americanized, consumerism-based, customer-oriented product of sorts.
This was never Jesus’ intent or His doing. He asks us to follow Him where He leads, to deny ourselves, and to “not let sin against us produce sin in us,” as the saying goes.
Let us follow Jesus wherever He leads, today!
January 6, 2023
Alex Oram
James1Seventeen 