John 15, 16 and 17
H,
There is, and we agree on
this point, a sort of powerful reminder on the true nature of prayer in these
chapters. It ends with a significant prayer that still speaks to us today. I keep
thinking about this as an idea for what it really means to dominate the earth. In
the Pentecostal movement, from which I am hewn, we are told that this is a
takeover and we are to possess the structures of the world for the benefit of
God. The great idea being that once we do this we will get some residual glory
that will be our ‘testimony’. There will be inner peace and a tangible
flourishing. We will prosper as our souls and the will of God also prospers. If
we follow a certain logic, a certain spiritual pilgrimage full of principles
and portents, we will then be able to have that material benefit of a title and
that material benefit of land title as well. We could be Presidents or CEOs or bestselling
authors or any other sort of success within the structure of the world but
bringing a certain light to it. We will realign the world with the Genesis
principle.
The problem with all that is
it matches nothing we hear or see or feel of God in the scriptures. It matches
nothing we see of Christ on earth as Immanuel (God with us). When the devil met
Christ at his weakest point of the great fast, in that desert where no water
was, he offered all the world. He offered him three things but they went up in
order of scale. First he offered him an immediate solution to his hunger. To forsake
the fast and save himself and let humanity spiritually starve. Then he offered
him the veneer of works. Show who we are. Show that God is with you. Make of
fate and faith an outer sign. Then he offered him the world. Now, when I was
being hewn I was told that the reason Christ said no to the third was because He
already owned the world and He did not have to bow to Satan to get it. It was
all delayed gratification. I now think quite differently. I think the offer of
the world and all its trappings is the ultimate temptation. It is subtle and it
is flat and it is full of little compromises that make bowing to the prince of
this world inevitable. The end never justify the means. The means are all parts
of the end. When we act in ways that celebrate the pattern of ascension in the
world we are bowing but it is such a thin line that we do not even know it. For
example, we are told you cannot win an election in Nigeria without rigging or
paying some bribes or “logistics” to operators. We are told every business deal
or contract has a kickback portion. We are told we have to edit our truth not
to scare people when we speak or write. All these things are forms of bowing. This
may seem simplistic to say but I am not picking a moral high ground here (you
of all people know how compromised I am) but it tells us that our way of
measuring the ascent may indeed be faulty.
We have been told we are not
here to be part of the world but the end of it. We are in direct opposition to
everything that this present system stands on because we are aware of a deeper
spiritual reality. It is not sparks of light but the Sun of righteousness with
true healing in His wings. It is not enough to be something or someone, it must
be that we are the right sort of thing and the right sort of person. Does this
seem impossible? It is. It is the passing of the eye of the needle. It will
take a miracle. It will take a Christ.
When He prayed for all his
disciples and for us the tone was not one of triumphalism. It was sober and it
settled our place in the structure of the earth we can see: we have no place. This
is not our world. These are not our standards. This is not our home. When we
say we are pilgrims it means we are foreigners to all of it and not just the
parts we do not like. We need to make our peace with that. We need to enter our
rest about that.
Now, this does not mean that
there is nothing to do here. Peace in God and the rest of His spirit is more active
than reactive, more perilous than the easy safety of fitting in.
There is a new heaven and a
new earth being formed. The clock on this present life and world is winding
down. We speak to and of new realities, new strands of living and being and the
whole truth of an impending kingdom. We might lose a few elections and not make
as much money as we could. We may miss the manipulative trappings of the
exploitation of high office and instead be forced into the high art of service
above self-service. It is all fine. These are deeply spiritual things. There is
nothing this world can give us that comes close or matches up with the glory
that is revealed in the person of Christ. We are in the rest of God. He looked
at what He had done and deemed it good. Even, and this is eventually now, us.
Tomorra.
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