He
has made everything beautiful in His time: also He has set the world in their
heart, so that no man can find out
the work that God makes from the beginning to the end. Eccl.
3:11
Go
therefore into all the
world and preach the gospel to all creation.
Mk.
16:15
Tues.
nite, Jan 16, 1990
Dear
Friends,
Last
Saturday, Jan. 13, as I was driving around Boston on "128"
toward Providence, the Lord imparted a wondrous revelation to my
heart. In the revelation, I saw a map of the Northeast. In the
area of Providence I saw a white light. Out of this light, as if
it were a hub, came arcs or "fingers" of light as spokes. The
arcs reached out to the various places of my sojourn where the
Lord has taken me over the years since I left Rhode Island as a
youth--- places where I've developed spiritual relationship such
as the Maritimes, Vermont, Ontario, Ohio, and Greenville, SC.
As
I watched the arcs of light, they reminded me of the gridlock
pattern of lines by which we recognize a globe. And as I saw
this, the words of the two verses above surfaced in my heart. In
a flash, I had a new understanding of the Great Commission -- an
understanding I will now share with you...
What
Is "The World"?
All
my life, as I've heard preaching about the Great Commission,
listened to missionaries from far-away lands, and have read
verses like Mk 16:15, I've always taken this command to refer to
the geographical globe at large, the earth with all its far
flung land masses and ocean islands, the world with its jungles,
deserts, and mountains containing the peoples of the earth.
Along with this understanding always came a certain weight of
guilt and lingering doubt, knowing that I could never reach all
these lands, and never sure
that I had ever gone far enough to fulfil my part of the
commission.
But
now I realize a whole new meaning to the word "world." According to
Eccl 3:11, God has set a world in our hearts.
That world is a certain specified portion of the earth at
large, a portion that we are each pre-ordained to inhabit and
obtain by spiritual
conquest, much as Israel was required to conquer Canaan.
This
world set in our hearts is the personal equivalent of God's
Promised Land to us, given to be sojourned in after the pattern
set by Abraham, Father of Faith. As Abraham traversed Canaan, so
are we his children appointed to discover and traverse the
length and breadth of that geographical portion set in our
hearts by faith.
In
turn, this establishes the meaning of the Great Commission.
The "world" Jesus has commanded us to go into is not so much a
general command referring to the earth-at-large as it is a personal command
referring to the world
set in our hearts. By "personal" command I mean it is a word
of the Spirit to each of our hearts actually revealing to us
over time that allotted area specifically ordained to be
individually traversed, fully capable of being
completely discovered
and "occupied" in our lifetime -- without regard to the extent
to which the visible church has or hasn't reached the earth at
large.
So
the revelation is this: The "world" Jesus told us to "go out
into" is the world He has "set in our hearts," revealed over our
lifetime by the Spirit, fully capable of being occupied,
removing all sense of guilt and doubt as to whether or not we
have adequately "done our part" to reach all ends of the visible
earth. Consequently, the obligation on the believer is not to
blindly answer calls to go to various lands, but to discover and
act upon the full extent of the world set in his heart from the
beginning of time.
Developing
Relationship: Key to World Discovery,
The
Cross: Key to World Conquest
The
discovery of the world set within us comes as we respond to the
Lord's Presence and lessons over the network of relationships He brings
into our lives at every point. Successful discovery of our world
and of our personal commission depends on our successful
response to the relationship God brings us. Saying "yes" to
people sent from God is the key to discovering the extent of our
world and
fulfilling our commission.
As
we say "yes" to the lives of others, we are saying "no" to self.
This is the work of the cross in our lives, and it is the key to
our actually moving out into our land and possessing it. Notice
that the commission tells us to "preach the gospel to all
creation." What does this mean?
Again,
the "gospel" is personal. It is not just
the retelling of the general story of Christ's death and
resurrection. It is our
on-going personal testimony to the outworking of Christ’s death
and resurrection in our daily lives over our response to
relationship, based
on His objective work. We are to be reaching then the ends
of our allotted inner world with the message of the inwardly
wrought gospel. As we preach "our gospel" to "our world", we
fulfil "our Great Commission".
Tell
me? Is the gospel being wrought out in your life as you
faithfully traverse the increasingly luminated corridors of the
world God has allotted you?
The
outworking of the gospel and the reaching of our world go together. It is as we
press into our allotted lands by responding to relationship that
the gospel is wrought out in us. As we expand out, the gospel is
deepened in us. In turn, as the message is deepened in us, we
are able to expand out more-- taking more of our allotted world
through new relationship encountered. This is how we "go into all the world
preaching the gospel to all creation."
The
wealth of revelation here is astounding. We can get a still
better understanding of the "world set in our hearts" by
looking at Jesus whose image we bear
increasingly.
Witnesses-
Both In Jerusalem- And Unto the Uttermost Parts of The Earth
(Ac. 1:8)
Jesus
is the Lord, He is the King. A king rules from a capital city, a
"homeland" if you will. But a king also rules over distant
places. These places are not "home." They do not carry the peace
or sense of security and familiarity that home does. Rather,
they are places of differing quality and dissimilarity. Compared
to "home", they carry certain elements of strangeness.
Nevertheless, they are part of the
kingdom.
When
we look at Jesus, we see that His capital city is Jerusalem.
When Jesus came to earth, He came ultimately to Jerusalem, to a
place that had what He called "My Father's House." But
look here. Earthly Jerusalem did not respond to Jesus. Though He
was attracted to it, it only mirrored a reality yet to come, to
which it corresponds. We call this "New Jerusalem."
This
is the true capital that has awaited Jesus, even though it was
within the bounds of earthly Jerusalem He lamented, "Jerusalem, Jerusalem, how I
would have gathered your children as a hen gathers her chicks,
and you would not." Because earthly Jerusalem mirrored the
true Jerusalem to come, the spiritual drawing of New Jerusalem
came to Him through it, giving Him a feel of "home" in what was
otherwise a totally alien city to Him and could not in itself
ultimately fulfil His longing for home. But let's go
on...
Jesus
does not only have a home, a capital. He was not satisfied with
Jerusalem only. He also desired to possess the outlying world.
He has claimed it for Himself --a world where strangeness and
distance abound. He wants both the outlying world with its
unfamiliarity as well as (New) Jerusalem with its rest and
familiarity.
By
all this we see a polarity; Jesus has a
home capital marked by His immediate Presence and Identity, and
He also has a "world" which He wishes to fully occupy. The
outlying "world" is not marked by His Identity, nor therefore by
the sense of rest and familiarity as is the home capital.
Between
these poles transpires a dynamic spiritual interplay. Going out
to take the world means leaving behind of the familiar, which
involves dealing with stress, labor, loneliness. Then there is
the "coming in," back to home, back to the familiar for a time
of rest and quiet waiting.
As
this dynamic throbs in the universe, two things happen in
proportion; 1) the outlying world gradually comes under the
domination of His Presence, and 2) the New Jerusalem is
gradually descending toward the earth, even toward the eventual
super Imposition and swallowing up of the site of the present
Jerusalem which now mirrors it.
A
Pattern for Each of Us?
Based
on this pattern, I propose to you the following truth about the
world "set in our
hearts." I believe that, in the image of Jesus, the world
God has put in each of us is identified by a "home capital
territory," a "Jerusalem" if you will. This capital is witnessed
to by some present earthly city or area for which we feel a
certain affinity or sense of "home."
Yet
our attraction to that place is not based in that place itself,
but in a heavenly
counterpart which appeals to our spirit through it, a true
reality descending even now toward earth, a place which will
eventually be considered home by all saints having been
appointed to that place over centuries.
So
it is, wherever our present "Jerusalem" is, we sense an
unmistakable drawing and attraction to that place. We have a
sense of being "home" and at "peace" when there. It is familiar
to us. This attraction may or may not be intertwined with
natural fleshly attraction. In any case, our true attraction of
spirit to that place really has nothing to do with the place
itself as it is now- whether Providence, or Charlottetown, or
Trenton, Ontario, Our attraction is based in a heavenly city
corresponding to that location. So it is possible we may have no
natural drawing to a given place at all, yet feel like it is
somehow strangely "ours."
Not
only does our world have its "Jerusalem," however. It also has
its outlying places. These are the places we encounter through
responding to relationship and which we occupy over the work of
the cross in our lives as we die to natural
familiarity of our "home" area.
We
come to these distant places through the leading of the Spirit.
They are unfamiliar at first, and even afterward hold no
permanent attraction to us, or at least no attraction as strong
as our home area, even though we may develop good relationship
there. Even when we are in these outer places, our heart is
still consciously or unconsciously turned toward the place of
our Jerusalem, much like Daniel who always prayed toward
Jerusalem.
The challenge of the Great
Commission and of the Christian life itself is to be perpetually
willing to leave our "Jerusalem" area to find and conquer
through death-to-self all the unfamiliar places of our allotted
world in response to the relationship god brings us.
Going
Out and Coming In
This
commission is worked-out over the polarity of "going out" and
"coming in" whereby He leads us out to discover the unfamiliar
and then brings us back to Jerusalem for rest and recuperation.
As this process continues over our lifetime, the same two things
happen: our outlying world gradually comes under the domination
of Jesus through our presence there, and the true counterpart to
our earthly Jerusalem descends ever closer from
heaven.
Let's
look at this dynamic more closely. As God deals with us. He
leads us back and forth in life between our Jerusalem area and
our outlying areas. These
correspond to periods of rest and periods of stress and dying.
As God works to break us from our natural fleshly attraction to
this world, He leads us away from Jerusalem.
As
He brings us into resting seasons, He brings us toward our
earthly Jerusalem. Yet each time we come back to it, we
see how we
belong less and less to it as an earthly place, yet in our spirit we
feel a part of it more than ever through the ultimate drawing
power of our New Jerusalem descending toward it.
To
clarify, let's note two things* First, one's Jerusalem may or
may not be the place one was raised. For some (like me), it is.
For others, it is a place whose spiritual gravitational pull is
only discovered after they have grown up, belonging to another
place. One's Jerusalem may be a place where his earthly
relatives dwell, or it may be a place where no one he knows
dwells. He only knows that somehow, that is "his place." For
some, it may be an entirely naturally foreign land overseas.
Nevertheless, for each of us, it is the world God has set in our
hearts.
The
second thing to note is that this dynamic between polarities is
a lifelong process. So when we speak of "seasons" of rest or of
being away, we can be talking upwards of years in or between
places. Above all, we need to note that, because we are talking
polarity, we can't say it is always right to be in Jerusalem or
always right to be moving among new lands. Each is appointed in
his season and must be followed according to the Lord's
leading.
"The
Kingdom Is Within You" and the Reality Behind the Visible Church
(Lk. 17:20-21)
The
thing about this world set in our hearts is that it cannot be
seen by the naked eye, nor appreciated from outward observation.
Somebody can be attracted to their "Jerusalem" with nobody else
understanding why on earth such a place should appeal to him.
This is the meaning behind the last part of Eccl. 3:11, "So that no man can find out
the work that god makes from the beginning to the end."
Truly
the kingdom of God is within us, hidden to
natural eyes. God's true plan for taking over the earth begins
and ends in the hidden depths of the human heart, conducted
through the work of the cross as that heart submits to leaving
"Jerusalem" to carry its out-wrought gospel to other
geographical regions through openness to new
relationship with other believers. As we pursue conquership
of our individual worlds, we make new relationship. Relationship is nothing more
thar the overlap of the hidden worlds of two or more
believers- and this is the root reality behind the concept
of church.
The
visible Church is nothing more than the temporary manifestation
of the overlap of the hidden worlds of two or more believers as
they one and all are in that place for the purpose of conquering
their individual “Canaans.” The point of overlap may be closer
to one believer's "Jerusalem" than the others’. One believer's
Jerusalem may be the "end of the earth" for the other believer.
Or else believers may be meeting on ground that is equally
foreign to all of them, though it be part of each's allotted
world. Conversely, where the allotted worlds of believers do not
overlap, there shall they never meet in this life.
All
of this is to teach us that the development of the Church
through relationship is simply the concurrent development of
individual worlds at the same place and same time. Building the
Church has ultimately nothing to do with visible
gathering in a visible place, but rather with inner
world-conquering together.
Thus,
when a Church is scattered, nothing is destroyed.
Inner worlds are simply expanded, bringing the personal gospel
to further reaches. Eventually, as all believers discover
and respond
to the Spirit's call over their inner "map," the entire world at
large will be reached, fulfilling the general meaning of the
Great Commission. This is the true kingdom we seek to
build.
The
World Set in My Heart
Perhaps
you see now how vast was the revelation to me there on "128."
Before me was laid out my own personal map with my Jerusalem and
all. That brings me to the personal part of this letter. Based
on all I've shared, you can begin to understand why I'm here In
New Hampshire. It has nothing to do with my teaching of school
or accomplishing of "ministry." Rather, it is the Lord's leading
me to the region of my Jerusalem for a season of badly needed
rest and recuperation from years of pursuing my outlying world
unto your lands.
The
reason, you see, that I know any of you is because I had left my
lifelong Jerusalem to come to you -- many of whom are in your
personal Jerusalem. Your Jerusalem is also part of my outlying
promised land. That's why we know each other. Now, however, God
is bringing me into my rest for a "season," camped about 100
miles outside the gate of my Jerusalem (the Providence area)
according to the will of God.
Yet
for most of you, your outer world does not overlap my Jerusalem.
Therefore you will never come here, nor understand why I am led
here or desire to be here. (Of course, that could change someday
should you discover God's leading to this place.) Since my
Jerusalem is inward, it has nothing to do with what is visibly
happening or not happening spiritually in this region, ie, in
the lives of others. It is enough for my spirit to know that
this is "my place".
I
don't know how long I will be here, but because of my need for
rest after extended years of heated battle in "foreign lands," I
hope it is long. Some of you have spoken to me of your house as
being "home" for me. How I appreciate that. Yet you must realize
that for me, your home is really "home-away-from-home."
You
see, you can call it home because it is your Jerusalem. But it
is not mine. Mine is here (ie, near here). Even when I have been
with you over periods of years, my heart has been secretly
turned toward this region. Being here gives me such a greater
sense of the Lord's Presence, peace, rest, and nearness of His
Return- -even though I naturally have less in common with this
area than I ever have.
While
I realize that this area holds little or no attraction to most
of you, perhaps later the Lord will reveal this area to be part
of your outlying world so you might visit me here. Whether
or not this is so, I trust that however long or short it
is before I see you again, you will follow my example in
willingness to explore the world God has set in your heart to
its utmost bound.
Remember,
if I hadn't left my Jerusalem, I would not know you now. So
there's no telling who you might meet if you answer the Spirit's
call to leave your Jerusalem awhile to conquer your complete
world through the work of the cross.
Meditate
on these things.