No
matter how
much we come to understand through spiritual
discernment, the Spirit Himself is
always one step ahead of us. I’ve had to
encounter this in a new way since I’ve
begun to see Him flow in a positive ministering
way these last few months. Like
you, I have languished these several years
amidst the dearth of His absence
amidst our People.
Through
spiritual
discernment, I’ve been enabled to see the faults
and flaws of the
church-without-His-presence. I was always ever
learning “how not to do it.”
Yet without His positive flow in my own life, I
had no alternatives to offer. I
could tell the people how to pull away from this
evil or that evil. But I had
nothing positive to offer in place of it. I
couldn’t say “Go here” or “Go
there.” The dearth was everywhere.
But
as
I’ve been changed to begin tasting of this new
positive wave, I’ve
encountered an irony. It seems that this new
awareness of God’s glory has
caused me to lose awareness of all the faults
and flaws I originally saw in the
first place. Not that they’ve been corrected. I
just don’t seem to notice them
as I used to. There’s just too much good to
think about in this new Presence of
God.
The
irony
is that before—I saw
(through
discernment) the problems and was, however, void
of the power to correct them—but
once the positive power came to me, it caused me
to rise above and lose all
sense of the evils that I had wanted the power
to correct! What was once so
important through discernment became
insignificant in the light of the glory of
His new Presence. It was like rising into a new
realm altogether that made the
realm of the evils to become as nothing.
So
why am I sharing
this? It’s because as God’s power and glory
start moving in, they don’t move in
with respect necessarily to how “pure” the
church setting is. Sometimes it
moves into the midst of an impure standard
fleshly church setting. Not that it
approves of their impurity or condones the
setting. It’s just that God’s glory
goes where it wants to without respect to the
rightness or wrongness of the
setting. He has His purposes.
Well,
if I’m a
follower of His glory-cloud, I may find myself
surprised to discover that I’ve
walked right into the middle of a setting that I
otherwise have learned by
discernment is fairly impure! This happened to
me a few weeks ago when I walked
into a certain church I had known for years to
be what Bruce Hehl in Ohio would
call a “Flesh City!” yet a new pastor had
stepped in—one full of
openness to the Lord—and the Spirit was there
too! Now even though I couldn’t
support the setting, I had to be amazed that the
Spirit saw fit to work there.
So I followed Him. And it felt good—good to be
free from the awareness of
whatever else was wrong.
Don’t
get me
wrong. God still cares about purity. He values
discernment and separation from
settings which harbour impurity in His absence.
And as His glory intensifies,
such settings won’t be able to stand before it.
All I’m saying is, as His glory
appears anywhere, be prepared to follow it—even if it should appear for a
while in an impure setting.
The
awareness of
His glory
supersedes our awareness of the flaws around us.
His glory is in a class by
itself—above the awareness of what is right
and wrong about something. This
is a higher grace.
Again,
why do I
say this? Some
of us have been on the
“out” so long that becoming involved again is a
hard thing for us, even if it
is with that glory for which we have waited—but
especially so if that glory
shows up in a setting from which we’ve already
learned how to separate.
Some
of us are so
burned and shell-shocked from past involvement
that we’re scared to respond
even to the glory when He appears. We’ve become so sensitized against wrong
involvement that we’ve precluded the possibility
of any involvement.
Personally, this is something I’ve had to be set
free from over the past year.
Now I’m able to flow in a positive stream of
God’s Spirit for which I’ve waited
long years—above the awareness of the “rights’
and “wrongs” of the settings.
As
one who has
been so shell-shocked and now being set free
into a higher flow that no tongue
of man can touch, let my example be an
encouragement to you. Remember, however
pure we may strive to have the setting for our
meetings, we will never have the
perfect setting. For the life is not in the
setting. The Life is in His glory
whenever and however it comes.
Yes,
strive
for purity in the setting of your
meetings and of your own heart. But don’t
strive so hard that you fail to
recognize that glory for which you’ve
been preparing when it comes! Be
ready to flow and move out in a positive
way the moment your spirit tastes the
manifestation of His glory. Don’t
let your good discernment concerning
purity of setting get in your own way from
moving into the perfect grace-flow
of his glory.