Wednesday, October 28, 2009
The Great Commission
By Ramone - October 24, 2009
This picture came as the church worshiped with a song called 全てが生きる, which talks about how wherever God's river flows, everything will live ... like Ezekiel 47. What broke me down in tears in the Spirit is seeing where that river comes from in us...
On the back of the picture, I wrote:
Wherever Your river flows, there will be life... Now what I see (and I am melted in tears in Your Spirit) is that the river comes from our brokenness before You, and before the world.
How do I draw this, Lord? The same clay pot as in "Perfection"? Yes, and below is the city (all cities of the earth & the nations) receiving the water of life...
But the broken pieces that flew off the pot in that picture... here they are long gone underwater! This means that we find and have found wholeness in brokenness! We've let our fragments go, and they are long out of sight... the things that You broke from out of our lives. I feel like the first picture was me, and this second picture is the Church, with Your Spirit now flowing out to the nations.
The Spirit told me these words from Revelation 22 go with the picture:
Then the angel showed me the river of the water of life, as clear as crystal, flowing from the throne of God and of the Lamb down the middle of the great street of the city. On each side of the river stood the tree of life, bearing twelve crops of fruit, yielding its fruit every month. And the leaves of the tree are for the healing of the nations. No longer will there be any curse. The throne of God and of the Lamb will be in the city, and His servants will serve him. They will see His face, and His name will be on their foreheads. There will be no more night. They will not need the light of a lamp or the light of the sun, for the Lord God will give them light. And they will reign for ever and ever. The angel said to me, "These words are trustworthy and true. The Lord, the God of the spirits of the prophets, sent His angel to show His servants the things that must soon take place."I am broken and in tears, barely understanding, and barely scraping the surface of describing this, but somehow floored in the Spirit by the impact of this...
When we--the Church--accept and admit our brokenness before God and before the world, recognizing our imperfection and hailing His perfection alone, when we share our brokenness, His Spirit will flow out through our very "cracks" to the thirsty, to people in the world who are also broken but are dying of thirst. His river of life will flow down the streets of our cities, not failing to bear fruit, bringing healing wherever it flows. With our attempts to look perfect utterly gone, His Spirit in our midst will become "clear as crystal", unpolluted by our flesh, by our laws, by our "putting on faces" and attempts to sound righteous and win people with our moralities. Curses will be reversed. Where wounds and curses had been sown, grace will flow, and the throne of God and the Lamb will rest in our midst, and in the midst of people who had not known Him at all, but whose brokennesses had been spoken to and ministered to by the Spirit pouring out through the brokennesses we admitted before them. By sharing ours, the Spirit was allowed to flow into theirs!
His face will be seen, and His name will be on our foreheads. We will be broken vessels, but His face will be seen in ours! We are constantly afraid that if we are broken and imperfect before unbelievers, that they will not see Jesus. So we want to "be Christlike", usually meaning being perfect and winning them with our perfection. But when we are naked and not ashamed before the world about our imperfections and brokennesses, against all logic somehow His face will be seen! Because then we will have "no face", and His face will be the only one visible! We were afraid that without saving face, that without being perfect, that all would be darkness and the commission God gave us would fail. But letting go of our artifical "light" (our lamps) to make things artificially brighter, and letting go even of the natural gifts and things we think are attractive, His presence alone will be sufficient light -- not only for us, but for all the nations to walk in the light of!
And these things must soon take place! (Or the stones will cry out!) That is why the sky is a sunset: the sun is setting on this world. It is time to be broken before God, and to be clothed in Him alone, naked and open about our imperfection, hailing His perfection alone, in Jesus' name even among the nations! Amen!
*****
See also: "First Judgment" (at Weeping Jeremiahs)
# posted by Ramone @ 12:30 AM 
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