Personal Matters

I was engaged in conversation recently with a national leader in a Christian marketplace mentoring organisation. Rather naughtily I inquired, “Do you teach those being mentored about idolatry?” The response was a blank stare and speechlessness; the extreme ignorance of the contemporary Church sometimes astounds me. Yet the Lord has a way forward to illuminate our deep darkness.

As I have been planning a trip this May to the 7 churches of Revelation region and the isle of Patmos a strange uneasiness came upon me. Praying for discernment as to exactly what I was sensing I was lost for clarity for quite some time. Then in the dark of early morning prayer it all became extremely clear, I was feeling very small. A passage from Amos came to mind, “behold, the Lord GOD was calling for a judgment by fire, and it devoured the great deep and was eating up the land. Then I said, “O Lord GOD, please cease! How can Jacob stand? He is so small!” The LORD relented concerning this: “This also shall not be,” said the Lord GOD.”” (Amos 7:4-6 ESV). The confession of smallness turns away divine judgement and opens up a prophetic perspective we urgently need today.

Falling Away

From time to time the Church is startled when the testimony of an amazing ministry falls to pieces[1]. Characteristically these ministries start very tiny, characterised by extreme God-dependence this period of their life is marked by many astounding miracles.  As they enlarge however they tend to grow in pride, warnings from the Lord are ignored and the Word proves true; “Pride goes before destruction, and a haughty spirit before a fall.” (Prov 16:18). This falling away from total reliance on God’s power can easily happen in our own personal Christian journey. Over time we lose the edge of the presence of God that was in our hearts when we first came to know the Lord. The solution to this problem is not to tell ourselves how small we are, but to recover a continuously enlarged vision of the greatness of Christ. Only in constantly seeing the wonder of Jesus can we maintain true perspective. A prophetic vision of Christ’s majesty must continually be before the eyes of the Church if it is to grow and mature. Here are three potent examples from scripture.

Prophetic Vision

Immediately after seeing “the Lord sitting upon a throne, high and lifted up” Isaiah declares ““Woe is me! For I am lost; for I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips; for my eyes have seen the King, the LORD of hosts!”” (Isaiah 6:1, 5 ESV). Peter is sceptical about Christ’s command to put down the nets, but when they miraculously fill with fish “he fell down at Jesus’ knees, saying, “Depart from me, for I am a sinful man, O Lord.”” (Luke 5:8 ESV). John, a man who knew the Lord intimately in the flesh describes his reaction to seeing the glorified Son of Man; “When I saw him, I fell at his feet as though dead. But he laid his right hand on me, saying, “Fear not, I am the first and the last, and the living one. I died, and behold I am alive forevermore””, (Revelation 1:17-18 ESV). This stark contrast between the smallness of mortal man and the enormity of the Lord leads to sovereign empowerment for serving God. Isaiah is transformed into a major prophet, Peter becomes a “fisher of men” and John becomes the seer of the End (Isa 6:8ff; Luke 5:11; Rev 1:19). It is not as if something just happened to these men; they had been taken into the life transformation of Jesus himself.

Transform

The polar extremities of human tinyness and greatness are found in the life journey of the Son of God.  By the enfleshment of incarnation the Lord of glory “made himself nothing” and journeyed to “the outer darkness” in his death on the cross; but it was this very submission to crucifixion which led to his exaltation by the Father into sharing the highest glory of God. (Phil 2:5-11). Jesus’ life identity embraces the depths of human lowliness and the heights of eternal heaven and his personal transformation is the pattern for the reconfiguration of the entire cosmos. Even now the whole of reality is in the process of being reconfigured around the crucified and resurrected Lamb (Rev 5:6).  In the End the glory that will fill the new creation will be that of a human being made lower even than a creature, “I am a worm and no man, scorned by mankind and despised by the people (Ps 22:6)[2], but now “crowned with glory and honour…. all things in subjection under his feet” (Heb 2:9; 1 Cor 15:27). The vision of being embraced in the lowliness-and-greatness of Christ motivates New Testament spirituality and is the only way forward to the maturing of the Church as we know it.

Humble Power

Many desire a triumphant life, but few desire Christ as he comes to us as a crucified-and-risen human being. Paul however has a positive attitude to both suffering and glory, “that I may know him and the power of his resurrection, and may share his sufferings, becoming like him in his death,” (Philippians 3:10 ESV). Despite the best efforts of an often immature Church Christ cannot be divided, it is either the whole Jesus or it is not the real Jesus at all. Jesus can only make his life transforming power available to us in the way that it was made available to him, “perfect in weakness” (2 Cor 12:9 cf. Heb 2:10). The Bible’s incomparable revelatory ability is not such a mystery, it records the experiences of men made minute in their own eyes then lifted by the Spirit into the glory of God to perceive eternal things (cf. Ezek 1:28-2:2). We are promised a share in this revelation, yet it can only come through union with the humiliation and exaltation of Jesus himself (1 Cor 2:8-10).

Conclusion

Who wants to feel very small and vulnerable! I do. I do because I have had enough of the dullness over our Western Church and our tragic lack of deep spiritual discernment as to the great things of God (Heb 5:11-14). A radically new vision of everything will break forward only as we desire to be grasped by our smallness in the light of the exalted greatness of Christ. In this bipolarity of being diminished and enlarged before God we are radically changed with Jesus, and in him we become agents in the transformation of the whole universe into the likeness of God (2 Cor 5:17; Eph 1:22-23). May the smalled-and-exalted Lord keep before us a vision of such an amazing life journey: which is his, ours and the destiny of all things.