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A Collective Union of Life

written by Michael McBane

As Christians we live within and out of our purpose. Is this because we are not really devout? You answer that. I would say that many simply are so casual about this roving that they never accept it as wavering or lacking courageous conviction. My conviction is that this is because we cannot be so single in purpose and understanding unless we are continually allowing our minds, our purpose, our being to be in Christ. Jesus does not allow us to create worlds that have identity outside of Him. We must be firmly deliberate. We must bring Jesus with us when we go out and when we return. Any of those other worlds are idols. So we weaken or dissolve our fellowship with Him in our diversion. We are meant to take Him with us, when we are frail and when we are strong. In all things, we live in Him and thus we celebrate Him. In grace He is training us to continually be with Him. We are to be as wise as serpents and as innocent as doves but that difference is not wavering. This example though is a collective wisdom drawn from a constant communion that cultivates a sensitivity that allows one to hear and respond. We because we are in Christ with a consistency have been trained, as the word says, we have had our senses trained to discern. That training also allows us to live with applied understanding. 

What we do can not be divided from whom we serve. The conflict is to keep us from such union and to create schisms that create a static that troubles our understanding with multiple distractions that abandon faith and dwell in fear, worry, self improvement and diversions of religion.

In reality Jesus demands that we replace everything with Him. In turn He gives life back to us.

When Jesus asked His Father for disciples He asked for followers. The rabbis of that day did not seek followers. The men that they taught were ones that came to them. See the difference?  

Did Jesus create leaders? Actually that is not a word that was joined to His vocabulary. Jesus formed servants and bond slaves. Jesus rejected the semblance of any earthly kingdom or ensuing kingship. There is great conflict even here. For the great majority of the western church focuses on leadership and teaching that mindset. There is a refusal to break this down so that it is either eliminated from the vocabulary and a determination is made to reduce the models that we drive everything towards.  

Those He called, never quite fit in the molds of life. They colored outside the lines, so to speak. They failed often. He was deliberate in His short time with them. We are given the highlights of their life together. He taught them by doing. His words were compressed but they lasted with the purpose of eternity. Because they came out of His relationship with His Father. Jesus revealed, “That I can doing nothing outside of My Father.” He also demanded that we be like minded saying, “Without Me you can do nothing.” No independence in Christ and there like wise cannot be in us.

Jesus walked in prayer, He never allowed prayer to be constrained in the conditions of time, or repetition. He listened and heard the moment by moment drawing of His Father. He did draw away but lived big because He heard and lived in the value of His hearing. His prayer positioned Him to be dependent on His Father. Was there a difference from who He was when He spoke, preached or went to Golgotha? No. His words set a highway of action. There was a rhythm to the life of God, Emmanuel.

Often we treat Emmanuel or God with us like a suit of clothes that we set in our closet. We choose when to wear Him. Get this, Emmanuel. God is with us is not a distant mirage it is substance, it is tangible. Even the thought of this is a greater reality then what you see in front of you now. If we can hold this and allow it to saturate us we will then let God define us. It changes everything.

Jesus modeled prayer as fellowship. It was a gathering with and of the purpose of God, that only worked in the collective of a union that was formed in walking in the cool of the day or the cool of the evening. It unfolded then in the words spoken to His disciples and in the marketplace. Jesus did not live multiple live’s He followed the voice of the vision he had with His Father. Life did not sneak up on Jesus, He was not surprised. 

Possibly the greatest growing frustration among believers that have longed to be everything that God has stirred in their hearts is the inability to do so. In fact I will say in ways we have gone through a season or seasons of a growing incapability to be the Christ centered man or women we aspire to be. And it is at times frightening. I have reason to believe that God has allowed this to be such a confrontation that we cannot over look it. I can say that God has allowed this so that we are reduced with such a compelling weakness that we not just in words but in the totality of our life and its expression fall into Christ. We see that Jesus saying that we can do nothing outside of Him is not a moral statement to reflect on. It is the reality of the true Christ centered walk.

We must look at the word through the purpose and life of Christ. We if you agree, see that we must live through Him. We then can read the word with a different perspective. We can see that Jesus revealed who He was when He preached the sermon on the Mount. Was He placing demands on us? We can aspire but to own them outside of Christ is a humanistic effort. But they give us a overlay of life together. And this is enlarged by this perhaps overlooked fact. Did Jesus give this message to one or three even twelve? No. He gave it to a hillside of people who were compelled to come and hear. He spoke what some considered to be His greatest message to a collective body. We cannot as one man or women reveal the entirety of who Christ is. But as a collective body we can. As a community we can. This does not give us excuse to let down and let another . It must draw us forward to a responsibility to others. We must see that Jesus expects us to enlarge Him to each other.

Jesus basically was saying I live this because I live in My Father. That relationship of love allows Me to love you. It gives me the strength to be a man fully human who lives without sin. Because I remain in My Father. Jesus was always giving us clues to how to live in this world but not of it.

Today I feel as if a skipped a flat rock across a river or pond. It perhaps as skimmed the surface but hopefully awakened some thoughts to allow us to see those things that hinder us. Let us call upon the name of the Lord together, it will be good.