A convergence of consensus

A Convergence of Consensus.

written by Michael McBane

I have found many places in scripture that form the same stream of thought but with different words. The convergence of the practical with the spiritual  over laps again and again giving us an opportunity to excel still more. My themes reach towards the enlargement of the Christ community among us. I sense the changes that the winds are uncovering and take my limited voice and attempt to forewarn us with one clear demand that we seek the particulars of the things I share and allow God to apply them if they fit. They may simply be for you an enlargement to who you are to another it may be a beginning to step forward with renewed hope and faith. 

"The end of all things is at hand; therefore, be of sound judgement and sober spirit for the purpose of prayer. Above all, keep fervent in your love for one another, because love covers a multitude of sins. Be hospitable to one another without complaint. As each one has received a special gift employ it in serving one another, as good stewards of the manifold grace of God. Whoever speaks let him speak, as it were the utterances of God; whoever serves, let him do so as by the strength which God supplies; so that in all things God may be glorified through Jesus Christ, to whom belongs the glory and the dominion forever and ever. Amen." 

1 Peter 4:7 through 11.

Within these words from 1 Peter is a consensus of sorts. It is a gathering of thoughts with a direct purpose. Peter speaks to us to prepare us. He begins by asking us to consider that one season is coming to a close and things will not remain as they were. In that time his sense seemed apocalyptic as he was keen in his spiritual observation and offered wise application but his discernment ellipsed time and extended through the ages and it confronts us today with similar dynamics. It seems we suffer with similar weakness. 

Peter begins to form his intent with the parameters of how we must see and hear and walk in life. He calls us to a soundness in judgment. A soundness in judgement? What does this say to us today. We must assess how we observe life and thus how that observation inoculates us to be increasingly immune from the spirit of this world and its tendency to dilute our thinking.  How should we now think? What filters our thoughts? Should we not step away from what was and ask if it has application that is meant to form life today? We must be sober in our considerations. Can we accept that we can walk in a spirit of prayer. In fact we must be ready in season and out. We must walk with a readiness, an alertness. We must be pivotal in our flexibility.

Today is the day of the Lord and we must hear differently. We must constrain ourselves to hear beyond the hedges of what we have thought and known to hear from the present perspective of God. There has been a worthiness to much that has brought us as a collective church to this point in history, but there is now coming a convergence of time. Within this convergence will come a confrontation of what has been and what will be. Darkness will be confrontational arrogant. But God’s light will be empowered as the Lord of Hosts will come as never before to integrate within the life of those who have waited for Him. They will have a fresh wind that will fall upon them.They will not hold onto anything except what God speaks as being relevant to His purpose and glory in that moment.There will be no pompous pretension among men, there will be no clamoring to be prophetic or apostolic. No this will be a time when the sons of God will emerge in the true spirit of Christ among them. They will understand that they are alive and dwelling in the presence of the Fathers delight. They will recognize in reality that they are the temple of the living God. It is in this spiritual anticipation that they will move for they have detached from what has kept them earth bound, today in this day, they will live with no fear of death or insecurity of what might or might not be they have truly eaten the goodness of God. This goodness will transform life. It will harvest the called out ones. 

But Peter holds life together by asking us to cover our sins among our communities in love. To be blinded with a grace that enables love to work as only it can when it is not encumbered by the restraint of human impossibility.Thus we see that our sobriety of spirit is an attribute that dismantles the eros love that fosters lust, that recognizes and is compliant with self will. Does covering our sin in love mean that we over look and allow sin to remain among us? no. But it establishes Jesus as a safe place. We dismantle sins right to abide among us by exhibiting the reality of Jesus Christ among us.

Peter demands that hospitality is a primary characteristic that it is meant to be natural. Kindness is worn upon our hearts as a garment. We do not hold back in establishing our life as a welcoming place that reveals the heart of the Father. Every thing that we are is offered to each other to build the life of God among us. 

Peter again revisits sobriety in asking us to serve each other in our words and thoughts. He asks us to speak as if God was in the room. And He is, but have we been so conscious? We drift in and out of our relationship with Him with a casualness that is depleting and I think that this will evaporate as we gain a renewed depth of longing for the Lord and we become a welcoming place for the Holy Spirit.

Clearly Peter establishes that we cannot walk in our own strength but in the strength that God supplies. I think Peter recognized that when those who are called to follow Christ stop and leave all to follow Him they are assaulted. They are hindered and broken down by the relentless pressure that depletes one of living in the Godly aspirations that He placed before those who would read his words. He knew that only in the strength obtained from the well of God within them could they endure.

We are in a space in time where a great mercy is separating us from that which will stumble us into unbelief. It may seem to many that unbelief has merit as there seems to be such a distance from what we knew as the high places of God. I tell us that this distance is for our good for God will again come to us but we will then not take upon us that which reveals HIm, we will serve others.

Perhaps this application of  the miracle of multiplication fits well here? The miracle of the loaf and fish is present today when we take what we have and offer it, we share it, we break it among each other. There should be no one who remains hungry if we share what we have and no one will be without. This is a principal of the Kingdom of God at hand. What then does our culture say about this? What have we been taught and what has example revealed, perhaps the opposite? So does Jesus then answer our prayers of: Lord how shall we do this, or feed so many with a question? Saying, what is in your house, in your pocket, in your bank?

I offer the previous words of Peter to us as a bounty to be partaken of, a table set before us to establish the life of God among us in the season that is coming upon us.

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