Stocktaking Time

1 John 2:24  As for you, let that abide in you which you heard from the beginning. If what you heard from the beginning abides in you, you also will abide in the Son and in the Father.

 The early Church only had one Gospel. The many divisions, factions and versions of the Church had not yet occurred. Yes there were heresies soon enough but they were like the cults that live around us today, easy to spot.

What early Christians heard in the beginning was not coloured or filtered by the branding or viewpoint of some group claiming to have a corner on the truth.

Sadly all of us now have heard some denomination's version of the truth and it does abide with us. But it is not all good. We have been short-changed.

Every movement, denomination or style of church gathering becomes a tradition that reduces the understanding of Christ into logical terms and “Statements of Faith.” We get a narrow picture of the Gospel that becomes the filter or paradigm through which all other subsequent truth is filtered.

In every church today we have many different viewpoints going on while the preacher is speaking. People are quietly (and politely) correcting and adjusting his/her words to confirm and fit with their particular initial experience of Christ. Every so often there is a jarring collision of ideas and someone either finds the grace to let it go or lets it fester into a major issue.

I have observed over many years that church folk mostly default to the form of belief they were initially exposed to. The problem is that those views are mostly sectarian. It was not the holistic and fresh gospel such as the early church experienced but a gospel filtered by people’s prejudices and historical bias.

 In the Charismatic movement, many saw a whole new vista of truth but when the fire burned low, they drifted back to what they were comfortable with. Many never went on into more truth. They tried feebly to retain the charismatic experience within the framework of their initial understanding and so we have a new logical tradition emerging: An overlay of Holy Spirit tolerance that keeps the ‘more enthusiastic’ believers content.  It would have been better for those folk to remain in their previous experience.

All of us are defensive at some level about the way we were introduced to the Lord. We feel we must keep the faith. The problem is that we all have different experiences and that keeps us locked into a way of viewing subsequent experiences. We did not hear a consistent or totally authentic Gospel though we may have been told it was.  

Recently, a friend remarked about the process of refining Gold: It is not considered refined until all of the dross then the Silver is poured off it in great heat. The silver is considered an impurity while ever it dilutes the purity of the Gold. Revelation 3:18: I counsel you to buy from me gold refined in the fire, so you can become rich; and white clothes to wear, so you can cover your shameful nakedness; and salve to put on your eyes, so you can see.

Now in scripture, silver is a type and picture of redemption. Our salvation is depicted as silver whilst Gold speaks of God’s deity and purity.

What I am saying here is that if we are to progress in God and become more like him, we will need to shed our limited concepts of salvation and let Him replace them with His glorious perfection. Salvation is but the beginning of our journey in Christ. While we camp on our initial experience and turn that into our idol we cannot see the glory that awaits us.

Jude 1:3 Beloved, while I was making every effort to write you about our common salvation, I felt the necessity to write to you appealing that you contend earnestly for the faith which was once for all handed down to the saints. 

Until we share a ‘common’ experience of Jesus Christ we are simply circling the Wilderness. We need to repent from our narrow views that limit our love and openness with one another and begin to re-discover and ‘contend’ for the faith that is unstained with men’s concepts.
Every day is an opportunity to renew our experience with Jesus Christ and to see fresh perspectives of God’s master plan for His Church. The price is simply this; we lay down our crusty old concepts and become renewed in our minds. Ephesians 4:23: and that you are renewed in the spirit of your mind. Colossians 3:10: and have put on the new self who is being renewed to a true knowledge according to the image of the One who created him—

‘Renewed’ does not mean we re-visit the old ways we had when we first knew Christ. It means the way we know Him NOW, today. It means we lay aside the old inadequate concepts (repent) and move on towards the greater glory. When we do this together we graduate from being merely a ‘fellowship’ of Christian folk to being a vital part of the Church He is building. We become unified in the Holy Spirit then our faith becomes unified. We will see great power and love poured out. 

Today I call for repentance of our little sectarian views and ways. No-one cares where you came from; we only care about where we are going. We must “forget those things which are behind and press toward the mark.” We have overvalued some things and undervalued others. 

Someone said “our minds are like a busy jewellery store at Christmas time. There is an urgent need to simply stop trading and take stock. A competitor (the devil) has slipped among the crowd and quietly re-arranged all the price tickets. We could go bankrupt!” 

Yes we do abide in what we heard in the beginning: our experience of Jesus Christ is our launching platform. We need to re-define our destination and refine the truth that lies within that experience. The means of doing that is to let the Word of God wash over your soul and become committed to where God has placed you. Identify those hooks of the past and let them go.