People of the Presence

People of the Presence

To learn Christ, is the beginning and end of all man.  Christ is the first and the last revelation encompassing all thoughts, actions, the height of imagination. There is no other answer to anything we could ever fathom.  Jesus Christ!  There is no other name. Religion is not mystery, though it is mysterious. To the new age nothing is new.  Man groping around alone trying to find His way back to the garden, sensing a third eye or whatever you want to call it yet they are left in the dark of their magic arts.

Being magical is not life from the dead.  Being spiritual is man’s version at getting in touch with reality beyond the five senses.  This I think, would be a greater attempt at reality say, than an inflated intellect,  but it is still man in his weakness.

Classical apologetics has its place, but to think the human soul could be won over by reasons to believe is short sided.  It may lower ones defenses or contribute to understanding once believing, but never is it the source of one’s conversion to the light.

If it were the source, than I would question if one were converted to Christ at all.  Perhaps they would be converted to the reasonableness of Christianity, the sensibility of it through evidential reasons.  This may even be a good thing, yet it must go farther.

Have you ever had a favorite song that you listened to so much that you just got tired of hearing it? Well Christ is the song that never tires.  Now you may read the bible until the pages blur.  You may weary yourself going to church.  Hanging out with Christians may become, let’s say, dry. But Jesus Christ himself can never become old, or even repetitive.

To live and move and have our being in Him is to touch a love that can never be fathomed to its depths ever. Touching the glory and presence of God is new every time it happens, like I can’t believe this is happening to me. To see Him, to know Him, to long for Him as the trees long for rain, a thirst once quenched with eternal light just makes us thirsting for more, as we groan inwardly for the sons and daughters of God to be revealed.

Christianity lived in its fullness passes beyond doctrine, ritual, and personal devotion. These are pillars that support the structure  in truth.  With them we discern the lie around us, yet the great glory of the saints is the presence.

Oh, my sweet friends, it is the presence of the Lord that awakens the Kingdom.  How we would long for the presence of God!  To thirst for the Kingdom, of our Lord and Christ, among those who have touched it.  I just caused a flutter in your heart. Presence as Kingdom come–it comes as love and power.  It comes and stirs us to heaven.  It comes and gives us life, even the life of heaven!

To those who have never been twice born the words I speak are strange, marked as religious nonsense.  But to those that have been privileged to see the Son of Man high and lifted up, you know what I speak.

I have no other word but the word of Christ.  Evangelism doesn’t come through congenial dialogue, this is pre-evangelism that is lowering defenses.  Real evangelism happens in the presence, when man stops working and becomes aware of the Kingdom come.

The glory of the Kingdom is our evangelism.  To those that have never seen, it would be like explaining color to the blind. Only those born of the Holy Spirit can even understand the Kingdom. How could one communicate a language or even teach it at all if the language was spoken in the frequency of a dog whistle?

Blow the whistle and the non-hearing may begin to see the dogs come running, even begin to howl, but they cannot hear.  They know the whistle is the source that is causing this reaction by observance, but their experience is on the outside looking in.

Faith comes by hearing and that by the word of truth.  Declaring Jesus Christ as Lord is our whistle, yet we must leave the hearing to God. He must open the eyes of the heart blinded by sin to see.  We can only be his supernatural instrument, to bring the presence through the word of our testimony.

The spiritual gifts given to the body of Christ are just that, spiritual from heaven.  If heaven is not communicated through your gift, than it is not from God as impartation. A natural gift is from heaven, but indirectly through nature.  Natural gifts can support your spiritual gifts but never the other way around.

How do we discern what is from above and what is from nature?  They often overlap.  God makes use of His creation.  He inflames with presence natural abilities as a rule, but God has been known to act outside of this.

To know Christ as presence is life and joy.  So it is with His gift.  Life and joy is the mark of your spiritual gift from God.  To be in Christ is heaven; to walk in your spiritual gift is the Kingdom of God working through you, with supernatural joy.  When the presence is flowing through you, know that God is using you at that moment that others may hear the frequency of heaven–that we might be people of the presence, even the presence of the Lord.