Bigger Than All of Us

This is a work in progress. I’m trying to gather together some threads that have pulled out of the fabric; at the same time, I’m trying to untangle some others. A good rug under your feet can turn shifting sands into a sturdy floor. We need a place to stand so we can deliver the message of Christ.

Persecution and tribulation are the natural state for followers of Christ. That our symbol of victory is His Cross should be all the explanation needed for such a doctrine. The fallen nature is hostile to God’s revelation. If we aren’t persecuted, it’s because either we have compromised, or simply that we haven’t yet been noticed. Given that we are starting freshly something radically different from the mainstream, the latter is more likely.

We have to get noticed. This is not the case of provoking trouble and generating persecution, but we know that trouble is the manifestation of God’s favor. In the case of Our Lord, He got noticed by the miracles that accompanied His teaching. I’m not trying to make anyone feel ashamed and guilty for a lack of miracles; there could be good reasons why we aren’t chattering here on this blog about all the mighty wonders and signs. Mostly it’s that we haven’t yet begun to ask. We’ve been busy just trying to figure out what the message meant for us individually.

A primary factor in the absence of miracles is the two millennia since believers lost sight of the heart-led way. It was easy to lose because it wasn’t quite so openly explicit in the message, but assumed as the background. I’m not saying the first century Christians made a mistake on that point, only that they didn’t use our terminology. So we have two thousand years of Christians reading the New Testament and not seeing it. Assuredly souls have stumbled across it all that time since then, but they continued talking about it in different terms. It was too easy to invest their words with a totally different meaning, so the message was lost repeatedly.

I can’t promise you that our explicit approach is better, but I am utterly certain that the Lord is blessing it right now. We still run the risk of the words being filled with false meaning, but we have a fighting chance against that.

Still, I believe Our Lord is asking us to seek ways to share this message with a lot fewer miracles than Jesus used. Miracles were germane to His message then; I believe they are less important right now. It’s not the same atmosphere. Science, technology and the manipulation of human perception is at an all time high. Genuine miracles we have, but they aren’t the primary means of getting attention. We have to rely on something else. We have to demonstrate shalom some other way. The greatest miracle of all is internal peace with God.

While I am confident Our Father will grant other measures, I feel certain that our current best opportunity is to emphasize Biblical Law and the resultant harmony with Creator and Creation. A sense of peace and joy that cannot be broken by any power on this earth is pretty hard to ignore. At the same time, we should expect a vast reservoir of confusion about our message because the mainstream is convinced they already have as much peace as anyone can get from God. In this we are like the early disciples dealing with synagogues, where materialism and orthodoxy were the barriers to truth.

Our message will seem to work a whole lot better once the people around us have been driven out of their comfort zones. That comes with God’s wrath in the form of multiple crises here in the US. What is hard to see from our current position is that this will be a fairly slow process. There will be sudden changes, of course, but the general sense of panic won’t simply burst onto the scene. It will develop slowly. What we have seen already is a good example of that. To a great many observers, it seems that we are muddling along as we always have. But the Lord has been quite clear to those who are paying attention: The end game for the US is now in play.

This is what I mean when I assert that this is no apocalypse — it’s going to be slow and teeth-gritting painful for the most part. In biblical parabolic language, this will be like a birth that took way too long from the mother’s perspective. In the end, it will kill her from sheer exhaustion. Something new is coming and it will have to make its own way.

You and I as practitioners of Radix Fidem will have to buckle in for a long rough ride. As soon as you read those words, your heart should witness of their truth. Your sense of conviction alone will carry you through.

Do you share my faith? Will you pray with me that we can gain attention? You know that it will bring persecution with it. Will you pray with me that we gain sponsorship to pay the bills? This is going to require a grant of resources from Heaven. We’ll do the best we can on a shoestring budget, and we challenge you to watch us in the process. See what mighty miracles God will do with just a handful of dirt! But I believe at some point this will be big enough to require a regular budget to “house” this virtual parish.

But first we need souls. We need people who have a sense of calling and a drive to push this forward. If it never gets beyond me and a handful of supporters, it deserves to die, and you should expect God will end it. But if this is really His plan, it has to keep touching a wider audience, an audience that includes future shepherds. If this is a work of God, not merely my hobby, it means there are people who will make this thing their own. Even if I live past 100, this has to be bigger than me or it’s not worth the trouble. There’s plenty of room for you to put your own stamp on this thing; I won’t stop you.

Don’t just help me; do this for your own sake. All we are doing is getting involved in a project that existed long before us. This is the carpet laid out before the throne of God. He has provided a solid place to stand in the midst of chaos, and it’s big enough for everyone who is tired of wading in the sand of lies.