Throughout this series, I haven’t delved into the full details of anything. Instead, I’ve sought to mark out paths for your exploration. As always, I have full confidence that God can speak to your heart and guide your life where He wants you. Discussing His Law means nothing if it isn’t your own.
In this final part, I wanted to invoke a sense of vision. Can you see with your heart? Does it not show you that God intends to build a whole new community of faith? On the one hand, I am confident that what we have here is the fulfillment of what the word “church” is supposed to mean. On the other hand, I’m pretty sure that if we use that term too much, outsiders will get the wrong idea. That’s why I use the term “virtual parish” for this blog. We will likely have to call it something other than “church,” maybe a lot of different terms in different places in the world. What matters is not branding like a franchise, but a genuine heart-led kind of faith.
The New Testament arose from little covenant families in their extended family households. The ideal is an extended household of blood-kinship, but it may take a generation or two to start seeing that. However, Biblical Law includes the provision that heart-led adoption of family is actually more binding than blood kinship. Still, we should hope to see a new generation of couples marrying in the heart-led way and raising families that way.
Have you ever tried to activate your heart sense around children? Especially with infants, it’s quite rare they don’t respond in some noticeable fashion. While the ideal is that we eventually develop an instinct for always being in the heart, for most of us Americans it means quite some years of trying to get used to that. But there are moments when it just comes over you, and other moments when you simply stop and take the time to give full conscious attention to it. Do that with children, anyone’s children. Learn to see the miracle of how they respond before their environment dampens what is entirely natural for us.
By now you should have already been doing that with the natural environment outside, so keep trying it with people close to you. Like everything in this life, the mightiest miracles take time. We are restoring Eden in our souls with this, so it’s what we are designed for, and shedding the false conditioning takes time. But it takes time for us and for others, as well. So make it a habit to turn inside yourself to the heart-led awareness with the people around you. While the initial reaction will be almost entirely inside yourself — the impulse to do for and with them things you might not have considered otherwise — it will surely change them, whether you get to see it or not. What matters is the miracle of how it will release things into your own soul.
Sooner or later, you can’t avoid building a community around this. That’s how God works. Like it or not, you will be the first elder. And as this community grows, it definitely needs an elder who knows the Law consciously, and is prepared to see God’s hand as He says it will work. That’s why we teach it in terms of law covenant: so you’ll consciously recognize it when you see it. The mind is designed to handle it on those terms. Biblical Law is a covenant of miracles.
