Month: March 2012

Government of God is familial – discuss?

/ 'face2face' - Gareth Duffty / 5 Comments
To agree or disagree with that statement has its implications; FAMILY is at the heart of all the Father is working towards he is a God whose in every way moves, acts, conducts himself in regard to bring a Family about.   The goal of God is the Restoration of all things through his family, through sons of God.

As you read Paul’s interactions with the New Testament church, you have to conclude his language is full of family, he uses mother, brother, father, sister, language constantly, he even called the church his children and as an apostolic father he mothered the church.   Somewhere we seem to have lost the language of the ‘ecclesia’ – church, family language.   The modern world has brought government and hierarchical issues to bear on the ‘ecclesia’, rather than the ‘ecclesia’ holding on to family and Trinitarian patterns.    Positions and titles have taken over rather than familial understanding.

Now hear me loud and clear, this is not a treaty to eradicate apostles, prophets ministers etc., far from it, it is rather to establish and honour correctly, that the ‘ecclesia’ of God might mature and “be” advancing in its servant hood towards God and his creation, being the true representation of the Father in the earth.   I believe that apostle through to evangelise is fully necessary to bring maturity to the body of Christ with one missing mature eludes us, but its not by name but by gifts of christ they must be present

It is a day when 250 million people have found faith and a staggering 125 million new church communities have been established, all in the last 6 years it’s reported.    We live in a day when 112 million people have left the organised church for the sake of their faith in the USA, and are discovering relationship with others in homes around Christ.   My appeal is for a mature relationship model as opposed to the importing of an organisational model from the business world or any other kind of world.  In the business world, titles and positions become ever so important rather than relationships, in this something has been lost from the center.     We have the language of relationships but end up with organisations, we have networks being proliferated but people are lonely and alone in the world of want works matters and leadership.   Leadership gathers talk pragmatic the how but rarely find true friendship – relationship.   Yet Jesus called people to be with him and he moved them from servants to friends did he not?

Paul brought familial language constantly and establishes a relationship pattern, a family pattern in every way

We take passages from 1 Corinthians to assist us in congregational life in bring order to meetings, yet it is now well accepted that these verses had nothing to do with meetings as we know them today.  Chapter 11 outlines the breaking of bread and sets out from then how to conduct yourself in relation to gifts and functions etc., Where does all this take place?    All around the table, in a home not in a meeting as we see today.   There is nothing stopping us taking principles from these verses and applying them to whatever setting we choose, but always seek to remember the context it was written for.

I would suggest to you that Paul’s language of government was familial brother, mother, father, sister, and children and in the midst of this apostles, elders, prophets, pastors, teachers, deacons, and evangelists were found, even gifts of stirring leadership are evident and necessary.    They father and matured children, mother and birthed new babes into the ‘ekklesia’ while the ministers functioned.   They loved as fathers and mothers and certainly never became celebrities.    They were servants of Christ and the ‘ekklesia’ of God, who the people honoured fully, therefore the people received the reward in their receiving the gift and of the Christ through these ministries.

Lets back up just a little no one would differ with the statement that the ‘ecclesia’ is a family, the challenge is our view of ‘success’ and our chase for success, our modern environment influencing us to a perception that is organizationally.   Some times the idea that big is beautiful creeps over the family wall and creates something other than the relational family that we have been born into.    There is nothing incorrect with big so-called as the life of Christ in the ‘ekklesia’ come it will produce life.   The issue is not the concept but how we so quickly allow our practice to create an organisational church rather than a familial ekklesia.    It is necessary for us to rediscover what the Father is after, what is this restorative goal he has, and what is the primary reason of us being on earth ‘bring heaven to earth’.    Making Christ fill all in all, he will remain in heaven until a season of restoration (Acts 3:19-21).   Ask yourself what does that ‘all in all’ look like?

The Father has brought a way for us to gain our sonship back through the Son, the orphan way of life and condition we have been born into is eradicated by sonship.    The reason for our sonship and salvation is “to them gave he power to become the sons of God, even to them that believe on his name” (John 1:12), hear it to every one is given power that is the ability, the notion of privilege or right, the opportunity, to become a son.    Sonship is a process of maturing, as we take up the right and ability.   Each one of us are children of God, born from above now, and we process, mature into sonship, a life knowing the will and mind of God, and move in the inheritance of God laid up for us all.

The Father sent his Son to bring, to redeem the orphans that humanity had become along with its associated life style constantly protecting along with making ways of provision for themselves.   While the Son enabled us to entre into a family who lives by their inheritance living that is trusting on the Father and protected by He who camps around his people there by eradicating protection and provision through sonship.

This journey we now travel as a family is a process, which is captured in the Psalms, the people travelled in families, ascending to Jerusalem, for us today, being born again, the ‘ecclesia’ as the new Jerusalem, the Zion, the Mountain of the Lord we have nothing to ascend as God has come to where we are, but we do mature and become sons of God as we are led by the Spirit (Romans 8)

More to follow!

We have not gone Ape but have gone App

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Together Update 
We have pleasure in announcing that Together has now its own App which you can find at the iPhone App Store for free”Together C” is that app name.    it’s a great advance to keep us connected.    Over the next few months, slowly we will add blogs and audio to the application although there are a few already uploaded for you.    You will find blogs already posted, 2012 diary then we will firstly pay honour to some of the preaching of over the decades that have made a difference for many.   We hope to make it a real resource to all as we become more and more App Able not Ape 

Why not visit, use and leave a feedback on the Publisher’s website at “Rate our app”.
Can I also ask you share the App with friends so we can use it as a tool in our high-tech world!
Remember let us go App not Ape!
  

A Room with a View II

/ 'face2face' - Gareth Duffty / 1 Comment

A couple of blogs ago I hope you recall the first part of this article which outlined the importance of how we see things, our view, our whole being is determined by what view we allow to fill our minds of God.   Our view of God is where our liberty is found, it is where our expression comes from, it is where our life flows.    These simple thoughts are meant to get us considering our view of God.    Your liberty is held here, a revelatory encounter will change you and bring you through in life, making such a difference to us all.   Let us continue in our journey of liberty and freedom.

GLORIOUS

God’s glory is His multifaceted perfection put on display.  It is, among other things, His incomprehensible love, His infinite hatred of evil expressed in His wrath, His tender mercy, His amazing grace, His love of justice, His boundless wisdom, and His iridescent holiness. God glorifies Himself by loving and exercising each of these traits. He created the universe and redeemed us to display His glory. It is His ultimate passion.

Remember, before God created the universe He had existed eternally in a perfect trinity of love. The love of His glory as it appeared in the other members of the Godhead was His consuming occupation. The Father rejoiced in His glory as He saw it in His Son, the “exact representation of his being” (Heb. 1:3). The Son exulted in His glory as it appeared in the Father. This love overflowed in a limitless ocean of eternal, unbroken joy. God in three persons loved His glory as He beheld it in each member of the trinity. Referring to this, Jesus prayed, “Father, glorify me in your presence with the glory I had with you before the world began” (Jn. 17:5).

When He created the universe, it was for the display of the glory each member of the trinity had already experienced before creation. That is why the Bible continually tells us that God does everything for His glory, and it never apologizes for these statements.

Now lets go back to John 17 again as outlined Jesus talks about the glory that he was given “…before the world began…” the amazing things is in this account of his word, the words he used just prior to his arrest Jesus included this statement in the middle of the Jesus prayer, his real prayer, his cry for oneness in his body 20-26                                                                                     “My prayer is not for them alone. I pray also for those who will believe in me through their message, that all of them may be one, Father, just as you are in me and I am in you May they also be in us so that the world may believe that you have sent me. 22 I have given them the glory that you gave me, that they may be one as we are one 23 I in them and you in me—so that they may be brought to complete unity. Then the world will know that you sent meand have loved them even as you have loved me.                                                                                                          24 “Father, I want those you have given meto be with me where I am, and to see my glory, the glory you have given me because you loved me before the creation of the world.                                                          25 “Righteous Father, though the world does not know you, I know you, and they know that you have sent me. 26 I have made you known to them, and will continue to make you known in order that the love you have for me may be in them and that I myself may be in them.”

The church has been given Jesus’ glory so we can stop chasing after it,  and just be the gift of glory to our world.

Lets now move on to another scripture that is captured in the account of Moses’s conversation with the Father, its the conversation around the presence of God going with Moses.   It has to be said that there is a fundamental difference for you and I to Moses’ experience, our experience today is that the Fathers presence has come to us as believer in Christ, we, as those who now believe never walk outside or away from his presence, it is the essence of the gift of abundant life “…he will never leave or forsake us…”

Now to Exodus 33:18-19.  Then Moses said, “Now show me your glory.” 19 And the Lord said, “I will cause all my goodness to passin front of you, and I will proclaim my name, the Lord, in your presence. I will have mercy on whom I will have mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I will have compassion.

See it, Moses asked to see his glory, what passed by, what did he see?   The glory was manifested in two things his “goodness” and his “name” and we are now to extend his glory by showing his goodness to all mankind, and to the people of God he has given his name, the church being the glorious body of Christ and the carrier of his glory in lives being fully lived out.

FATHER

As a very young Christian, I stumbled onto a verse in Psalm 27 that piqued my curiosity as much as it unnerved me. It spoke of something I could not then imagine: “For my father and my mother have forsaken me, but the LORD will take me up” (Ps. 27:10, NASB).

I am my father’s first child—born in 1956 a reason for him to come home from the dark coal pits of South Wales, he would come home from the coal mines,  wash the dirt of the underground away and say I am here, I will always be here for you.    My dad leaving me, forsaking me how could that ever happen to me?

As I moved out into life I slowly realized that every father fails or “forsakes.” He fails as every human fails—and, worst insult of all, he dies.    My Father died over 15 years ago and when my mother passed away a few years ago a strange thing happen I felt like an orphan, until God overwhelmed me, moved on me and showed me I was not an orphan at all but a son of God.   At that point I could have allowed an orphan spirit to take over, or become like Melchizedek with no mother or father,  I choose to be the latter and the orphan spirit left me.    We realize as we journey in life that our fathers cannot fully father us, then we discover what God has been waiting to reveal: He will take us up. It is in those moments when life hands us a tiny shred of “orphan-ness”—of being on our own—that God the Father is especially present, longing for us to take our hands out of any human hands and grasp His.

He is our Father and longs to have a family; God will bring us to Sonship though his fathering.  We see it even in John 3:16 “For God so loved he gave” his love come forward and manifested in a Son his love gave as it has no boundaries, or control and withholds nothing.    So Jesus is the love of the Father manifested, this love removed the orphan nature of humanity that came through the loss of Adam in the garden, by bring us into Sonship by the love of God giving us the gift of his Son as his love manifested.   We are all given the opportunity to mature in Sonship.

Adam lost his sonship and became an orphan that has affected the whole of creation; Jesus came and died to recover the Fathers ultimate intention.   That God is a Father who longs for a family this is what he had in mind prior to creation.