The world you and I live in and with, the world of the 21st Century, one could say a world that has been characterised by connectedness or perhaps better said interconnectedness which impacts every aspect of life.   There has always been connectedness but not as we have it today, through web spaces, through Facebook, ‘Whats app’ and every other way of weaving our lives together.   For some it has become the hours and hours of conversation that has helped a degree of belonging or being known, for others it is just a plain pressure to conform or what causes a competitive challenge to be as bright, big, known as those people feel are in their network.

We actually live in a society that has now developed a need to collect information about clients, friends and family.   

Our search for more and more connectedness in our every day world whether it be in terms of knowledge of people, in business or just  more and more so called friends on Facebook that you have to cull out every so often.

Yet in all this we have a deep need for friendship, practical friends around us that we can go through life with.   Before you say I don’t agree, it is a sociological fact people are more lonely today than at any time in history. 

Our invitation to participate with the Creator, with the Father Son and Holy Spirit is first and foremost a ‘Let there be relationship’, a relationship that will surpass all others we have ever experienced.   We humanise the words of description of the scriptures dumbing them down to human form, rather than realising God communicates with us in expressions and words we can grasp but invites us to elevate the ideas to the place where the Divine functions 

When we are told ‘we have been brought near’, or even ‘abide in me and i in you’, ‘just as my Father has loved me…i loved you’, the ultimate connectedness we have been introduced to.   More than introduced to, it is the ultimate Facebook experience a ‘Face to face’ relationship.    Oh to be able to pour myself into this connection, this Divine Union as much as our world pour into sudo connectedness.   The hours that drift by of posting, making clips talking to millions on screen, making a name yet never really being connected.   Perhaps people having more information than ever about each other, which I agree can be so positive but let us not get lost into a non relationship relationship.   Find those who are so impacted by the UNION of God that they will be those who ‘stick closer than a brother’, who are ‘friends in time of need’, who will carry each others burdens without using the information to become superior or dominate.

I find the words in the book of John, so relevant and powerful today, of this union we have been made part of, nothing of ourselves it is all a Divine work that made provision and brought us from an unfriended world to be in UNION.    I cannot get over people who Know Father, Son and Holy Spirit in our little techno world unfriending people,  we are to be the exact mirror of the one who takes away every unfriending.   It is time to be and demonstrate to the world around us ‘how they love one another’, not my how divided they are.   A relational world, even the society around us knows we are interconnected, globally connected and are trying to grapple with this, true connected is our UNION

John writes of this great connectedness in this manner, let these words wash over you and become living, become connected with the person, allow the words to become alive, living off the page and embedding in our innermost being, John 17:8 “for the words which You gave Me I have given to them; and they received them and truly understood that I came forth from You, and they believed that You sent Me.”.   For there is no better way of saying our UNION and the creation UNION, words are not just what we speak,  is not the Son in our words and actions, the language of the last days Hebrews “in the last days…spoke in the Son”, how rich a UNION.      The life, the essence, my vehicle of communicating myself – words I give them, I implant this in them.   Then John goes on in V9 “I ask on their behalf; I do not ask on behalf of the world, but of those whom You have given Me; for they are Yours;

10 and all things that are Mine are Yours, and Yours are Mine; and I have been glorified in them.

11 “I am no longer in the world; and yet they themselves are in the world, and I come to You. Holy Father, keep them in Your name, the name which You have given Me, that they may be one even as We are.

12 “While I was with them, I was keeping them in Your name which You have given Me;

Connectedness, interconnectedness at a Divine level,  this is what we are designed for, hence the need to belong, have friendship, be together

it does not stop there but moves into our connectedness across humanity John15:12 “This is My commandment, that you love one another, just as I have loved you.

13 “Greater love has no one than this, that one lay down his life for his friends.

14 “You are My friends if you do what I command you.

15 “No longer do I call you slaves, for the slave does not know what his master is doing; but I have called you friends, for all things that I have heard from My Father I have made known to you

16 “You did not choose Me but I chose you, and appointed you that you would go and bear fruit, and that your fruit would remain, so that whatever you ask of the Father in My name He may give to you.

17 “This I command you, that you love one another.

No greater connectedness, friends of God, chosen of the eternal creator for relationship not to be in the Christain circle but to be in the Divine movement, enjoying the relationship enabling us to enjoy sport, people, mountains, seas, music, art, living via the vehicle of relationship with Father Son and Holy Spirit as well as each other, what a world to be alive in.   

Commence by becoming friends to move into the depth of full connectedness with one another and God.   Learn friendship and you will go deeper into God as well.

Stage 1 Strangers – Strangers are people you begin to share information with on a superficial level.  Meeting in hallways, have little eye contact, conversation is in general terms, you might attend activities, events, volunteer 

Stage 2 Casual Acquaintances – You still do not know each other well enough to share personal information, might ease into sharing some feelings and thoughts but only “positive” ones about non-controversial topics. You’re there to have fun, share a task. its about getting to know one another better, Skills for Independent Living

Things casual acquaintances might do:

Stage 3 Friends – Trust begins, secure enough when you are in the other person’s company to be more spontaneous, laugh, giggle, tease. It’s OK to discuss negative things as long as amongst positive ones . Face-to-face time regularly, sharing personal information and gain personal information. Support likes, dislikes, philosophies, and character traits.

Stage 4 Deep Friendships – Both have experienced each other closely trust is there, best friends here, relationship tested.   Commitment to continue working on the relationship. 

Stage 5 Self-Intimacy – This innermost circle consists of you, Healthy friendships move gradually from 1 to 2.

Excellence is the abstract noun it is part of a word base that includes excellent (adJ) and excel (Verb) coming from the root that is latin which means to raise above others, to be lofty.   Dict definitions include “to surpass others”.

When I began my studies for an MBNA a key note book published in 1982 had impacted greatly the management, business world, it actually changed  thinking, “In Search of Excellence” by Tom Peters was foundational to all reading then.   I am still amazed today how much this book has informed, also formed perception affecting generations to chase after excellence in many sphere of work and life.   We have to consider the notion of pursuing excellence…

Now I would like to challenge your thinking…

Now having said that have you heard stated comments of, let us be ‘excellent for Jesus”, or you need to practice to become excellent to bring glory to God.   I now struggle with these thoughts in the light of the definition outlined.   Now before you get on my case, I understand what we are trying to communicate, however are we destroying something greater.    My cry often these days is, ‘O God give us the vocabulary for what we are discovering, for the revelation you are releasing today.   Our words often take us down old pathways although we actually mean new understandings.   I am also aware that our confession governs our thinking as we say it we lay down pathways in the brain that never mean what we are seeing and discovering by the Holy Spirit, or what God is breaking in on us.

Let me suggest an example of this, where our minds and confession takes us down well worn pathways.   The realisation that God is not female or male not a gender but Spirt, although these expressions of humanity are in God and are required male and female, both to express God, yet we fall back to relate to God, the Father as male, relating to God as a Father is not the issue but God as male is my point.    God is a Fathering Mother and a Mothering Father our constant use of ‘he’ relating to God determines that this wonderful Fathering Mother who is spirit, our words formulate our minds. O yes I must add Christ calling God Abba Father is not a gender statement neither, another article?     We can agree that God is Spirt but a huge % of people in thinking see God as male, how can we better understand this?   Old pathways.

Back to reconsider the article emphasis, my initial though ‘EXCELLENT’, to raise above others, to be lofty, the life of Jesus Christ was far from this way of living, Christ at no time made himself lofty far from it.   Did not his excellence mean a lowly life, poured out for the lowest, giving of self, breaking of self-centredness in taking on another’s will.   I think we need a new vocabulary before we entrap ourselves in word that is lined with people grasping for power to be above others, lofty.   We are not to raise our selves above others but to raise others , preferring one another above ourselves.

I recently realised that the notion of being ‘poured out’ of Christ and the apostle Paul both saying that they had become a ‘drink offering’ is in opposition to this way of thinking, it also makes a mockery of the image and likeness we are to display and become in our worlds.

Become Excellent in being emptied if you need to raise yourself to new heights of empty for your brother and sisters is this not displaying Christ and the nature of the Divine, each one pouring themselves out for the other.    Each one taking themselves to serve and bow the knee before the other.    Jesus said ’if I be lifted up’ did he not mean in his self-sacrifice, how do we do this by becoming lowly ourselves in pouring self out.   Let us stop walking in the tracks of the celebrity world in the community of the King and be excellently emptied and pour out and nothing more.

A society that produces excellence and uses it by its very nature must be competitive, and believe that the outcome of competition is good?   In other words for some one to surpass some one, people must be outdone?    I have heard it said true excellence can only really work when there is a scarcity.

Our Spiritual world is in the environment of plenty, ‘everything unto Godliness given to us’, a world of ‘more that enough’ , you see the pursuit of excellence will entrap us down into a lack world, where God has not done that.   Before you quote the Queen of Sheba to me, coming to Solomons world ‘the half was not told me’, if I understand servants of God of old that truly encountered the Divine what they displayed was not stuff, although they had and much of it some, but the character and nature of God.   Perhaps what she saw was the nature of the divine not only in the kingly elite but in the lowly servants displaying the God of Covenant.

Another misunderstanding on excellence is we have people who cannot differentiate between excellence and excess.   In some societies first nations people societies, no one is to be be called excellent as that would mark you as  a threat to the society interesting?   what have we elevated advanced, and developed to?

Here is a throw away Genesis, tells us that Father, Son and Holy Spirit are involved in creation of all and at the end of this period the Divine concluded together that its was “good’ seven times and one “very good”, not excellent, it could not be excellent as there is no thought of surpassing others, or being above any one, they are community and total
relationship within which all three function.

I wonder in our educational achievement is there a difference between “very good” and
“excellent”?   There has been a cultural hijack here…are we expecting the educated to do better that the Father Son and Holy Spirit?

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