It’s about relationships –
First and foremost about our relationship with Him, and His relationship with us.
But, with that as a given, how can we say we have a relationship with Him when we have no meaningful relationships with each other – none that come even close to our oneness that Jesus prayed and died for?
Where is that “first love,” without which there is no fire, and our candlestick is gone? Where is this love that is the first fruit of The Spirit? For that matter where is the evidence of the Spirit’s work in our relationships with each other?
Paul writes to us in Ephesians: “Therefore do not be foolish, but understand what the Lord’s will is. 18 Do not get drunk on wine, which leads to debauchery. Instead, be filled with the Spirit, 19 speaking to one another with psalms, hymns, and songs from the Spirit. Sing and make music from your heart to the Lord,” Ephesians 5:17-19.
And this brings me once again to the very rocks crying out: (While the theology of rocks is not perfect, why should it be any better than the theology of what’s been calling itself “church”?)
How Do You Keep The Music Playing?
Love!
Loving Like God 
AMEN, Jay!!
Am PRAYING FOR YOU during your current trial…
Love & Blessings,
Marge Porterfield
Thanks Marge!
We’re making progress here in houston, and hope to be headed back to NC by next weekend. :-)
Love!
Movements come and go, but denominations hang on forever.
Along this same line of thought about things that have been lost, my brother, I was thinking about the words to the song by Don McLean, “American Pie,” and how it was a story of my own life…
By 1965 the America I grew up in as a teen (pre-Beetles) was lost. I grew up with Buddy Holly, Big Bopper, The Brothers Four, The Kingston Trio, The Everly Brothers, button down collars, pleated skirts, apple pie and loyalty to our country. I went off to the Vietnam War and came home to The Rolling Stones, The Beetles, Dillon, riots on the campuses and in the streets and “The Eve of Destruction” by Barrie McGuire. It only went down hill from there. Mainstream media driven America became a nation that cast off God, Christianity, and morality, boasting the slogan, “God is dead,” and replaced it with heathenism, drugs, illicit sex, eastern religion, and an empty, world values driven churchianity. Pastors and doctors no longer made house calls and family values were trashed. The hippies with their head shops eventually became Yuppies and full-blown materialism driven entrepreneurs. Everything became a dead, empty, impersonal, institutionalized system… the very thing that the hippies were protesting against in the late sixties came crashing back in.
I was fortunate to have a moment in time in which I experienced Christ and His true love-filled body with some born again hippies and young people that saw Jesus and His message as the only answer to all that was ailing the world. For about two years from 1970 to 1972 I was part of a body of believing young people that lived Christ and His love for all men. But as it was with the hippie culture, businessmen and greed moved in and saw a way to make a buck on what the media called, “The Jesus Movement.” It was not long until that, too, turned into a worldly system of belief and “the music died” there as well. Many of the Jesus People went back to drugs and what was left of that culture, but the most of them joined churches and settled into the empty religious system in this country that claims to represent Christ, which has no semblance of the New Testament faith and love for one another we read about in the Bible, which many of us experienced in the early 70’s. You see, much more was lost than apple pie, Chevrolet, and baseball. God moved in a way in the early 1970’s that revealed what Paul meant when he wrote to the church and said, “Christ in you, the hope of glory.”
McLane wrote, “The three men I admired most, the Father, Son and Holy Ghost, caught the last train for the coast the day the music died.” That is what was lost, the manifest presence of God in a form that the world could see. Will we ever see a true manifestation of the relational body of Christ that our Father desires again? Yes, I am sure we will and it will come under attack just as it has every time it has happened in the past, but maybe THIS time we will have learned something from the past and not let presumptuous men put their greedy hands on what only the Spirit can birth and guide.
Looks like we’re on the same page! :-) When I read your opening thought, I thought it said, “… and denominations are their hangovers.” As for the rest of your Comment great stuff, Except perhaps the McLane quote. It’s a little heavy on the male side. I prefer “The Father, The Seed, and The Chemistry.” They are looking for a woman, and that’s us. For almost two thousand years whats been calling itself “church” has been trying to do the Seed without the Chemistry, and by now, even the world knows that’s “date rape.”
Jay,
This brings to mind a song often requested on a Wednesday night bible study; “Now and Forevermore.” (Add familiar harmonies here) :)
” As for me and my house we will serve the Lord, now and forevermore. He’ll be our God, we’ll be his people. We will love Him, we will obey Him. Under His wings we’ll find our peace.
And in the bond of covenant we’ll share the bread that’s Heaven sent. Ever mindful to be thankful to the one who sent His Son…
To be an offering, so that many could follow. Open the gates, receive the King. Who is this King? The King of Glory, mighty in battle. Redeeming all who call on his name”… ( And back to the refrain, with love to you Jay…”And in the bond of covenant”…)
Kevin
WOW!! How Great to hear from you! That has brought back beautiful memories!
We Love And Miss You!