In this and the coming posts, we will be looking at a Biblical teaching that in many ways has been hidden from the Church for a long time. Over the years God has been restoring much that has been lost. The thief has robbed us of many things, but God is persistent in the restoration business, and He seems to take special delight in revealing things especially at times of great need. As our society become sicker and sicker it becomes more and more important to enter into the restoration, the inner healing that He provides in and through His wider body, His Word and His Spirit. This restoration of lives is a big part of the Gospel. He came to redeem and restore ruined lives. I believe that this is what was intended all along by what theologians call Sanctification, but we failed to fully understand it. It does have to do with the journey to becoming righteous, but it also has to do with entering into the truth that sets us free (truth in the inward parts), with receiving the healing of our broken and fractured hearts, dealing with the influences and habits we have been handed down from our culture and environments and families, and it is being delivered from the oppression (and/or possession) by the devil and his minions.
A key passage in connection with what I want to say is found in Isaiah 61:1-4. We will be coming back to this again and again over the coming days.
1 “The Spirit of the Lord GOD is upon Me,
Because the Lord has anointed Me
To preach good tidings to the poor;
He has sent Me to heal the brokenhearted,
To proclaim liberty to the captives,
And the opening of the prison to those who are bound;
2 To proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord,
And the day of vengeance of our God;
To comfort all who mourn,
3 To console those who mourn in Zion,
To give them beauty for ashes,
The oil of joy for mourning,
The garment of praise for the spirit of heaviness;
That they may be called trees of righteousness,
The planting of the Lord, that He may be glorified.”
4 And they shall rebuild the old ruins,
They shall raise up the former desolations,
And they shall repair the ruined cities,
The desolations of many generations
Jesus read from this passage (verses 1- 2a) at the very beginning of His ministry, and in effect declares its content as His primary purpose in coming (Luke 4:18-21). He came to heal my broken heart and yours. He came to comfort and bring back the joy that has withered away. He came to restore and renew and rebuild the structures that keep us trapped generation after generation. In the making of disciples (learners), He commits this to us to teach others, to teach others to enter into the anointing (verse 1) and to bring these tools and these principles to the World (Matthew 28:18-20).
To counter the negatives in this desperate hour of our need, God has been revealing principles for our healing, restoration and for advancement of the Kingdom. These can be described in terms of five interrelated foundation stones. All five are contained in various ways in our passage above from Isaiah, and these posts will seek to unpack some the amazing truths of these verses and companion passages. The first corner stone brings hope for the healing of soul/spirit hurts. This involves hearing the good news, healing our broken hearts, bringing comfort, and having our pain replaced by joy. The second corner stone involves uncovering, dismantling and turning from the negative influences in our individual worlds, things inherited, things handed down or that have otherwise impacted us from the outside and rebuilding our lives on the Word of God (repairing ... the devastations of many generations). Of course we inherit good things too, but it can be difficult to see them when you are in deep pain!
The next two foundation stones centre around our bondage. We are all at various levels in prison, many times of our own making. In order to be free from these prisons, we need Him to teach us what King David called “truth in the inward parts” (Psalm 51:6 NKJV). This is what brings true freedom. Jesus told us that as we continue in His Word we will know the truth and the truth will set us free (John 8:31f). The point is that we are not really free, and that we do not (fully) know the truth. The tenses in Jesus words are progressive. There are, in fact many kinds of prison in which we find ourselves. There are the prisons of our addictions. These more often than not, flow out of our woundedness as our attempts to dull our pain. However with time, these addictions can take on a life of their own. I want to relate this to His intention that we become “Oaks of righteousness” (NIV). The other prison that I want to mention is one the Kelstra's (rtfi.org/) associate with what they call our ungodly beliefs (UGB's), the lies we have (unknowingly) believed, and the part they play in keeping us trapped. Nobody has all the truth, and nobody really understands (Romans 3:11). So then we are all a mixture of truth and error. Many times lies get attached to our woundedness, often at the very time of wounding. It is typical for a victim of abuse to believe that somehow or other it is all their fault. Both the abuse and the lies then lead us into prisons of shame. So cornerstones three and four have to do with dealing with slavery of sin (John 8:34), and dealing with our UGB's.
The final cornerstone we will discuss in these posts is the influence of the daemonic in our lives and our need to be delivered from oppression or worse. Jesus was not ashamed to talk about the daemonic, and we ignore it at our peril (see “You believe in the Devil - give me a break” November 2010).
In restoring these foundational stones to His Church, God has raised up ministries to help us. In closing today's post I want to point to just some of the ministries that tackle parts or all of these foundational truths: rtfi.org/, restoringyourlife.org/, www.elijahhouse.org/, www.leannepayne.org, www.livingwaterscanada.org/. There are many others.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment