Effective Missions?

The goal is people immersed in the reality of the Triune God who is holy love.

We must first seek to live in this immersion.

We do this from our hearts and with our fellow believers using our gifts to build one another up in Christ likeness (the Adam we ought to be, fully human and fully dependent on the Father).

In our drawing near to God we replace our wrong thinking about ourselves and others with His view (the actual definition of ‘repent’ in the NT).

Drawing near to God propels people to reach out to the lost.

Craving affirmation and belonging and status will also motivate people to go evangelize.

A system that intentionally capitalizes on the ability to manipulate people to do their religious duty is routinely condemned by God.

Such a system has the illusion of honoring God but and is easily confused as being ‘blessed by God’.

God can work real blessing in spite of religiously manipulative systems but we will be held accountable if we promote them.

Speculation/Articulation on Incarnational Aspect of 1Corinthians 15:28 and Habbakuk 2:14

Warning: the following post is one of those thinking out loud things, not a fully resolved thing. Consider and respond? Good. Copy and teach as is? Not good. J Cheers J

God had a plan of a creation in which he dwells in a full and gracious way: 1 Corinthians 15:28

Then comes the end, when he (Jesus the Messiah) delivers the kingdom to God the Father after destroying every rule and every authority and power. For he must reign until he has put all his enemies under his feet. The last enemy to be destroyed is death. For "God has put all things in subjection under his feet." But when it says, "all things are put in subjection," it is plain that he is excepted who put all things in subjection under him. When all things are subjected to him, then the Son himself will also be subjected to him who put all things in subjection under him, that God may be all in all.

(1 Corinthians 15:24-28)

The Son incarnates in Jesus.

The Spirit incarnates in the Church.

The Father 'incarnates' in everything in the age to come.

Behold, is it not from the LORD of hosts that peoples labor merely for fire, and nations weary themselves for nothing? For the earth will be filled with the knowledge of the glory of the LORD as the waters cover the sea.

(Habakkuk 2:13-14)

The great unification is not monistic but incarnational.

Here is my really big leap: The plan of God required the fall for incarnational glory. Naïve man is subject to delusion. Redeemed and completed (telosed) man is not. God's glory being known is the ultimate goal (God's meaningful union with creation, though without absorption). The demonic are created for the purpose of leading in the playing out of the logic of rebellion.

We are headed to a mature creation that is capable of understanding good and evil such that good is genuinely known as complete (Adam/Eve had to wonder, the church won't [when telosed]).

I AM NOT SELF EXISTENT; ARE YOU?

Certain observations are so seemingly obvious that there value seems questionable. Yet, we often function with ideas that are so simply wrong as to be dispelled if only exposed to the unstated obvious.

I am not self-existent. I do exist, but not from myself. There is something that causes me to exist. That something is my frame of reference. It is where I come from, and, critically, it is where time compels on toward. My ultimate fate is inescapably linked to the source of my existence. This is truly important. If I cannot reconcile with what is the actual cause and end of my existence my life will at best be a guess. Likely, failure to engage my cause and fate will lead to a failed life, now and then.

Options: impersonal nature has given rise to me and the world in which I find myself. If so, there is no personal reception for me when ‘life’ ceases. Thus, there is no real meaning, only sequence.

However, if my reflective self exists as a result of a self-existent Person, that Person is the key to everything. Do I have the courage to diligently pursue this One? And if so, how personal. Can I talk to the One in my head? Can I hear the One? Can I talk responsibly about this One?

The answers have to be yes. But courage is the right word. The world (people everywhere) gets caught up in the immediate. The immediate then determines the questions we ask and the answers we accept. The challenge is to have the appropriate intersection of the immediate and the ultimate. Treasuring that which is ultimate enough to see it, even when you have to look through, around and beyond all the stuff.