“Come Arion.”
I woke up with such a jolt hearing God call me out of a deep sleep. His voice was authoritative yet kind, urgent and excited. I knew that God was calling me with purposeful intent to teach me something. And give me something to write about. I knew God was calling as I have heard God call before, unlike Samuel’s first time, but both of us responding to the authority alike.
I have heard God’s Voice a few times in my life. There is a difference to the prompting of The Holy Spirit through our thoughts bringing us into remembrance, or caution, or loving reassurance, compared to God’s Voice which seems to shatter matter all around. It is hard to describe other than to say that every cell in your body knows it is before its Maker. Reverence and healthy fear go hand-in-hand because the powerful awareness that when God Speaks the Power is enough to kill us, and we are no match whatsoever to God.
Any thoughts to the contrary, are quite literally blind ego trying to approve it’s own existence, aka god-complex.
Anyhow, I literally jumped out of bed with such a fright. I expected to see Jesus knocking at my bedroom door waiting for me to let Him in. Once I checked all the doors, wet my face, and my heart calmed down to a panic, I asked, “God please show me why You woke up. Holy Spirit draw me into my Father’s Presence in the Holiest of Holies.”
Loadshedding (power outages) meant reading via emergency light as I sought my Holy Bible when God’s Spirit prompted, “John 2 vs 14.”
The milk was out, so timing the power returning I rush to the petrol station waking the sleeping teller. He looked as startled as I am feeling.
Arriving home and settling into God’s Holy Word, and studying it, ready to make some coffee now 2 hrs later, 04:12am, I feel God’s Presence so strongly. A perfectly hung art work falls off the wall, and I am now beside myself. The artwork is about identity, truth, and the anguish of finding solace in a world that cruelly offers exchange of ideas for profit that profits not the Spirit. Quite literally, something has to give when God’s Presence is near, and this specific artwork too exactly related to what God is saying, to have coincidentally fallen, considering that 4x heavier artworks are hanging by the exact nails.
GOD, OUR FATHER, OUR DAD, OUR MAKER, HAS SOMETHING TO SAY!!!
At first glance, from a biased perspective which creates a cloudy agenda in our hearts, we can get all self-righteous saying, “See, churches shouldn’t sell things like a market.”
We would be dead wrong. As dead wrong as these religipreneurs were that caused Jesus to correct their dodgy ways. A bit of investigation about why John places a distinctive clause between sacifical animals for sale AND moneychangers helps us grasp what God is saying that He boldly woke me up to read, learn, and write about for Him.
The issue wasn’t making available the things needed by the people to be able to offer sacrifices to God, symbolic of what God was to do through Jesus, but the fraud of those whose agenda was profit by dishonest means. By the opportunists who sought to take advantage of people in highly vulnerable states, weighed down heavily by the guilt & shame our sin brings, and wanting the release God gives.
GOD DOES NOT, HAS NEVER, AND WILL NEVER ACCEPT HUMANIST RELIGIOUS SUPREMACY THAT MAKES CHURCH UNAVAILABILE TO THOSE WHO DESPERATELY SEEK HIS FORGIVENESS.
When we fall into the trap that Christianity is an identity that validates us versus Christianity being about God/Jesus/Holy Spirit who include us into God’s Story by serving others to attain that forgiveness from God, it isn’t a far fall to justify selling Jesus as if He is a luxury commodity set at a cripplingly high price. It is only the other pagan religions that set a price to try bribe the “gods” for favour.
GOD CAME TO MAN BECAUSE MAN CAN NEVER BE GOOD ENOUGH, PERFECT ENOUGH, SACRIFICE ENOUGH, PRAY ENOUGH, SING ENOUGH, BE PIOUS ENOUGH, TO BE WORTHY OF THE PERFECTION OF GOD. SO GOD CAME AS JESUS TO SHOW US THAT ONLY BEING IN A RELATIONSHIP WITH HIM CAN GET US INTO A PLACE TO BE ABLE TO GROW INTO WHO HE SAYS THAT WE ARE. WE ARE ACCEPTED AND BY ACCEPTING JESUS, THEN BEGINS TO WORK OUT WHAT’S UNCLEAN IN US TO BECOME LIKE HIMSELF.
The artwork falling off the wall is metaphorical that Christianity isn’t an identity. We aren’t members of a church and its branding. We are family in God’s House whose identity is Child of Light with the purpose of serving others as God Loves them into wholeness and maturity. Christianity is not about us, but about what God wants us to do for Him. When we make Christianity an identity to parade like a label we are no better than the moneychangers who made specific coins fraudulent by playing with metals that made up the weight of money but didn’t have the right value of the value of the correct metal.
WHAT DOES THAT MEAN REGARDING IDENTITY?
If we, as the church, are making the church a brand to be followed, we make metaphorical coins of wrongful value. You know the types who hang out with the popular peeps in church, or say the right words to be heard by the right people, and serve to be validated, or heckle to be seated in the esteemed seats in church? The value of God’s Work is tarnished as it is then about personal profit versus being available for God to use to reach others who are beaten up by this horrible world we have made through our god-complex and self-serving agendas.
God wants us to be reminded that His House is available to anyone who wants redemption, forgiveness, and wants to build a relationship with Himself. Nothing, is on any value other than God’s Purpose to save. Much like the brilliant movie, ‘Jesus Revolution’ shows the struggle of metaphorical moneychangers- the hyper Chintianese religious types- who judged the dirty, barefoot, and stoned hippies for coming to church, God is telling us to be aware of Christian Elistism that does the same.
GOD’S HOUSE IS FOR CLEANSING, AND IS NOT FOR SALE!!!
John 2 ends with such a startling paragraph that should make all of our artwork fall off the masks we wear as forms of identity. When we aren’t surrendered into a life of continuous repentance, growing through confession and accountability as Jesus cleanses us, and church becomes a club rather than a place-of-safety for Jesus to heal the lost and broken-hearted, and restore them, then we have missed the point.
BUT JESUS HASN’T!!!
SO, WHAT NEEDS TO FALL OFF YOUR WALL FOR YOU TO TRULY RESPOND WHEN GOD WAKES YOU SAYING, “COME (insert name)”?
MORE, SPECIFICALLY, WHAT NEEDS TO FALL OFF YOUR CHURCH WALL FOR OTHERS TO RESPOND TO GOD SAYING, “COME,” THAT IS MAKING JESUS UNAVAILABLE TO THOSE WHO NEED HIM MOST?
#Hayibo 