the great "rebellion"--of resisting {spiritual} authority

The keyboard doesn't come lightly.

And as the "stats" counter seems to rise (ever so slightly), I tremor a bit.

I fear my words. I fear they'll altogether fail.

I fear my clay-self, cracked pot that is, will seem harsh, or self-congragulatory, or religious, or heaven-forbid, pious or rebellious. I fear to speak at all.

"It is possible to be so anxious as to how and what you shall speak that your manner grows constrained and you forget those very points you meant to make most prominent." Charles Spurgeon's "The Greatest Fight In the World"

Sometimes, I key-tap words like dusty bones and shake them out across my desert screen where only He's able to water them into the flesh of a Person. Other times, they're a raging river pouring into the mouth of a deep, wide ocean of words, blogs, internet-worlds like a boat where only the Sailor can steer it to the right shore.

But they're from desire.

And so I'm baffled by the Church. There's an institution which needs walls and programs and pyramid schemes, and most of all, authority. I'm not talking about the heavenly Throne but the earthly ones.

As if you were to fall right out of Grace if you appear to be "resisting" or "rebelling" against this authority. I ask, what authority?

God's or man's?

Last I knew, Christ was the Head of His church and we rise "within the ranks" by going lower and dying. And even this we can not do ourselves.

Christ didn't nail His own hands, but instead allowed our very own depravity to bring Him to the Cross, by which we displayed our very need of His sacrifice by the wickedness of our hearts which said "Crucify Him! Crucify Him!"

But I would never do that, we think. Yet we're guilty of crucifying eachother and driving nails through the very Body, even worse, we injure ourselves because we're now part of this Body, if in Christ.

It doesn't mean we'll always agree, or that we won't ever part ways, or that my view of Church will be your view. It just means, we eat of the same Bread.

The Church isn't about esteeming ourselves higher than such an such in the Body, thinking we're more together than the next, lording a "position" over people, or intellectually-infusing ourselves with scripture as to maim eachother with it.

Which gospel is this?

This is the same false doctrine which nailed Him to a tree and still works today and all we need do is look around. Our own depravity witnesses against us.

But for what? To prove it only matters on one point.

Our need for Christ is evident. And that is all.

When problems arise we must go back and lay that foundation all over again, Christ, Him crucified and risen.

We wear the Holy Spirit like a betrothed ring to our Husband.

So why is He barred at the door? Why is the Spirit set outside the gates like an unwelcome guest, because He might disturb the service? Why are we so fearful of losing control, we don't give Him permission to even speak out of turn, as if the turn is ours to control? Order is lost or confined into tight knots only when man is overly involved in one extreme or another.

Why is His own intimate language, rebuked and repulsed by His Betrothed, the Church? What bride desires to live a celibate marriage? When a marriage lacks intimacy then there's trouble indeed.


We must get back to Christ! We must lay the foundation all over again, and again. We need to give up our works, religious laws, our programs, denominations, sectarianism, my church against your church, my theology is better than your theology and get our eyes back on the Prize!

When we are wholly Christ-centered it doesn't mean we don't fail, or don't make mistakes, or that we have become perfect, or that we'll magically treat eachother like angels, it means we die and Christ lives.

My friend, we are not enemies if we are truly in Christ. It's not by some intellectual assent, or weapons-of-mass-scripture, or one doctrine over another, or your way or the highway, that we are called the Church.

We are called to that baptism of the grave, where our soul must be buried, so Christ can raise us up in Him and resurrect the new {wo}man. It's by Him alone.

Nothing else.

If I should meet here or there and you do this or that, we still have but one Authority, one Head, one Mediator and if we're all looking to Him....He's able to set the order of everything else.

So why do we feel we need to be under man's spiritual authority? There are so many arguements, this order and that order, differing authorities, or spiritual coverings by a church pastor or denomintion. But if we're looking exclusively to Christ, then there is Divine order.

Question is, no matter how uncomfortable our flesh becomes, do we truly trust His order?

"For there is one God and one Mediator between God and men, the Man Christ Jesus.." 1 Timothy 2:5

At Ann's.