Our ONE Need in 2022

 As we enter into this New Year,

    and as all that can be shaken is being shaken,

        as the light goes out over the nations, 

            as the darkness deepens all around,

                we need an answer.

As the earthly shows its true nature of impermanence,

    there is One Thing alone that remains.

We have heard much, and spoken much about the KINGDOM OF GOD.

    But as a people, as a church, we have never seen it.

 

Let me say it again;

I am certain that this generation has never seen the real Kingdom of God.

The Kingdom is not about the outward:

    the observances, the laws, the forms.

        It is something infinitely beyond these things.

An eagle, if it is to fly must take to the air.

    Imagine for a moment an eagle unwilling to commit itself,

        unwilling to step off the crag where it is perched,

            unwilling to abandon the visible 

                and give itself to the invisible winds.

What would be the end of that bird?

    It would die trusting the "safety" of its rock.

So it is with us unless we find the sphere of the Holy Spirit, 

    unless we find the dimension of the Kingdom of God.

        All the outward things that we call the church, the Kingdom,

            are NOTHING if the Spirit of God does not quicken.

As I look at the Scripture, verse after verse marks this difference:

We are DELIVERED from the power of darkness,

and TRANSLATED into the Kingdom. (Col 1.13)

 

It is a place where the past has vanished away.

    It is another plane where all is infinite, because it is the realm of God.

 

How much do we really know of this Deliverance?

How much do we know of this Translation?

    Simply... where do we live?

        What world surrounds us?

            What things matter to us?

 

Would that we could feel "the intolerable craving."

    Would that, like Francis Xavier, we would be moved

        "to shout as a madman" to the blind who 

            indifferent to reality think themselves to see.

 

Friends, this year can be, must be, if we are not to drink of death,

    a year of coming into an understanding of what Jesus came to bring.

        It must be a year of stepping out of mere human construction

            into the freedom of that Kingdom which is a Spiritual Realm.

 

God calls us,

    and as we dare to spread our wings, He will not allow us to fall,

        rather we shall know the joy of the Limitless -

            the Infinite reaches of God's land of "far horizons."

 

         "I will never leave thee" - His Spirit is there sufficient,

          in every need, for every day, for every circumstance.