Pentecost Sunday

Jun 8, 2014 4:54 PM

I write this on Pentecost Sunday...the day many of us are taught "the church was born."  All week I have traveled into what we call town, the Chehalis/Centralia area where we go to the gym, Walmart, doctors, etc,. and each time we've gone into town we pass a big new LED reader board sign from one of the the largest churches in our community. It's a big new sign that calls out to everyone that drives north on the I-5 corridor. For the past two weeks the sign has blazoned  with this saying: New Series Beginning,  BECOMING THE CHURCH.   I was intrigued by the title of the series and went up to the Internet to  see if they had a podcast or anything. One of the wives of the men that my husband has breakfast with attends that congregation and shared a bit of what the sermon was about last week so I had hoped it would be on podcast so I could get the full intent. I could locate none! So, as I write today I can't with any measure of truth, tell you what that congregation heard preached about "Becoming the Church." But it has intrigued me this week and stirred up my thinking about who we are.   I kept asking myself, Can I become what I already am? How do I become what I am?    In the last couple of years God has been unfolding in my life who I am in Christ and who Christ is in me.  It has never been about becoming something , but the unfolding of who I am...and who the I am is in me.   Christ is the head of His body, even the church.  How do I become the church?  Now if you were to ask me how I am to function being who I am...that might be another whole matter...and perhaps that is what the pastor's series is about...coming to understand how I walk out who I am in Christ Jesus...what are the ways that I am to "express" the reality of who Christ is in me and my relationship with Christ as He lives and dwells in other believers.  I hope that is what the sermon series is about.   I have grown up in the culture we call Christianity, my father being an American Baptist pastor and then when I was in 4th grade he had to return to the work as a public school teacher due to lack of available pastorates who wanted what was then a 55 year old man.   We've always been associated with those who call ourselves the church. And yet,  I can recall almost no awareness of us "functioning" as the body of Christ" or having any sense of identity in Christ Himself, other than, we were 'saved" by believing in the work of the cross and inviting Christ into our lives....and of course being baptized...and then eventually baptized with the Holy Spirit (in a Pentecostal congregation I attended in the evenings with my boyfriend..not at an American Baptist fellowship.) Most of my life was about "doing what I was supposed to do"   Doing what I thought God wanted me to do. Doing what was right versus wrong.  And since I so often fell down there was over the years that guilt and shame that  piled up because I didn't know who Christ was in me or who I was in Christ.  Did it mean He wasn't in me and I wasn't his son? Of course not!! Did it mean I wasn't a part of His body?  Of course not. But what it did mean, was I wasn't functioning in who I am and out of who Christ is in me.   I was still an infant, and at one stage probably a teenager testing out my own abilities apart from the governing powers of His Spirit. I didn't know who I am....the Son of the Living God...a son of the King...with every spiritual blessing in heavenly places....a joint heir with Christ, a co-laborer with Him in the gospel of the King...oh maybe should add..Kingdom. I didn't understand the gospel...even today I love asking folks...what gospel did Jesus preach?  If we say we preach the gospel of Jesus Christ then that must be the same gospel Jesus preached when he walked on the earth as a man.    If you had asked me this a year ago, I would have been dumbfounded ...without an answer...yep...Meri would have had no answer!! grin!!   I later began to study and found Jesus preached that the kingdom of God was at hand...ok , so what.........the Kingdom of God is near...........I remember someone saying years ago after a brief conversation I had with them,  something about  being near the kingdom I didn't understand.  Oh, but here on this Pentecost Sunday 2014.....I understand a bit more..........I think I have some understanding today.  Jesus preached the good news of the kingdom of God...because he was the KING...and he manifested the power of the King of Kings in healing, deliverance, multiplication of food and and many other miracles.  The King is here.... Is that the message of Pentecost today?   We may not hear it in the service we attend but the reality is . the King is here!!!!  He was there alive i where I attended this morning in most of the saints that were crying out to Him...unaware that He is come...and we can "rest in Him" that HE IS OUR REST. As I left service, a song welled up in me...and since I don't remember song words worth a nickle when a song rises up I know it comes from my spirit through Holy Spirit .  it was ..Ps. 132:14...This is my Rest forever, here will I dwell, for I have desired it...for my habitation. I sensed many of those in the pews "crying out" wanted "visitation"...they were unaware that the church was already birthed in them... and that it is time to Rest in him that we might learn to co-labor with him, follow His leading and direction from the inside out.  I had such a peace during the service...and during the time of "praise and worship"...that Peace flooded my being with awareness of  situations where Holy Spirit was at work, places his Spirit was ministering, healing he was doing....wow...Seeing what He cares about and what He is doing by His Spirit, sure takes a load off my shoulders. which is why He says, Come unto me all you who labor and are heavy laden and I will give you rest. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light and I will give rest for your souls. As one of those "called according to His purposes"...as His Spirit leads and directs me, I can trust all things to work together. I can trust that He will show me where He is working and invite me to work along side him by His power, with his Words, with his heart and mind.  I spent my life "working for God", standing up against injustice and other social wrongs.   One time  I had a lady call me a crusader ...and I was...but I wasn't doing and saying what He was doing and saying, I was doing according to my sense of right and wrong.   And I will be faced with reckoning myself dead to my "old ways" and the "old man that ruled my old ways" and alive unto Christ in me and what He says and what HE is and who He is in me...until this body of flesh falls off or I am translated.   Jesus said that we were to deny ourselves, take up our cross and follow him.....and that HE would "make us" fishers of men. The power of my own self-directed way of life I inherited from Adam is something I must deny access to  recognizing it is dead and produces death. And I will be going through that process of my humanity, being "put to death" so to speak, putting that to death, which is my cross, until I die....only as this is done can I follow Christ...for He is always on the other side of the cross...I am helpless to die myself. I can kill myself which is suicide, but I can only reckon myself dead in the face of all Jesus was and is and shall be...knowing that when this house of flesh falls off I shall be like him....as will you as you follow Christ as I let Him be who he is in me. Pentecost Sunday...the birth of the Church.....It is birthed...and it IS...and we are encouraged to allow Him to be formed in us...that all that He is come forth in us as we function as the church that we are in Christ Jesus.  Ok, that could be translated...becoming the church...but I'd rather say...I am becoming all that I am, was and ever shall be in Him who was and is and is to come.. and all that I am can only be fully developed as I have relationship with others who live and move and have their being in Him,The Lord Jesus Christ revealed in us by Holy Spirit himself. Meri