Shining gold nuggets, Romantic love called marriage not partnerships

Bear with me while I lay the ground work to make the point in this article.

Lessons learned by evangelistic works. In this city of Boston the MiracleJesus ministry had been very active in outreach. We were on various radio stations, we had a program on Fox TV, we distributed many postcards in the Boston area. We had billboards strategically places around Boston. You may have seen the "need a miracle" billboards on the major highways around Boston. We rented meeting facilities in downtown Boston and held crusade type meetings. One pastor friend who is over a large group of churches commented how we had seen more people come to Christ in one year than all his churches put together. The businessmen s fellowship we ran the Boston Business journal did an article on. I think you get the point we were active in this area.

Something always troubled me in all this evangelism and it was the fact people would come and go so rapidly. One week nine drug addicts came to know Christ but within 2 weeks they had fallen back into their crazy life of drugs and junk. Something inside me knew there was more, knew there was a key we were missing but was not sure what God was trying to tell us. Many people had come weeping to Christ, never to be seen again. Granted we can never know the impact Christ had on their lives but allow me to paint a picture of what we currently see.

Hebrews 8:10 For this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, says the Lord: I will put My laws in their mind and write them on their hearts; and I will be their God, and they shall be My people. 11 None of them shall teach his neighbor, and none his brother, saying, ‘Know the Lord,’ for all shall know Me, from the least of them to the greatest of them. 12 For I will be merciful to their unrighteousness, and their sins and their lawless deeds I will remember no more.

It has become apparent that all the knowledge of Christ and what He has done for us does not change the world. It transforms our immediate world but outside of that we struggle to make lasting changes. Hebrews illuminates a valuable key which has bought about a massive change. Verse 11 says "none of them shall teach his neighbor". A huge amount of what churchianity does is to try and teach the unteachable.

We are now understanding that everyone has Gods laws written on their heart. The problem is the laws get buried in life itself. Everyone knows the Lord as "for all shall know Me, from the least of them to the greatest of them". Not everyone has understanding of Christ but every person alive has Christ at work in their life. Maybe it's love or a gift or a song or joy, God is there somewhere and these things cannot exist in and of themselves. We just have been buried in self righteous carnality and a lifestyle of self gratification.

Having changed our approach we now see life manifest.

As ministers of Christ our place is to reveal Christ in people. Instead of converting people we have taken to revealing romantic love of Christ that is at work in every soul. The bible tells us every good gift comes down from above. Gifts in peoples lives are a great introduction to Christ and as we find the gold shining in a life we polish it and help people understand where it came from. When they see the romance of the gift they are hungry for more and slowly they start to see a desire for Christ revealed in their life. Ultimatly there will be a surrendering of their life to their spiritual lover Jesus Christ but for me to try and push that or make that happen is contradictry to Hebrews 8.

We can do nothing but shine the gold in peoples lives. Gods laws are written on their hearts and minds and as we discover what that means together we find religious knowledge is lost and koinonia love is established. Now the need to take ownership of lives no longer exists and the freedom to love and release is awesome. Daily our purpose is like Christ who came to seek and save that which is lost. We do not seek by action but rather by the state of who I am in Christ. As we just let the state of Spirit life be us, lives are changed business happens and what we once called miracles is now called life.

Now the people we journey with are only there to be encouraged into koinonia. Yes the churchianity people teach koinonia and in so attempting all they do is reveal how little of it they have. Within such folks there is the desire to teach the knowledge that Hebrews 8 tells us there is no need for.

1 Corinthians 8 We know that we all have knowledge. Knowledge puffs up, but love edifies. 2 And if anyone thinks that he knows anything, he knows nothing yet as he ought to know. 3 But if anyone loves God, this one is known by Him.

 Maybe it could be said this way. We spent countless hours and huge amounts of money to bring people to Christ. Now as we gave up living self righteous knowledge we understand how far from Christ our approach was. Now we/I understand I have nothing to teach anyone but I sure love polishing gold. All I do personally now is walk through a dirty world being aware of nuggets of gold that shine. Then I polish nuggets! Ultimately people are coming to Christ and never leaving as who wants out when all you get is romantic love. How can a person not surrender their identity to Christ as a bride does her identity to the groom. It is not a struggle it is a joy and any who do not surrender do not have a marriage they have a partnership. Partnerships and marriages are two very different things.