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Boldness of Love by Ron McGatlin
Last updated on: November 21, 2010 at 7:25 am by editorconvergingzone
Boldness of Love by Ron McGatlin 2010-11-21T07:25:00-08:00 editorconvergingzone
Patheos Explore the world's faith through different perspectives on religion and spirituality! Patheos has the views of the prevalent religions and spiritualities of the world.
An increasing number of followers of Christ are sensing an inner heavenly unction and hunger to experience a full-out worldwide fire of God revival. We are longing for an outpouring of people turning to God with passion that ignites the world with the pure holy presence of God – a flood of the liquid fire of God’s love flowing from within God’s people consuming the foolishness of a sin-sick world and replacing it with the kingdom of God on earth as it is in heaven. All that is needed is now available by the Holy Spirit – the Spirit of Christ Jesus in all who live by the Spirit and walk in the Spirit.
All the systems of life on Planet Earth are languishing in desperate straits of degradation. Life is fading from the people and systems of the world. The world suffers from continuous decline of life gradually eroding into death as the substance of life oozes out and away from mankind.
THE WORLD IS DYING FOR LOVE.
The love of God is the substance of life. With God’s love all life prospers and all systems of life increase and improve. Evil fades away as love grows and intensifies. The fire of God is the passion of His love. The passionate love of God is setting our hearts on fire with His passion in us. The weak become strong in the boldness of His passionate love. Human reason and fears are devoured in the passionate fire of God’s love.
A small frail mother will arise and fiercely attack a large strong man who is threatening her small child. A father will run through flames into a burning building to save his precious son. An old man will dive from a bridge into a deep cold river to save his drowning grandson. Human love is powerful; how much more powerful is the spiritual love of God?
How much more is the passionate love of God in our hearts consuming our fear and human reasons for restraining ourselves from rising up to bring life to those around us and stop the flow of death in our world? Father God in His passionate love is sending fire from heaven. Can you feel it? Can you sense the call to explode with the fire of God like lightning from heaven, thus beginning an outpouring of a deluge of the liquid fire of God’s love?
We are like the old man standing on the dry safe bridge peering down into the cold murky flowing water of the large river that is carrying away our posterity of the generations that has fallen or jumped from the safe dry bridge into the deadly water. There is no time to think or prepare, only time to shout “HELP!” at the top of our voices in hopes that someone will hear as we jump over the banister in the hope of grabbing the child before he is carried too far away by the current or submerged into the depths.
Personally I believe Father God and Christ Jesus in the Holy Spirit are ready to make an all out move to leap into our personal and world situation to save the drowning posterity of His creation on Planet Earth. Further, I believe God is calling for his frail and humble people to arise and shout for help as we leap from our safe dry place into the passionate flow of redemption and transformation. God is looking for sons and daughters who will present their bodies as living sacrifices.
I hear a religious voice of denial saying something like, “God will have to do this in His timing when He is ready. I am certainly willing to be a part whenever He decides to send such a move. He has all the power and is in control and can do this thing. I can only wait until He does it. I sure don’t want to get in the flesh and try to make it happen. I am willing whenever He does it. And we all know we must be careful for it might be Satan doing a counterfeit thing.”
This sounds good and certainly is not all untrue. We sure don’t want the flesh or the devil involved. However, there is nothing wrong and everything right with doing something by the Spirit. Pray, hear, and obey is our part.
The above excuses are usually made from false humility probably coming from religious training. The effect of these words is to quench the fire of God. We will not jump in carrying our weights of religion. There is an abandoning of secular and religious weights involved. God is not going to do this by Himself apart from His sons and daughters, His Body on earth. He will do all the empowering and supply all the needs and direction for the leap into the activity of the Spirit, but He will not do it without His people.
We must break through our religious shells and leave them behind. Like a chick forming and growing inside a protective eggshell, we must exert the strength to break through the “eggshell” to experience life in the Spirit. Until that breakthrough the chick’s world consists of only what is inside that shell. It was a good place for a miracle of life to begin and be formed into a living being. However, it is not a place to grow up and experience life in a much larger realm.
If for some strange reason a natural chick decides to not peck his way out of the shell, it would live a very limited short life in the shell. The chick will never experience the far greater life growing up in the big world. If for some reason the chick does not develop enough strength to peck through the shell and breakout, he will soon die. The mother hen cannot help the chick to break through the shell. The will and effort must come from within the chick. The same is true of the butterfly, fashioned by the hand of God from a caterpillar while in the womb of cocoon. The butterfly gains needed strength in the exercise needed to break through.
When I lived on a homestead type farm, I had a large incubator and hatched a couple of hundred chicks each year. On occasion I would discover a chick that was having difficulty trying to hatch. I discovered that if I helped the chick, most of the time he would not be strong enough to survive. I had provided the right temperature and humidity and turned the eggs twice daily for the 21 days or so in the incubator. I had done all that could be done, but the chick had to do the hatching on his own.
The truth can be proclaimed and prophesied and the environment made right for hatching through our religion. However, only we can decide we will break out of our religious shell and leave it behind. With the natural chick, not one particle of the old shell can remain on the chick. If it does it will stick tight and require some help to safely remove it. The other chicks may peck it off and do some damage to the skin. I found that I could help in removing the shell by moistening the stuck piece of shell and gently removing it.
So it is in the Spirit. We must within ourselves make a clean break from our shell of religion. If we get free and are walking around with a bit of religion still stuck on us, we can help one another by gently removing the piece with the moisture of the Holy Spirit. However, we still have a part by submitting to the ministry of another and remaining still while the piece is removed from us. There may still be some pain in its removal, and the tendency is to lash out toward the one helping us when it hurts a bit.
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