In Ezekiel 47, the prophet shares an amazing vision. His poetic expression of God’s kingdom dominates the way we think about church.
In Ezekiel’s vision, God’s kingdom is seen as an ever deepening river. As the waters increase, they flow further and further into the land. The river is dynamic not static. It is expansive not retreating or protecting. Wherever the river flows it contacts dry and parched places. And as it does, those places erupt with new life, fruitfulness and hope.
This is a vision of life with Jesus. He rescues the enslaved, he binds up the broken, he reconciles the alienated and he radically reorients human life toward a new hope. Jesus is the head of the Church. We are his body – his hands and feet in the world. With him as our head, we join his ongoing dynamic, expansive mission to “destroy the works of the evil one” (1 John 3:8). We go in his name as his “sent ones” to continue his mission.
“All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Therefore, go and make disciples…”
Matthew 28:18-19
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Nothing will change the world more powerfully than the love of Christ shared with a world that so desperately needs it.
Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.
God cannot give us a happiness and peace apart from Himself, because it is not there. There is no such thing.
Even a small light holds back darkness and a group of small lights can banish it completely.
Merely attending church doesn’t make you much of a church because sitting in a row, consuming church doesn’t make you very good at being the church.
If the wrongdoer has to do something to merit mercy, then it isn’t mercy.
By judging others we blind ourselves to our own evil and to the grace which others are just as entitled to as we are.
You can’t build the future of the church on passionless, disengaged people. Nor can you build it on consumers.
The difference between humanity and all the rest of creation is that men and woman were made to relate directly with God.
Genuine spiritual knowledge lies in the union of the believer’s life with the truth of God.
To exist without the pursuit of God’s mission in the world is to exist as something other than the church.
I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in to him and eat with him, and he with me
Revelation 3:20