From Now On I Will Go to the Gentiles Pt 1 of 2
by David Orton
The Current Realignment of the Church
Part 1 of 2
But when they resisted and blasphemed, he shook out his garments and said to them, "Your blood be on your own heads! I am clean. From now on I will go to the Gentiles."
Hearing the voice of God
I was in the national capital attending a roundtable conference of leaders committed to transformational city-reaching.
Sitting at the table listening to my fellow delegates I suddenly heard the voice of God. Without any human contrivance their voices all of a sudden seemed to be turned down and over the top of them I heard, almost audibly, the Lord say, “From now on I am going to the Gentiles!”
The words carried with them a sense of foreboding – of divine import, of imminent divine action that was threatening. It felt and sounded like it came from a deeply held determination in the heart of God in the face of something horribly wrong or unjust – in fact, it sounded like a declaration of war!
A line of demarcation
That was more than eighteen months ago. Since then this declaration of divine intent has played out with a line of demarcation becoming increasingly clear in the body of Christ.
For us in our life and ministry it meant some fundamental shifts. Since 1993 I had served catalytically in our city of Melbourne and across our nation to bring pastors and leaders together primarily to seek the face of God. In 2000 I stepped aside from these various citywide and national roles into a hiatus which realigned us for the present era, also producing the book, ‘Snakes in the Temple’. Previously in 1999 I had found myself unexpectedly out of pastoral ministry to engage in what became a five-year process of realignment. It was not until 2004 with the ‘Open Heavens Over Australia’ Conference in Melbourne and the release of the book that we were to re-emerge.
Realignment of self
Over this time God consolidated a three-decade-long process of realignment relating to identity. In my view this is the foundational realignment of all the current shifts in the larger body of Christ. Without this all the other shifts of the ‘emerging church’ are either merely cosmetic or only a re-engineering for growth. They are just more of the same in the quest for more effective ways of doing church.
So why is ‘identity’ so important to the current reformation? Because it is central to who we are – to our sense of significance, and therefore of self. It determines what we do and why – it is the inner motivation for action and behaviour. Our source of identity boils down to two possibilities – either God the creator or the creation. As I show in my book, ‘Snakes in the Temple’, this is the essence of idolatry.
An idol is simply a created thing, either material or non-material, which provides me with a sense of well-being. This means anything can be an idol: a relationship, a role, a ministry, a status, a belief, a church, or even my own self-perception – whatever provides me with a sense of affirmation and significance.
Our self-perception is particularly prone to the inroads of idolatry. We create a false reality about ourselves which we then live in. This is especially so when the emotional pain of life’s circumstances become too much to handle. In a form of denial we transfer our consciousness to an upper story of mental self-perception to cope. This false reality affirms me, telling me I’m okay, but contradicts the pain of my actual emotions creating a deep sense of inner dissonance, if not confusion. It produces Christians who live out of the upper story of their thought-life but are not emotionally nor spiritually whole. They may even know how to move in the gifts and operations of the Spirit but at a character level are eating of the tree of knowledge. It also manifests in an inability to receive counsel without being deeply threatened. To continue to feel good about myself in the face of counsel or correction I must take a self-defensive posture. To feel safe my self-image becomes a stronghold defending me from the truth and those who speak it – from truth-sayers. This is the cause of much relational tension and breakdown in the body of Christ, particularly in times of reformational change.
More than ministry restructure
This line being drawn in the sand through the word of the Lord is far deeper and far more threatening than any realignment of mere ministry structure or protocol. Many, for example, are fighting over the redefinition of the local church and its structures, particularly in light of the so-called “out of church phenomenon”, but these issues while important are missing the point. The outward structures of the church as we have known it is only the institutionalisation of inward problems.
The holiness of God demands the total eradication and destruction of idols. If His presence is to return this is the inescapable imperative. This is a heart shift. It is foundational to any reformational shifts of structure, protocol, or vocabulary. He cannot dwell with false gods – with the ‘idol of jealousy’. The subtlety though is that we do not outwardly forsake the worship of the one true God. But inwardly we unwittingly derive security from the false idol-strongholds of our own self-perception. And so, the deception is deep and insidious.
This calls for a foundational realignment of self. It is the paradox of losing our life to find it:
"He who loves his life loses it, and he who hates his life in this world will keep it to life eternal.
John 12:25 NASB
Rather than deriving your sense of self from a created thing – from ministry success, a career, or a role – you will derive it exclusively from God. This is more than an upper story matter of belief – the mental assent that says, “Of course I get my significance from God – that’s what Christians do!” It demands a reconnection with the reality of your pain and true condition. It calls for a soul laid bare and an utter abandonment to God. It usually occurs through a crisis of financial, ministerial, relational, or career deprivation where we are forcefully fasted from the things of this world by an invisible but merciful hand.
Yielding to the realignment
If we yield to that hand awesome and beautiful things result. As I lay my life down I am realigned to exclusively discover my significance in beholding Him. Instead of rushing from one activity to the next performing for God’s approval, or the approval of my peers, my whole attention is stolen by the beauty of who He is. I find myself falling deeper into Him, discovering that my life is hid in Christ in God. As my heart resonates with His I discover a true sense of self – that I am made in His image – that I am bone of his bone and flesh of His flesh, and in fact that I am beautiful – that I am His child. This is the smile of God – the existential affirmation that you were created for – the pleasure of the Father that declares, “This is my beloved son in whom I am well-pleased!”
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Copyright © David Orton 2006