For Christian Prayer

                            Meno: Abiding oneness

 

Most of us try to understand the things of God’s kingdom,

and their occurrences intellectually, while we depend less and

less upon the Holy Spirit showing us truth. We evaluate most

circumstances scientifically as our understanding and knowledge

of life increase. We may even adopt principles and procedures,

and find them useful, since they explain the dynamics

already at work in the complexities of the natural order God

has created. We become proud of our accomplishments, even

confessing our own wondrous part in their discovery. We apply

our reason to these truths and attempt to make sense of them as

we bring them into another structure of a building we’ve erected

from the ground upward. I’m afraid any approach to reasoning

out God’s plan from the bottom up over against from the top

down may prove mostly useless.

When I am empowered by the inward dynamics of Christ, it

is not that I have discovered a truth or detected a secret to apply

to my world. It is that I have learned that I can become empowered

by a relationship from out of another world. By the power

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MENO • 47

of that person, Christ and the Spirit of God, I can then be more

vital in relationship with another like myself. Also, I am empowered

to love God more deeply through abiding oneness.

The Shema (see Deuteronomy 6:4–5) helps us see this

truth begun for those under the Old Covenant. We may look

back and discover the roots of a system God taught His people

concerning loving Him with their all. As God continues His

lessons, we learn from His Son that the Shema also includes

loving our neighbor as ourselves (Matthew 22:37–40; compare

also with Leviticus 19:18). Empowering seems to be a wonderful,

supernatural phenomenon that has its purposes out of us

and toward God and then toward others. The blood of Christ

empowers us from out of ourselves supernaturally and into others,

and the matter must be understood in continuity from the

top downward and not so much from our perspective of placing

these truths within the structures of the building we’ve erected

from the ground upward. God does not need to wait for us to

understand the dynamics of ministry power. Downward power

is always available for ministry, whether we understand its spiritual

process or not. By faith we have acted on saving blood and

God accomplishes the thing from then on. Understanding the

building we erect, as outlined in this book, will only sustain, and

add more power to this working structure as we become closer

to God and learn to listen at His feet.

God created you and me to work well because of the blood

applied to our hearts, to our inner parts, and not so well when

blood is absent. God planned us to want a relationship with His

Son. When He contemplated His creation, our human form in

His image, He knew we would be imperfect creatures without

His Son’s empowering sacrifice. We have all heard that God has

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48 • The Tabernacle

placed a vacuum in each human, a sort of inward desire that

only His Son can fulfill. It should be clear to our understanding

that our hearts contain this vacuum, and the Creator has always

known that its filling would require the shedding of His Son’s

Holy blood—that has always been His plan.

Empowering dynamics and the blood of Christ must be

understood as elements created especially for their usefulness

in our lives that have become spiritually awakened. By God’s

Spirit, Christians can understand where Christ Jesus is staying

and where He abides and, by trusting in this understanding, can

become more empowered. Why, where, when, and how these

dynamics apply to the spiritual life is closely tied to loving God.

Loving God first—a first things principle—empowers the second

thing, loving your neighbor as yourself.