I want you to be inspired by this at two levels. Some will recognise that this is superb tuition at any level, and some will even be reignited about playing the piano.
But I want you to slip slideways and now consider your whole approach to making disciples.
Did you just hear what he said at the end to summarise?
Two contrary approaches which meet up at the end?
In Song of Solomon, at the end in chapter 8 are these words,
“[j]We have a little sister,
And she has no breasts;
What shall we do for our sister
On the day when she is spoken for?
9 “If she is a wall,
We will build on her a battlement of silver;
But if she is a door,
We will barricade her with planks of cedar.”
10 “[k]I was a wall, and my breasts were like towers;
Then I became in his eyes as one who finds peace.
I believe Watchman Nee wrote about this passage in his Song of Songs book something about our breasts signifying the two tandem qualities of faith on one side, and love and trust on the other.
Mature saints are filled with faith, but they also ooze AGAPE love.
Mature congregations have endured much with patience....not least each other !!!!
and .like old couples, ooze this strong affection and deep knowing of one another.
But, if they have matured in faith , not compromising, mature Spirit churches are something else regarding the release of God's power amongst them.
BUT.....Kingdom kids, I am sure you have realised both require totally different approaches.
Both sides though are linked by a common denominator.....FAITH.
There is raw faith, the faith that speaks things into being.
There is fidelity faith. Ed Miller said a "faithful man is a man full of faith".
To endure, to persist....requires faith.
People who give up. People who don't complete....it CAN be....they just didn't have faith.
The TRUSTING side of faith is one that Acknowledges God in all our ways, Proverbs 3.....refuses to SEE DOUBLE.....or REFUSES to SEEanything outside of God, even when all is Darkness.
Refuses to give the devil overall Lordship but says at every point....
God works all things for good with those that love him.
St Paul was in and out of prison for preaching the gospel, but he viewed the whole thing on a continuum.....viewing the sufferings as the engine driving the resurrection life....
sowing his mortal body in a Romans 12 fashion to reap immortality.
But they are contrary in this way.
And there are simply no hard and fast rules. Abraham had words with God about his nephew in Sodom. Moses had words with God about the future relationship of God with His very own people.
Things in the Spirit are frighteningly fluid in one sense.
I mean God the Father asked the Son in Gethsemane whether He still wanted to go through with it?
Supposing hypothetically He had said no?
Sometimes we are enduring things and we are just stupid. A faith man comes, speaks a Word and Kapow our prison door suddenly opens.....but we were sure this was our lot to endure.
Other times, we are sure we have heard a Word on something.....but nope, nothing opens up.
Listen, if a man as full of faith like Paul is ready to go to Bythinia or whatever the region was called and the Spirit forbade him.....no amount of faith and enthusiasm is going to get him the gig !!!!
It's just not going to happen....YET.
Why is this all so important and current? Torben Søndergaard has had a profound effect on Tony Maden. You can see Torben's movie here.
But Tony Maden is one of this new generation like Peter David Aston who are starting to see both sides of the gospel at once from the outset.
Tony and Fred Pruitt beforehand, were only in Christ a few years before learning about the third level. Most Christians do not even know there is a thirdlevel. Certainly in its early stages the thirdlevel looks outwardly like a disaster movie.
It would be like the surrounding kings looking at the early history of Israel.
So, tell me what does this God of yours feed you?
Well, we all got to live in a desert with the same shoes for 40 years, and had a crispy honeycomb like substance which melted or decayed after a few hours, then for tea we had bird....every day.
So tell me,the kings continue, this God of yours that has promised you a thirdlevel experience in some Land or other?
What is it about your present experience that tells you you haven't been duped by a cultleader whose only credentials are keeping sheep?
I digress....
Tony just happened to get wind of Norman Grubb a few years after becoming a Christian.
Peter David Aston grew up in a fellowship with similar roots to my renewed Baptist church in Amersham, and received much input from Randy Clark and John Crowder.
John is one of the few in the early years of the millenium who saw the twin aspects of Jesus Christ ministry. The free use of the spiritual gifts, but also the teaching about the Cross and a total change of inner consciousness.
JESUS TAUGHT BOTH SIMULTANEOUSLY ON EVERY PAGE OF THE GOSPELS.
WORD AND SPIRIT.
IT ALSO GOES THROUGH EVERY STAGE OF THE TABERNACLE
BRAZEN ALTAR.....LAVER
TABLE OF SHEWBREAD......LAMPSTAND
MERCY SEAT WITH THREE FORMS OF WORD INSIDE WITH SHEKINAH GLORY OVERHEAD
HOW THE UNION BELIEVERS HAVE MISSED ALL THIS IS SIMPLY BEYOND ME. ITS STARING EVERYBODY RIGHT IN THE FACE THROUGH THE WHOLE BIBLE.
Perhaps one of the reasons the Lord stopped the Bunting's yearly conferences was because they were simply too one sided. Now for years, God HAD to restore the teaching of the thirdlevel, because the Pentecostals and Apostolics had been sweeping it under the carpet for 100 years....and that wasn't balanced either.
But the two paths, so forked up until our current age, are both in God, though both contrary WAYS.
Or apparently contrary, like these two forms of piano teaching....
But actually in the end they meet up in one glorious KISS.
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