It's harder for a rich man

In the house churches in the 70s we were waiting on God and prophesying to each other. The Word God gave continually was about the glorious church. The great influx. The fact that as in Isaiah 60, Darkness would cover the earth but Light, a great light would arise. We prophesied the rise of the Body of Christ. We received in our spirits the vision of the Church, the recovery of all the lost types of ministries. We used to have a great time just singing and prophesying these things with the attendant presence and overshadowing of the Holy Spirit....but seeing very little with our eyes. Then our generation began looking too much with their eyes. We started buying buildings, running faith schools. Switching our worldly pyramid power structures over to Kingdom Names like Salt and Light, Harvest time, New Frontiers....and carried on much like New israelites who happened to be born again and at one point at least, filled with the Spirit.

But ofcourse we Ishmaeled it. It was one big Ishmael. A bit of Divine seed, Kings Church High Wycombe, having sex with a maid, the High Wycombe Town Council and giving birth to the same sort of hybrid Beasts that Anglican Village Halls are.

Nobody told us that Jesus, when He came to give us Life....meant errrrr real Life. As in Galatians2.20 as consciousness.
We thought it was our old separation consciousness, appeased like taming Beowulf's Grendel, outside the village in Holy Spirit meetings. See, that felt like Life. Anybody who has attended the great vibe in a stage concert....well imagine that charged with a vibrant electric unlimited energy of Holy Spirit in a meeting? So we could be forgiven for making the mistake. Did you ever wonder why Joshua and King David hung around the tabernacle and the courts of the Temple so much? It wasn't the colour of the fabrics!!!!! The decor.

So now we have a Beast hybrid that people wear like badges and they are called "ministries". Now these guys with these things always say that they are preaching out of real life experiences. They are no fools. But none of them have laid everything down like Jesus said and fallen into the ground like a seed and died....for an impossibly long time....not knowing what would become of them.

No, when they mean roadtested, they mean a washing machine man came this week and they helped him pull the washing machine out from the wall to show that as ministers they weren't averse to doing something other than ministry.

No no no. When Jesus says
unless you enter the narrow way
unless you take all your various riches through the eye of the needle
unless you sell everything and follow Him

unless unless.....

then all these manipulating grasping measures, these arms protruding from your skin like bits of still alive independent self delusion.......will still be very much crawling about your person...
because as Dickens wrote....you are 'umble, ever so 'umble' Mr Copperfield.

Only a complete death can get to these things.....and the Holy Spirit runs the funeral Plan.