Christmas Eve, 2008
I was thinking recently of the four hundred years of silence that lies between the book of Malachi in the Old Testament and the first advent of our Lord Jesus Christ. In keeping with that, I would like to post a portion of a letter I received in 1990. I was cleaning out some old files and came across this. It was written in a letter to me from George Moreshead who spoke at a home fellowship meeting we went to in the Altanta area. Although this is 18 years old, the message is vitally relevant to our current times.
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"Given the spiritual level of the Body of Christ, with the consequent immaturity prevailng among older as well as younger believers, can we hold out for..... and does the Lord look for.... anything more than the Malachi condition, which pertained, apparently, all during the last 400 years--at the very least--before the Lord's first coming.
'Then those who feared the Lord talked with each other,
and the Lord listened and heard. A scroll of remembrance
was written in His presence concerning those who feared
the Lord and honored His Name.' .....Mal. 3:10.
May it not have been to the members of just such an unformed fellowship of His lovers and expectant ones in Jerusalem with whom Simeon and Anna were related and to whom Anna 'spoke about the Child'.... as to those 'who were looking forward to the redemption of Jeruslaem'. Lk. 2:38 ?
If we allow our minds unwittingly to form a preconceived pattern or image of what we expect to see dwelling in and with our groups....and then, thereafter even unconsciously, continually measure our groups over against that preformed concept of what we believe the Lord is working for among us, may we not run the risk of ending up somewhere out in left field and also missing the Lord's goal.... and of straining in the flesh to achieve what can be attained only in and by the Spirit .... as with the Galatians. (3:3)?
Could it be that the Lord is asking and expecting at the moment no more than our simple gathering together.... as those who love Him supremely and want nothing more than Himself.... just to talk of Him and share what he has given us of Himself either from the Word, or from our other reading, or through some personal, practical experience on the job or in the home (and even perhaps at times just being there as a channel for His Life to flow through.... and out into the room and into the spirits of the others present for their uplifting and quickening)-- a Malachi scenario in this time preceding the Lord's second coming? Would He have us to reduce down to something of a zero condition together-- a coming down to ground floor, as it were-- and from there, without care or preconception as to what and when and how He will take us higher up corporately, let His Life draw us and beget among us just that form and expression of Himself that will issue organically from the growth of His Life in and among us ("Behold the lilies of the field: they toil not, neither do they spin......)"
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I was thinking recently of the four hundred years of silence that lies between the book of Malachi in the Old Testament and the first advent of our Lord Jesus Christ. In keeping with that, I would like to post a portion of a letter I received in 1990. I was cleaning out some old files and came across this. It was written in a letter to me from George Moreshead who spoke at a home fellowship meeting we went to in the Altanta area. Although this is 18 years old, the message is vitally relevant to our current times.
-----------------------------------------------
"Given the spiritual level of the Body of Christ, with the consequent immaturity prevailng among older as well as younger believers, can we hold out for..... and does the Lord look for.... anything more than the Malachi condition, which pertained, apparently, all during the last 400 years--at the very least--before the Lord's first coming.
'Then those who feared the Lord talked with each other,
and the Lord listened and heard. A scroll of remembrance
was written in His presence concerning those who feared
the Lord and honored His Name.' .....Mal. 3:10.
May it not have been to the members of just such an unformed fellowship of His lovers and expectant ones in Jerusalem with whom Simeon and Anna were related and to whom Anna 'spoke about the Child'.... as to those 'who were looking forward to the redemption of Jeruslaem'. Lk. 2:38 ?
If we allow our minds unwittingly to form a preconceived pattern or image of what we expect to see dwelling in and with our groups....and then, thereafter even unconsciously, continually measure our groups over against that preformed concept of what we believe the Lord is working for among us, may we not run the risk of ending up somewhere out in left field and also missing the Lord's goal.... and of straining in the flesh to achieve what can be attained only in and by the Spirit .... as with the Galatians. (3:3)?
Could it be that the Lord is asking and expecting at the moment no more than our simple gathering together.... as those who love Him supremely and want nothing more than Himself.... just to talk of Him and share what he has given us of Himself either from the Word, or from our other reading, or through some personal, practical experience on the job or in the home (and even perhaps at times just being there as a channel for His Life to flow through.... and out into the room and into the spirits of the others present for their uplifting and quickening)-- a Malachi scenario in this time preceding the Lord's second coming? Would He have us to reduce down to something of a zero condition together-- a coming down to ground floor, as it were-- and from there, without care or preconception as to what and when and how He will take us higher up corporately, let His Life draw us and beget among us just that form and expression of Himself that will issue organically from the growth of His Life in and among us ("Behold the lilies of the field: they toil not, neither do they spin......)"
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