Where does one really GO? Where do we plant our feet?
“Let us go to Him outside the camp, bearing His reproach…” (Heb 13:13)

The following six verses have come my way to form a framework in which a Kingdom stance has become clearer to me. Perhaps it adds a guided security. I would like to share them with you for your consideration:

Ps 84:10: “For a day in Your courts is better than a thousand. I would rather be a doorkeeper in the house of my God than dwell in the tents of wickedness”
1 Cor 9:12: “If others are partakers of this right over you…nevertheless we have not used this right, but endure all things lest we hinder the Gospel of Christ
1 Cor 9:15: “nor have I written these things that it should be done to me, for it would be better for me to die than anyone make void my boasting”
Heb 11:25: “Choosing rather to suffer affliction with the people of God than to enjoy the passing pleasures of sin.”
Acts 5:29: “…we ought to obey God rather than man.”
Acts 26:22: “Witnessing…saying no other things than those which the Prophets and Moses said would come.”

Choosing to be merely a doorkeeper, not using rights, not fulfilling our need of expression, obeying God rather than man, speaking only that which conforms with His Word, and choosing the company with His destitute ones.

May we stand until that Day.

The Canon on Scripture follows two general bookends. It begins Genesis, Creation, the beginning and ends with Revelation, the culmination, the End. The pathway through the passages/verses/ books of its pages generally follows the trail of humankind’s mortal experience from beginning to the ending age.

The Law emerges in the OT, yet glimpses of Grace come in, too, i.e., David’s knowledge that blessed is the man whose sins are forgiven in the Psalms (cf. Rom 4). It all points to the Plan and the Redeemer coming.

Jesus appears. His words and life deal with the bridging of “the law coming through Moses, BUT grace and truth came through Jesus Christ (John 1).” Law to Grace and Truth. His earth-time Words and teaching extend to the End of time (Matt 24 and 25). His Words in the Gospels too bring in words of the Law, yet He interprets them with the NEW ORDER, the new righteousness, which is higher than the Law. He dies on the Cross and is Resurrected, becomes our Righeousness and baptises the Church with the Holy Spirit.

Acts of the Apostles, great acts by the Holy Spirit.

Conversion of Paul unfolds and his revelation as a man of the Law into the PURE and FREE Grace of Jesus apart from works. Romans, Colossians, Ephesians seem the FLOWER of civilization with the blossom of Grace apart from works revealed and expressed. Glorious and visions of the Age to come.

As we move further in the pages of the Epistles of Canon, there is Grace. More accountability, though, begins to be God-breathed for what we have done with Grace. James – test the work of grace by works. 1 John clearly brings us to account that the practicing of sin reveals we are not children of God. Hebrews (lest we let it slip), 2 Peter 2 and 3, Jude, 2 John…have a tone with the theme of Accountability and retribution even for the one who says they embrace Christ. Warnings increase. There is more ‘threat” in the terms of following Christ, if we truly ARE Christ’s own. The age of the End is coming nearer.

Revelation, the End book. By the Churches in Revelation 3, Jesus is speaking to the actions resulting in these churches. Actually, not much talk of faith and grace by this time but the FRUIT of what true Grace has/is revealing/producing in them NOW.

Am I off on this? Does it make sense that as the tinge of the End of the age starts pulsating, the rightful threat in the proclaimed/preached/taught Word must increase as well?

(Tell me where I am wrong on this.)

The Old Testament perhaps highlighted mostly clearly in De 28 speaks in a conditional/if sense of fellowship since humans ruptured that chance of freely moving with the Loving Creator. One might still have fellowship and blessings, but the determining factor was “if, if you obey…” Please see vss 1 and 15.

There had to be such a sigh of relief as the requirements of His Law that none could attain were completed in the Beloved Lord Jesus. We were now joined to Him, righteousness included, One Spirit and so bound together that nothing can separate us from the love of God which in Christ Jesus the Lord (Rom 8:31-39).

So has “if” (whether, provided that, unless, except you, should you, as surely as you)…of our actions now been removed?

Our land is bearing under the weight and repulsion in almost every neighborhood, every committee, every family, every church, every office, every workplace marred by the behavior of one speaking belief in Jesus. This could be the greatest single plague of our land truly.

Francis Chan, David Platte, Paul Washer among a few have arisen to seemingly reinsert the “if” into the ears of the American professing Church. There is a warning by one’s fruit…if truly we are a child of God. Is John saying in 1 John that the practice of sin keeps one from being a child of God or that the fact of not truly being a child of God issues in the practice of sin?

There seems to be a conditional quality Voiced upon the Seven Churches of Revelation (cf 2:5,2:26,3:3).

Can we accurately assess this in-between day of grace of many conversions and yet so lacking in fruit of self-denial? May we tremble to ever minimize the completeness of the Cross of Christ. If some conclusion must come, the finished Work of the Perfect Sacrifice of the Unblemished Lamb is FULL. Yet to our eyes, like the words of John the Baptist preparing the way right before the Harvest, the fruit of repentance must be brought forth. “If” there is no fruit, the “if” may remain.

To this, I would now give a “yes” that needs qualified. Yes, only if Jesus Christ is the pursuit alone, and somehow on a temporary basis the result in society is viewed as “cool.” Was Jesus cool? Yes, yes, yes, as the Pulse of humanity, the Agent of Creation, the Sustainer, the Savior: the WORD. He is relevance. He is the Relevant One. He was cool when He did the healings. He was cool when He defied the religious establishment. But was He cool after sharing that all must eat of His flesh and drink of His blood in John 8, and all deserted Him?

Who sets the standard of cool?

•A participant in a study of Nauert Phd: “Almost any one of us will be cool in some people’s eyes, which suggests the idiosyncratic way coolness is evaluated. But some will be judged as cool in many people’s eyes, which suggests there is a core valuation to coolness, and today that does not seem to be the historical nature of cool. We suggest there is some transition from the countercultural cool to a generic version of it’s good and I like it. But this transition is by no way completed.”

•Ladybird on a Yahoo blog says: “My fella and I happen to be too cool. We are excellent people to be around, we’re funny, we wear clothes that set trends coz we’re the first to wear them. We are good to everyone, nice and yet people come to us, not the other way around. And we make other people feel like they are cool too, just by hanging around us. This is cool. Your pretty cool too”

•Wikipedia: Coolness is a “age-specific phenomenum…”
◦”The sum and substance of cool is a self-conscious aplomb in overall behavior, which entails a set of specific behavioral characteristics that is firmly anchored in symbology, a set of discernible bodily movements, postures, facial expressions and voice modulations that are acquired and take on strategic social value within the peer context.[3]
◦”Cool was once an attitude fostered by rebels and underdogs, such as slaves, prisoners, bikers and political dissidents, etc., for whom open rebellion invited punishment, so it hid defiance behind a wall of ironic detachment, distancing itself from the source of authority rather than directly confronting it.”

From the Scriptures it is evident that the standard setter is the prince of the power of the air (please see Eph 2:2 to John 15:19). It is the god of this world. He sets the track.

The pull to us is so great in this poll-driven, popular society. We MUST see where it pulls you and me, because it does! It wins elections, it changes fashions, gets the most financial funding, determines culture, grows churches. (It is what is forming the end of the age.)

For the believer today, we must realize we are at a crucial juncture. We will find ourselves on both sides of the track of coolness if we live an obedient life. The important thing for us all to know and determine that the track of coolness is not our track, it is ONLY following the One Who was for the Father and others, Jesus Christ.

Romans 14:7 For none of us lives for himself and none dies for himself. 14:8 If we live, we live for the Lord; if we die, we die for the Lord. Therefore, whether we live or die, we are the Lord’s.

I believe we are seeing our personal experiences set up to see this. Our experience reflects this for the sake of the whole, because we are no longer to live or die to ourselves.

So many believers are thinking their lives are micro, just about them: my pain, my hurt. No longer. The aerial view yesterday on the airplane opened SO much before the Lord. Gary, IN became a transitor radio data board; the mountain ranges became a wrinkle on a shirt. His order, His parallels from macro to micro. We must feed into the bigger picture. (Henry Blackaby speaks to this in Experiencing God.)

The power of God is when we realize we are a part of the Large Gospel Story.

Scripturally (Matt 14), this plays out as Jesus CAME to the boat tossed by the contrary winds in the middle of the sea. Peter saw the COMING. He wanted to do what Jesus was doing. If this WAS Jesus, tell me to do the SAME thing. (It IS Jesus.) This is a Kingdom yearning in Peter and starting to open much pleasure in Jesus for Peter to rise up beyond his own circumstances into the realm of what Jesus is doing. Jesus did command/order him to do the SAME thing. So Peter started the “CAME” to Jesus (same Greek word). Peter then saw the earthly wind and fright filled him. Jesus could have seen this fulfilled in Peter, doing the SAME thing as Jesus, but Peter got caught up in the micro. Peter did fall short (yet ventured out). I feel in Jesus’ words of disappointment in WHY do you doubt, not have more faith/trust, that He wants us each inevitably to fulfill the BIG picture, not just the micro picture of our own wounds.

I believe our times are speaking: there is no longer just a micro version of life, living or dying merely to ourselves.