Wednesday, October 19, 2011

The Cultural Intrusion of Perfection


Picture this. You are in a closed circular room. All around you are flashing pictures, sounds, voices, and every sort of media message that intrudes upon your life throughout your day. The room is darkened so as to add impact to the consistent bombardment of your mind and your senses with these messages. You stand in this room, representing your life, and are mesmerized at the way these things attempt to form or conform you to their message or method.

What is being said? The subliminal message is simple. YOU ARE NOT GOOD ENOUGH. It is the pervasive statement behind each picture, spoken word, or every sound. The pervasive statement subliminally reaching you speaks to the fact that you will never measure up so you need SOMETHING or SOMEONE or SOMEWHERE for you to reach some state of nirvana where you will be pleased with your life and yourself.

Then suddenly you have had enough. You can’t OPT OUT of life because you are in it – living moving and being.  But there is a more excellent way. In fact the way is a person. The way is Jesus Christ. So, in this room, the roof suddenly lifts off and up. You look up and see the glorious sky, filled with freedom, adventure and possibility. It is glorious, awesome and wonderful. The sky is freedom, a true longing in your heart to rise above that that is constantly bombarding you day by day. Freedom destroys the lie that cries out to you each day to measure up to some nebulous idea of what life should be like or could be like. But know this. You have NO LIFE without Christ Jesus because all life is in Him and through Him and for Him. So folks, the sky is the limit and the possibilities are endless and boundless in Him. So you are a child of the here and now but an eternal being living in two places by the Spirit IN CHRIST. In other words, you are in the world but not of the world.

But let’s get back to the messages that surround you each day through news reporting, social media, TV, and on and on. It is staggering and overwhelming to think about it. At least it is for me or was for me.  I lived life with a deep root of rejection that has been healed in Christ. For years, those subliminal messages impacted me deeply. My sense of who I was or why I was or where I was in the here and now seemed to elude me on a daily basis. Until Jesus. Now the sky is the limit. Eternity is my home. I am just passing through BUT I am living in the here and now. So now I simply reject that which does not align with the Living Word and His way for me. It is a process my friends. There is complete freedom in Christ.

The cultural intrusion of perfection surrounds us each and every day and it is getting worse. It is fueled by greed trying to sell a new concept, a new product, and a new message. But, mark my words; there is greed behind it. Someone is trying to make money and intrude on your life to be better, smarter, more beautiful, skinnier, younger, more active, more vital. The list is endless but it is the product of demonic subterfuge to get you to believe that you need more than Jesus Christ.

Jesus is enough AND it is only as we enter into His perfection that we find ourselves going from glory to glory to glory, from faith to faith to faith. Then, the impact of this world grows strangely dim in the light of His glory and grace NOW.

Perfection is an illusion. The existing religious church is a perpetrator, alongside the world in this crime of deception. The crime is trying to keep you blinded from the reality of the finished work of the cross of Jesus Christ and what has already been accomplished FOR YOU so that His life and can flow THROUGH YOU.

Religion wants you to constantly work for what has already been given to you in Christ. There is a subliminal message that says you have to do such and such to gain any standing in Christ AND you are tied to the minister with a message. You go to church each week fervently and religiously working your way to being good so that you can attain a measure of peace which will never come and constantly eludes you. So you leave ‘church’ still feeling unloved or unwanted but putting a smiling face on and perpetrating your lie of self-righteousness on an unsuspecting world that needs Jesus. But, they can’t find Him in you because you are not free.

It is also clear to me that the charismatic prophetic thing going on in past years and even now walks in a measure of distortion because the focus is on something or someone or some place that you need to partake of to be perfected and made whole. Its message is also indeed subliminal because it wants you to buy books, CD’s, conferences, revivals or some such thing to add to Christ and His finished work. It entices you with the thought that He is not enough and you need something more than what is found in Christ.

Look around and you can see it. Books on prayer, how to get healed, how to prophesy, how to pray. Conferences that were focused on gold dust, angels, prophecy and a lot of hype at times. Revivals that were advertised worldwide as the place to BE or BE SEEN were touted as the next big thing, which we all needed. The focus is on the method and a distorted message instead of the simplicity that is found in Christ. The nebulous IT becomes the focus rather than Christ to sell more books or finance more conferences. The prophetic movement wants to entice at times with its new revelation of endless words that seem to constantly be spoken but never materialize in reality. They sell good books and gain star-status for many ministers but in the end, they are void of life because the testimony of Jesus is the Spirit of prophecy. How often in times past did I go to a prophetic conference to find out that I had to seek out angels, discover glory dust, shake, laugh, discover how to get new revelation, buy the book, join the email list etc. etc. Yet all of that was subliminally saying to me that there was something that needed to be added so that I could be perfected in the prophetic or the charismatic but not IN CHRIST. I left feeling elated and euphoric for a measure of time but then, like an addiction, needed a new fix to get me going.

Now I have a LOT to say about this and it is time so this is just the beginning. My desire is to see people set free. I have repented for that which I am responsible in doing in times past that may have caused confusion. This is just the start of a new beginning for me. Truth sets you free. I am seeking TRUTH in the person of Christ and with that comes it all. I am accepting it all IN CHRIST and that which gives Him glory and honor and praise. He alone is preeminent. (I love that word.) He stands at the center of my life and everything I am and all I do and will become is centered on Him. Then I have discovered all else flows. So let the river flow. Not in the proverbial charismatic way but in the real way. Through me as I discover Christ in me, the hope of glory.

Okay, so back to perfection now and in the coming days as revelation is given to me. It will be given to me and I give it to you to go farther and deeper in Him so that you find yourself- not me. I have to find me in Him. You go find yourself in Him. I will just help you on the journey.

Perfection is an illusion. So why try? Find Him and be perfected in what He has already done not what you can do. The greatest self-discovery you will ever make is the one that says you can do nothing without Him. You are nothing without Him. Nothing. Dark. Empty. Void. Does that hurt your ego or significance? I hope so because until you lose yourself and all your preconceived notions of who you ARE you can never find you ARE IN HIM. The journey begins……….

We are in Finland. Time to write. Time to go the nations. Time to record. Time to write books. Time to preach. IN HIM.