Our Christian Mission: Being Part of the Mighty Ones

Recently, I met quite a few Christians dedicating their time and energy to go to missions: building houses, giving out free food and clothing, providing various kinds of medical assistance, etc. All with good intentions to help mankind and to tell them about Jesus. I admire these ones. Yesterday, however, I read a quote that charged and challenged me with a high commission.

As Christians, as part of the Church, we are quite familiar with the evangelistic commission given by the Lord Jesus in appointing us to "go forth and bear fruit" (John 15:16). John 15 is one of the most important chapters in the Bible, loaded with crucial aspects in organic growth, fruit-bearing, increase, multiplication, and so forth.

However, hardly ever mentioned by most Christians is the fact that as Christians, as part of the Church, we are also involved in a great spiritual battle (Ephesians 6:10-20) to represent God in carrying out His judgment upon the enemy, the devil. This is truly non-fiction, that Christ will come back, descending with the mighty ones (Joel 3:11), to defeat Antichrist and his army.

In short, I was charged to be part of the mighty ones described in the Book of Joel. These mighty ones are not mighty because they are, in themselves, capable, self-sufficient Christians. The striking characteristic of these mighty ones is their will to choose to live in the divine history within the shell of the human history and to allow Christ to reproduce Himself as the Mighty One in them.

Let me share with you the quote I read yesterday from a dear brother in the Lord, R. Kangas. I hope that we would all pray while reading this:

"As human beings, we need to live a normal human life as part of the human history, but as believers, we have the honor of choosing, in response to the Lord's drawing, to live within the divine history that is unfolding within the human history. 

I hope that many, at whatever stage in human life they are, but especially those who are younger,... would have a transaction with the Lord and make a decision, trusting in His faithfulness, that from this point onward, they would not merely live in the human history; neither would they be part of Laodicea. Instead, they would be proper human beings, experiencing the things of human life according to their situation, yet those who want the Lord and the enemy know that all the human things are not the focus of their being. They would immerse themselves in the unfolding divine history." 

For reference and further context about the divine history within the human history, check these out:

Comments

  1. Lord make us mighty ones!

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  2. I really enjoyed the two phrases that were in boldface in the two paragraphs you quoted. Besides the Lord, I don't know anyone who respects a person's will to choose more than Him.

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    1. Yes. I mean He created us with a free will & never really force us to choose Him. But when we use that free will to choose Him, imagine how much it means to God.

      Actually in the universe, there are mainly two wills: God's and His enemy's. Whether we like it or not, our will would eventually align to one of them, wouldn't it? And it's funny that oftentimes I think I'm the one who's in control but in reality, I just end up being in God's will or being in the enemy's will.

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  3. Amen!

    I want to choose to live in the developing divine history within the human history!

    These days I have been pondering over this matter of the hidden divine history which right now is happening within the human history. How we need the Lord to open our mind as He opened the mind of those two disciples on the way to Emmaus that we may SEE it, and choose to be in it moment-by-moment!

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    1. That's a very touching aspiration, Stefan.

      When the Lord opened those two disciples' mind, He first walked the whole way with them to where they wanted to go. Yet when they began to see who He really was, not only their mind was opened but their inner being was stirred up to return to Jerusalem, where the Lord wanted them to be.

      Actually even in our aspiring to live in the developing divine history, we can't make it on our own. However, the Lord as the unique Mighty One, He's always going alongside with us until the time He would reveal Himself to us and at that time, we wouldn't be able to do anything but love Him, can't help but to allow Him to do whatever He wants in us.

      It is indeed our choosing but simultaneously it is Him who causes us to choose Him.

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  4. hi Katherine, i really was blessed by reading your post this evening :) i think it is so radical that we can live either a conventional life while on earth, or an extrordinary one, by simply making a choice. i always need to be reminded that my strength is not my own, but that it is God's, and that is what makes us mighty. When i think of immersing myself in history, i think of reading the new york times...maybe to immerse ourselves in divine history, we have to delve into God and His word, and His people? - Erin

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    1. Hi Erin, I'm glad that you enjoyed reading this post. Isn't it amazing how our choices determine our destiny? And like you said, there's this paradox of the mighty ones being made mighty by being made weak (2 Cor. 12:9-10).

      I also appreciate your remark on immersing ourselves in the divine history - to delve into God and His word, and His people. Yes it's true. Actually not only "delve" in the sense of "learning and knowing about" but also "dwelling" in the sense of "living in the realm of" God and His Word, and His people. This divine history is not just a collection of accounts happened in the past but it is in the making right now, in the midst of the making of the human history.

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    2. So I have a question related to this, how do we know what the divine history is and how can we be kept from just being blown about by the earthly history?

      Like Erin said, I know that to get the human history I just need to go to the NY Times or CNN.com, but is reading the Bible enough to know what is being written in the divine history? How do I know what God is presently doing today? What's the history that He's writing today?

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    3. Your questions are very poignant and crucial. I'd love to be able to answer all of them, but I think I'd end up falling short.

      To put it in simplest definition, while the human history is the history of man (as in mankind), the divine history is the history of God IN man. The former is like the shell but the latter the kernel within the shell. Also, the divine history within the human history is the history of the new creation within the old creation.

      With the new creation, the key is "if anyone is in Christ" (cf. 2 Cor.5:17). There are many implications with the term - the new creation. Yet we should go back to God's original purpose. The history of God in man began from Christ's incarnation through His ascension to become the life-giving Spirit (1 Cor 15:45b) and then continues with His indwelling us to eventually make us the glorious bride of Christ.

      I believe to be practically in Christ is to live within this purpose of making us the bride of Christ. We all know that the bride of Christ is His church. Thus the best way to know what is being written today by God and to live within the divine history is to live in the healthy church life.

      Of course, the church here is not a physical building but the church in its purest definitions of being the assembly of the called out ones, the household of God, the kingdom of God, the Body of Christ, the bride of Christ.

      The story He's writing is His indwelling us today in His salvation to not only redeem and regenerate us, but also to regenerate, sanctify, renew, transform, conform, and ultimately glorify us to make us the glorious bride of Christ.

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