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GWR 08 AUTHOR'S
VIDEOS ON YOUTUBE Religion:
A Cistern
The title term cisterns comes from God through Jeremiah the prophet, He states, "my people have committed two evils, they have forsaken me the fountain of living waters and they have hewed for themselves cisterns which do not hold water" Jeremiah 2:13). What meaning does that have for us in relation to the question of religion and its detriments? Viewed in a shallow way, we may think the prophet is giving a discourse on the best kind of water supply to have, flowing wells versus stored water; but it goes deeper than that. Speaking figuratively, God expresses this: the worst thing which people calling themselves God's people can do is to forsake the fellowship and intimate closeness of God's immediate presence. God declares that He is the fountain of living waters. To exchange that intimacy with something totally stagnant, without freshness, movement, life and vitality is a grave mistake. Stored water is still water but God does not prize it. It has become stale in time and has lost the zest of freshness. Religiously speaking cistern water might be yesterday's water, or it could last year's water, or even water of many generations past. Moreover though staleness is bad enough, God says further, that those cistern leak and are drying up. The
cistern allegory has a wide range of application to religious
tradition. The question might be, "How long has the water
been allowed to stagnate?' Was it a year ago, a generation ago,
or multiple generations ago that the presence of God was
manifested and alive in the midst of the congregation of His
people. If there is no sense of God living and moving in the
center of our lives or our church fellowships, we have evidence
that He has been excluded by a religious people. Traditionalism
thrives on memories of some bygone day, or accounts that God had
come by and left an historical token of his glory "way back
when." That however, is not enough for the people who have
deep spiritual needs, who have been wounded, bound, afflicted,
imprisoned, enslaved by the lash and oppression the enemy. What
force can set us free, what force can soothe our pains and
sorrows? What power can touch and salve the wounded spirit? It
must be something full of divine life, power and compassion. It
must be that living fountain which flows from God. God is always
a God of now, not a God of tomorrow, yesterday nor of decades
past. He is the I am who Is, now. A grave danger of religion is
that it risks the separation of the believer from the present
manifestation of a living God. A Heavenly Father who wants to
continue to make His presence known to His special people. As
Jesus spoke to a woman at the well of Samaria, “ God
has always desired to close the gap between himself and the human
family upon the earth. The story of how God has dealt with this,
makes up the scope and substance of scripture -- the Bible. In a
certain place it is written that God was at work in Jesus Christ,
reconciling the world to himself.(2 Corinthians 5:19) There
remains another side of the equation regarding the matter of
knowing God; the fact that there is a spiritual power and
authority resisting God's program. This resistance is unseen, but
none the less potent in its effects. Just as God uses human
resources and requires "a yielded vessel" to minister
His grace to others; so also does our adversary with his own
hierarchy of minions. The adversary, Satan, is a spirit being
who also works in supernatural powers. God's adversary has an
agenda which long established of old. His agenda is not for the
good of humanity! This adversary is a killer and a lying
deceiver. As an enemy of God, there is no good in him. He is the
king of all rebellion and rules over a dominion of unseen
spiritual beings who follow his orders. Just as an earthly army
has a chain of command, with a strict protocol of duties and
responsibilities for every layer of authority; so is it with
these spiritual armies. I remember taking an undergraduate course
in college in anthropology. I liked the class. It was about all
the divergent cultures in the world, how they lived and how
cultures and societies were unique to their in their own
environments. The first of the two spiritual kingdoms is the Kingdom of God where the King of glory is enthroned in a heavenly place; and the second, the kingdom of darkness, where the "God of this world --the prince of the power of the air, the great deceiver, Satan exercises his dominance.. Because we live in a Spiritual world we have to have spiritual knowledge. A secular religion limited to material interests and understanding, speaks to the natural world and strictly human potential. Secular religion is inadequate to deal with the forces which will impact us for an eternity. We need more than teaching about "goodness" as positive choices or positive social attributes and evil as bad choices which have bad consequences. God is not a God of psychological wellness and feeling good about ourselves, He is a God of spiritual restoration and reconstruction which is forged not by human will, nor human wisdom but by the power of Spiritual life generated by the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead. When God does the work of renewal it is deep and eternally effectual. If we try to reconstruct ourselves, it is an act of the will and is good only as long as our own energies prevail. The end result of God's hand at work in a human soul surpasses anything that counseling or self-will could ever achieve, Joy unspeakable and full of glory. E Book 1: The
Gospel Without
Religion |