House Not Made With Hands

Robert Browning had a wonderful phrase in his "By the Fireside" - Stanza 27. It goes like this:


"When earth breaks up and heaven expands,

How will the change strike me and you

In the house not made with hands?"



Have you ever seen or been part of a people of God that wasn't made with hands? It's an experience I wish everybody could be part of.

It has to do with having someone give a little bit of help to a people to get them going and centered in Christ alone, and then leaving them alone to work through the many things that will either make them or break them.

Paul did this throughout his entire life in the churches he started. Other than a couple of exceptions, he was only there for a short time and then left them alone to hold to the Lord Jesus and one another. What an adventure for God's people.

What it means is Lord builds his church from within His people. It means that He alone is head of the church.

A house not built with hands is a house in love with their Lord far beyond anything else in the world or universe. A house that exists only for Him and Him alone. A house that can survive only if they hold to Him as their head together.

I've lived in this type of house more than once, and grew up as a brother within them. Once this type of life is experienced and embraced, it is difficult to want to ever go back into a world that only holds together by props and personalities of people.

This can work as I've helped a number of these precious groups of people over the years, and what comes out of this experience is something that really cannot be explained, but must be experienced.

It's my hope that through knowing this type of experience can be found is out there in the Christian world, that it may make you see that there is something of the type of life that existed in the early church, still alive today.

Gary

Without Jesus, We can do Nothing

When Jesus said without Him we could do nothing, He wasn't just giving us an idea that He couldn't relate to, rather, He also said that without the Father, He could do nothing as well. He was speaking from a reality that He lived and experienced.

I've known a lot of people that take this the wrong way and feel guilty about their lacks because of this statement by Jesus. Instead it should be completely liberating to us as we then can know that we don't have to be or do anything but fellowship and love Him within us.

Out of that beautiful, organic experience, we can simply be with Him and share the love back to Him that he gives to us.

If anything more comes of it, great, but there's nothing that we can do through effort that will make it happen. Even the desire to want to will elude us if we think there is anything we can do outside of Christ.

It is from this that a truly living people can be born of God together as they share that live of Christ on a day-to-day basis together. There is nothing else that Jesus and the Father did before creation except to fellowship in that way.

Creation came forth because of the inability of God to keep something like that love to Himself. It had to be shared because God is love.

Let us not desire anything else but that love of the Father and Christ to share with one another in simplicity. But we can only ask the Lord to live that in us and through us. Why? Because without Him we can do nothing.

Jesus Has a Great Open Heart

The Lord's heart is wide open to those who want the key to it. We don't have to be afraid to respond to his love at any time.

All we have to do is enter into that love by faith, for faith works by His love.

His heart isn't wooden or stone or hard, it's a heart kind toward His people, His bride.

One of His desires is to have us respond back to His open heart with the very love He shares with us. We need to learn to encourage one another not to harden our hearts toward our Father, for He's not hardened toward us.

Even that we have to ask Him to do in us, as we can do nothing without Him. It's a beautiful dependency that he's created for us to have on Him, if we'd only believe His arms are open wide to us, no matter where were at. We only need to believe they are.

Let's not allow the cares of this world and the endless problems associated with it cause us to look away from Jesus and close our hearts to Him, or one another.

He told us when He was on the earth that we would suffer through problem here, but to be happy and cheerful, because He had overcome the world. And the one that has overcome the world lives within us. We can rest with open hearts to Him, while the storms rage around and upon us, for He is able to hold us up, no matter what has happened or what we feel.

Jesus is a faithful friend and lover, and He will never forsake us.

Jesus Take Us As We Are

This is a song that we used to sing with a bunch of us that lived together in a neighborhood and just spend time together loving the Lord. It is from about 25 years ago, and we learned it from brothers and sisters that were living the same way in Britian.


Jesus take me as I am

For I can come no other way

Take me deeper into you

Make my flesh life melt away

Make me like a precious stone

Chrystal clear and finely honed

Life of Jesus shining through

Giving glory back to you



I wish I had the music to upload so you could listen to it, but the words speak for themselves.

We also used to change it around sometimes and make it 'us' and not only individual. Either way it was very moving to all of us.

Gary

The Great Mystery That Was Hidden Now Revealed

The great mystery!

The great secret hidden away from the beginning of time.

The unsearchable reality waiting for the right time to be revealed.

A seed hidden away, yet fully grown at the same time.

A tree waiting to extend himself throughout the world.

The river of life waiting to be drinken up and spilled over to others.

A single purpose in an all-knowing being.

The groom in union with His bride.

The master gardener, yet being the fruit.

As close as can be, still seemingly distant at times.

Filled with sufferings and willing to share them with us.

A walled garden, yet open-hearted.

Rejected by most but still willing to woo us in him.

Hated but still pouring out His love.

Humble beyond imagination.

He is Christ within us, the hope of glory!