Dear Bride of Christ,

We Have Some Work to Do!

Please understand me: I am not talking about the various theologies out there that say you must take over world governments. I am not talking about growing in worldly strength or reputation at all. I am talking about you growing in holiness, becoming like Jesus, a wife formed in His image and deeply in love with Him. You must be a people like that. So we all have some work to do!

Right from the start, your people have wanted the End to come now--forgetting the work. That's very understandable! But your Groom has always directed you to focus on the task at hand. Remember the day He returned to the Father? You and He had this little conversation: "So when they met together, they asked him, 'Lord, are you at this time going to restore the kingdom to Israel?' He said to them: 'It is not for you to know the times or dates the Father has set by his own authority. But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes on you; and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth'" (Acts 1:6-8).

Jesus was saying: Don't ask Me about the harvest yet! That's the Father's concern. Yours is to bear the crop I've planted you here to bear. You are to provide a testimony of who I am--beginning right here, and spreading over the whole planet. You've only just now been sown. Be faithful to come to fruition. God will take care of the harvesting part!

It is God's will that you evangelize the heavenlies as well as the earth. You will not accomplish that goal by founding missions and clinics, as devoted and self-sacrificial as many of the people are who staff them. God's Word says that the creatures who inhabit planet earth and the spiritual realm will in the end be convinced of Jesus' Sonship and His own Wisdom in only one way. "His intent was that now, through the church, the manifold wisdom of God should be made known to the rulers and authorities in the heavenly realms" (Eph. 3:10). Through the church--not through committed individuals or through parachurch organizations. "May they be brought to complete unity to let the world know that you sent me and have loved them even as you have loved me" (John 17:23) Through complete unity--not through slick methodologies.

Your crop, dear Bride, is conformity to the stature of Jesus. That will happen if and only if your members become "joined and held together" in a fabric or relationships in which they speak Truth into one another's lives, working together as one man. That's when the "gifts to men" Jesus bestowed on you will coalesce into one picture--the image of Jesus. And that's when the unbelieving worlds of men and of angels will finally get the point: God's Wisdom is supreme and Jesus' Lordship is complete.

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