Yeshua Explored
20th February 2022
Flockdown – part 1
Building God’s House
(This series of articles was written at the beginning of the first lockdown in March/April 2020)
Previous articles are still available on the Premier Christian radio website – https://www.premierchristianradio.com/Blogs2/Yeshua-Explored – (until they finally pull the plug!)
“You expected much, but see, it turned out to be little. What you brought home, I blew away. Why?” declares the LORD Almighty. “Because of my house, which remains a ruin, while each of you is busy with your own house” (Haggai 1:9)
So while there’s a job to be done – returning to the foundations to build up God’s House – God continues to remind us that, until we take this seriously, our Church “systems” are not going to always do the job.
The preceding verse spells it out:
“Go up into the mountains and bring down timber and build my house, so that I may take pleasure in it and be honoured,” says the LORD. (Haggai 1:8)
Build My house, not yours!
“Therefore, because of you the heavens have withheld their dew and the earth its crops.
I called for a drought on the fields and the mountains, on the grain, the new wine, the olive oil and everything else the ground produces, on people and livestock, and on all the labor of your hands.” (Haggai 1:10-11)
It seems so clear, if we persist in building our own houses, rather than His house, the very basics for life would be withheld. In the sense that God’s house, the Temple, is now a spiritual entity (Don’t you know that you yourselves are God’s temple and that God’s Spirit dwells in your midst? 1 Corinthians 3:16), it will be the spiritual basics for life that will be withheld, or diminished.
Haggai’s message was heeded and the Temple was rebuilt.
So the LORD stirred up the spirit of Zerubbabel son of Shealtiel, governor of Judah, and the spirit of Joshua son of Jozadak, the high priest, and the spirit of the whole remnant of the people. They came and began to work on the house of the LORD Almighty, their God, (Haggai 1:14)
So that’s our mandate, to rebuild God’s house. We have always taken the following Scripture as our mandate at Foundations:
Your people will rebuild the ancient ruins and will raise up the age-old foundations; you will be called Repairer of Broken Walls, Restorer of Streets with Dwellings. (Isaiah 58:12)
I wonder now if there’s an extra relevance here with the second half of the verse, that we had erstwhile not considered, Repairer of Broken Walls, Restorer of Streets with Dwellings. Can we be indulged just a little bit to consider that what we do can contribute to the rebuilding/repairing of the Temple, with an accent on dwellings? If you grant us this, then our mandate has widened from just introducing the Hebraic roots to the Church, to help creating a Hybrid Church that includes an aspect of home or house fellowship. This is tremendously exciting!
We have already seen, through our Foundations 13 conference, how God is perfectly able to speak to us through virtual environments and how we can connect to each other spirit-to-spirit even if we can’t currently meet flesh-to-flesh. We are, after all, the same people, regardless of whether we are just a bunch of pixels on someone’s screen! We also discovered that meeting virtually has had a hidden advantage, represented by the safety and familiarity of still being in our home environment. This was borne out by the many testimonies we received after that conference. Taking this further, we can now reconsider the Great Commission:
“Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age.” (Matthew 28:19-20)
OK, baptising them may be tricky (but not necessarily impossible), but making and teaching disciples are activities still open to those operating over the internet. Traditionally, most evangelistic initiatives are conducted either in church environments (hostile territory to some?) or in public places for street evangelism or rallies/crusades (neutral territory).
Perhaps not too much of it happens on home turf. A man’s home is his castle and very rarely are the drawbridges lowered for a visit from an evangelist. But consider this. What if you meet half-way? You’re at home in your safe place, the evangelist is in his home in his safe place. You’re both safe, at ease. You know that you have the power to switch him off at any point, he knows the same thing, which should spur him on to really connect with you. If God can speak through Balaam’s ass, He can speak through the wi-fi. Any limitations are only in our imaginations, because we are treading in unknown territory. But God knows all, God can reach anyone, through any means.
About twelve years ago we launched Saffron Planet from our dining room table. It was a simple concept, with the byline – chatter that matters – comprising two families chatting around the table, then a recording was mixed and broadcast over the web. It became surprisingly popular, attracting a sizeable grant (and a short-lived radio slot) from TransWorld Radio and an award from the first Premier Radio Digital conference. We attracted some high profile guests, including John Mackay, Justin Peters (USA), Tony Pearce and Chris Hill (who then joined us on a regular basis) and some of our filmed YouTubes have attracted (and continue to do so) good viewing figures. Foundations emerged from this ministry as a desire for us to meet some of our listeners!
Now, with Zoom we can return to this same model – chatter that matters – but we don’t have to meet up in a dining room, we can repeat the Saffron Planet model in a virtual sense and do so live, with open access. This has been launched and already we are seeing results.
A passage in Philippians speaks to me with regards to this project.
Therefore, my dear friends, as you have always obeyed—not only in my presence, but now much more in my absence—continue to work out your salvation with fear and trembling, for it is God who works in you to will and to act in order to fulfill his good purpose. Do everything without grumbling or arguing, so that you may become blameless and pure, “children of God without fault in a warped and crooked generation.” Then you will shine among them like stars in the sky as you hold firmly to the word of life. And then I will be able to boast on the day of Christ that I did not run or labour in vain. (Philippians 2:12-16)
We need to demolish the negative stereotypes of Christians and show the World that we are as real as they are, ordinary people … with an extraordinary message. But, beneath the ordinariness is a wonderful potential, not always realised, as exemplified in this passage. We need to shine like stars and break the mould of negative expectations. Let’s show the World that our message is the only hope in a World that has shifted a gear to new realities and ever-increasing uncertainties.
This is an extract from the book, Flockdown: Is the Church out for the count?, available for £5 at https://www.sppublishing.com/flockdown-263-p.asp
