95%

We have trained ourselves, intentionally, but more so, unintentionally, to expect a marginalized amount of Good and God in our lives. In more ways than I can count, Christianity has allowed for a faith that says that there is only so much of God’s goodness that you can expect in this life, and that it may even be wrong to "over-expect" or put God to the test. As a result, "going to heaven" and, when we "get to" heaven becomes our default for anything that extravagantly challenges our faith. (Another one of these safe zones is the millennium, but that's a topic for a different time).

This is a far too convenient way for Christians to have a lack of faith and then validate it in spiritually accommodating terms. This can sound so spiritual, even “mature” and then quietly, but tragically, invalidate mountain moving, history making, nation healing faith. Limiting, portioning and budgeting our faith then becomes, “mature”. I read somewhere, however, that real maturity is coming to the full stature of the image of Christ and, frankly, His kind of faith scares the khaki pants off most of us.

As a result, I don’t believe we’ve expended the kind of concentrated, corporate, cultural faith for a significant amount of time consistently to really know what God might pour on earth from heaven. Are you aware that Moses saw sapphire floors in the presence of God, right here on earth? What are we seeing? I watched a popular national TV broadcast last night that put new wood floors under a family that neglects their own needs in order to meet the needs of others. That's great, but I'm tired of being a part of a church culture that accepts an impoverished view of what we can do while the outside world dances circles around us.

I wonder what would happen if, in the church, a delightful core of warrior believers found their way to a corporate, kingdom, cultural mindset and they learned to establish among themselves a covenant to speak the same things, sing the same things, to believe and agree together on the same things (in kindness and love) to hold ourselves true in prayer, with a line drawn, that every good and perfect gift comes down out of heaven; if it’s evil, we did it or the devil did it and by the Kingdom's power and glory, we will overcome it!

I don’t know if we have fasted toward this kind of community. (Read and reread Malachi 3:10-18; Isaiah 58:6-12) All too often we allow the delusion of little compromises and diluted down versions of the Kingdom among us. Even our "Christian" media sometimes is so subtle in these errant messages that we miss the watering down of badly needed world changing truths. Christian sugar flies at us and sticks us in sugary holes. People all around us are living in hell while we sing about how much fun we'll all have when we get to heaven. Shouldn't we rather dare to dream about bringing heaven to earth for the healing of the nations?

We are called to a fierceness of spirit, of faith and of a cultural covenant kingdom communication to war against those things that war against us and to be collectively drawn to a REAL focus of heaven on earth. What would happen if we focused on just how far do we dare go with this!? What would happen if we (and I mean, at least, a core of us) would end all the shaming and blaming of people groups and politics and take up the command to examine ourselves and our own works to see if WE are in the faith? What faith is that? The faith that aims at discipling the nations (not a few in every nation, but the whole nation), raising the dead, healing the sick and the confident announcement that the Kingdom of God has come near because it lives and breaths IN US!

We need a vision of our calling that requires God's presence and power in us to accomplish it. By the way, and for the record, I'm not talking about TV ministries or buildings. It seeems to me that too much of what we church folks do could have been done with or without God. Billy Graham is credited with saying that 95% of the activities in today's church would continue if the Holy Spirit were removed from us, but in the book of Acts, 95% of the church's activities would have stopped if the Holy Spirit was removed.

If that burns you like it burns me, lets change it.