My wife, Brooks, wrote the following observations following our return from a ministry trip in Kenya:
The Revolution is happening – it’s happening all over the world. We are in a Reformation. Acknowledge it or not. Be a part of it or not. Jesus longs for his church to come alive, to become a living, breathing, organism. He longs for us to be in a real, live, intimate relationship with Him, regardless of others – and then in real, live relationship with our families – earthly and spiritual. And, He’s begging us to come alive, be who we are as individuals, alive and free in Him, telling the world who and what He has done for us.
While visiting Kenya recently, I saw a part of the world that is saturated with Christianity. However, like many of us, the church there is dull to true life in Christ. We are like dead men walking. We depend on evangelists, teachers, preachers, and prophets to experience God, to hear from God, to learn from God, to have that deep relationship with God and then to tell us all about it. We are lazy, apathetic, and very content to have second-hand relationship with Him. We are insecure. We are busy and exhausted from seeking relationship with other people and other things first. Or, we believe our relationship with God is second-rate to someone else’s and so we put our relationship with Him aside and live out our lives through someone else’s relationship with Jesus. Jesus is calling us out. He is calling his disciples out. As Felicity Dale refers to in her book, An Army of Ordinary People, He is forming an army and He is calling for soldiers to join the ranks!
What I saw in Kenya, I see in America and I see in other parts of the Christianized world. The enemy accepts that Christianity is in the world – real, strong, alive Believers in Christ. But, if he can just contain us, keep us from contaminating others, there’s little to worry about. If he can contain us in buildings, then the world will not know the truth and few will be set free. But what I saw in Kenya, I also see in America and other parts of the world. The virus is leaking. The Reformation of the 21st Century, led by the Holy Spirit, is taking Christianity out of containers into the open spaces of the neighborhoods and nations of the world. The virus of Jesus Christ’s love and resurrection power is leaking into the world. Disciples of Christ are no longer content in the restraints made by man, they hunger to hear what their Master is saying. The virus is gaining momentum and it is intensifying. There is, indeed, a revolution happening and it’s happening all over the world!
