"And I lifted my
eyes and saw, and behold, a man with a measuring line in his hand! Then I said, "Where are you going?"
And he said to me, "To measure Jerusalem, to see what is its width and
what is its length." And behold,
the angel who talked with me came forward, and another angel came forward to
meet him and said to him, "Run, say
to that young man, 'Jerusalem shall be inhabited as villages without walls,
because of the multitude of people and livestock in it. And I will be to her a wall of fire all
around, declares the LORD, and I will be the glory in her midst.'" Zechariah 2:1-5
The "new wineskin"
that Jesus spoke of is not an institution, a system, a human leader and
followers, a hierarchical structure of authority, a technique or way of
meeting, a building instead of a temple, etc.
It is a community of relationships built on the love of Christ and it is
an INDIVIDUAL-FOCUSED (one heart at a time) network. It is only when EVERY
MEMBER begins to take responsibility for EVERYONE in their household (oikos:
the 10 to twelve people you are really connected with) that we will ever see
the true nature of new covenant church take shape on the earth. Anything else is just a human SYSTEM or
MACHINE that will eventually be thrown on the trash heap of history with all
the other robotic inventions of man, rusted and moth-eaten.
It is only when you
stop looking for church 'out there' as some external system or corporate entity
to be discovered and look within your own heart to see the PEOPLE that God has
placed there that you will FIND the pearl of great price. So "sell" all these useless ideas
of church and begin to LIVE NOW in the REALITY of the Christ-life, the Trinitarian Community (John 13-17) that
is eternal and indestructible.
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