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The Apostolic and Prophetic Foundation
God is at work to both beautify His bride and establish His glorious house in these days. Only He can do this. The methodology of man is simply insufficient to achieve what God has purposed. We desperately need Him to come and fill us with His presence and change us from the inside out. Simply put, what the Church needs is to bear an abundance of the fruit of the Holy Spirit.
Obviously, there are many necessary ingredients that go into growing spiritual fruit in our lives. However, since God is not looking for the fruit of human effort but for the fruit of His own life in us, the most important ingredient is the presence of the Holy Spirit.
We must not consider Pentecost to be only a historical event. Rather, we must have an ongoing experience of the rain of heaven in our midst. He is as necessary to the Church as rain is to the land. We cannot produce fruit that reflects the character of God without the continual abiding presence of His Spirit within us and the continual outpouring of His Spirit upon us. God Himself is our hope of fruitfulness.
…Until the Spirit is poured upon us from on high, and the wilderness becomes a fruitful field and the fruitful field is counted as a forest. Then justice will dwell in the wilderness, and righteousness remain in the fruitful field.
Justice and righteousness characterize those who are bearing the fruit of the Spirit. Righteousness is found in a proper relationship with Him; justice is found in a proper relationship among men.
While righteousness is a gift from God, justice occurs in the expression of that righteousness toward others. Justice is found where men treat one another as the Lord intends. Men have always longed to be treated with fairness and dignity. Yet the lack of true justice has been a distinguishing mark of human history. Greater education has not established it. The disciplines of science, philosophy, and psychology have not brought it forth. Communism, capitalism, and socialism have all promised it; however, we always find much injustice in every society built exclusively on these economic ideals.
Justice is the mark of the Kingdom of God! All human attempts to produce it apart from God have failed and will fail.
God promised that when He poured out His Spirit upon His people, justice would be apparent in their midst (Is. 32:15 - 16). Men would treat one another as they ought. Jesus pointed to this truth just before His ascension. He promised to pour out the Holy Spirit upon His disciples, and then He commanded them to treat each other as He had treated them (Jn. 14:16 - 17; 15:12). This was to be the sign that they were followers of God’s true Messiah (Jn. 13:35; 17:22 - 23).
Without question, the Church has failed to express the Kingdom of God as she has been commissioned to do. As we see the many divisions in the Church and a lack of godly character, we ask, “What is the solution?” We need to humble ourselves before Him and seek a fresh visitation from Heaven. He is our only hope. He has promised that righteousness and justice will be found in our midst with the outpouring of His Spirit. History and personal experience have proven that He can be trusted.
Ultimately, the goal is Christ! Jesus has so identified Himself with His people that He speaks of us as a body, with Himself as the head. Thus, what is seen is not two separate, independent entities, but one corporate being - Head and body, which is Christ.
For as the body is one and has many members, but all the members of that one body, being many, are one body, so also is Christ.
In this corporate man, each member retains his individuality; this must never be lost. Jesus retains His personal identity as King of kings, Lord of lords, the Great I Am, the One worthy to be worshiped forevermore. He is God. We also keep our individuality, for Jesus loves us and died personally for each of us. He wants to have a close, intimate relationship with every one of us. Yet, while we retain our individuality, each of us has lost our independence for we are now “individually members of one another” (Rom. 12:5).
We are literally parts of one another and in need of each other. Because the Church has not recognized this one basic truth, there has been division of what is indivisible, a weakening of what should contain all power, a tearing down of what is being built, and much death in what should be characterized by life. Sadly, many Christians are oblivious to the paradox of these things.
Little by little, though, the Body of Christ is coming together. He is restoring the Church; He is preparing His bride for His return!
Let us be people who contribute to this end.[20]
Lord, may Your life be revealed in us. May Your holy character be increasingly manifest in our lives. And may the corporate expression of Your person be produced and put on display for all the nations to see. Lord, establish justice and righteousness in the land. In Jesus’ name. Amen.
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