There must be ample room for the Spirit to move within your doctrine.
Likewise, doctrine must exist to help reveal the Spirit.
This doctrine must encourage self discipline and holiness; things we seem to have lost sight of in the American church.
How can we walk in the Spirit if we only feel the presence at emotional worship services, conferences, and revivals? I’ve experienced this myself and it was not enough to sustain me.
God’s presence will sustain us, yes, but only insofar as we are willing to walk with Him.
Yet the children of God keep settling for breadcrumbs when God has prepared a feast. We have deemed the feast too costly, being unwilling to exchange our striving and busyness for daily abiding in the sweet presence of our First Love.
This busyness has turned our quality time with God into quantity time and somehow we think it’s enough. It will never be enough.
Your fifteen minutes aren’t more meaningful than basking in His glory just because you have given Him the first part of your day. You could give your entire day to reading scripture, singing hymns and praying yet still miss the presence.
You could prophesy, speak in tongues and lead revivals and still miss the presence.
Most lean heavily on one or the other, spiritual things or religious things, but it is a healthy combination of both that ensures the growth of God’s people.
We have deemed the feast too costly, being unwilling to exchange our striving and busyness for daily abiding in the sweet presence of our First Love.
The division between the two camps must be bridged and we must begin to embrace one another as Christ intended. This is the only path forward into being a Church that is not schizophrenic. Until we learn this, we will remain divided in mind and Jesus is coming for a perfected bride, not one at war within herself.
We need to be a people who are diligent about practicing sacraments, reading the word, fasting and praying… and we need this diligence to flow from a love of being in the presence of God, not from a spirit of religion.
I pray you discipline yourselves in worship, face down in the glorious presence of God simply because He loves us. Let us be filled with the Spirit and strategic in walking with Him into a new era of Church unity.
Your sister,
Monica