GlocalNet

I’ve just had an awesome personal worship time with God this morning.  A few weeks ago God brought me to Luke 5 and I camped out there.  As I’m reading through the Bible this year, I’m reading Luke first instead of Matthew for my New Testament reading.  I read 2 chapters in the Old Testament everyday, starting with Genesis, then 1 chapter of wisdom literature - those are the books of Job- Song of Solomon, then a chapter in the New Testament. 

As I was in Genesis 11 - I read of the tower of Babel.  I’ve always loved that story.  It was a common language, the world being made into one, and with technology God says “nothing they set their minds to do will be impossible for them.”  That little verse speaks volumes.  It describes our world today.  We are now connected (sounds like my book about to come out!) and anyone can do anything anywhere in the world.  Desire, technology, communication all came together for that tower.  I wrote a prayer in my Bible about us as Jesus followers being wise in the world we are in today and using all the tools for the glory of God. 

Then I read Luke 5 - WOW - it’s as if those two chapters were born to go together.  Here Jesus is calling his disciples.  It’s in the morning; he’s borrowing Peter’s fishing boat to push out from shore so he could see everyone he was speaking to.  He finishes and then comes in and the carpenter tells the fisherman to fish again.  Peter’s response was we’ve fished all night - but, if you say so.  To have caught a fish or 2, or a partial net full would have been nice - but no way - so many fish the nets began to break and others had to come and help - other boats.  The next story in the chapter is Jesus healing a man who hadn’t sinned but was just sick.  The next story in the chapter is of a man who was paralyzed and people wanting him healed but couldn’t get him in the room in the house where Jesus was speaking so they tore a hole in the roof and lowered the man in!  In that instance - Jesus forgave the man - his sickness seems to have been due to his sin.  Next story in the chapter, Jesus calls Matthew the tax collector and says that it’s the sick that need a physician (spiritually) not the whole.  He then is asked why his disciples don’t fast more - his explanation boils down to they will later - but for now they must complete a very specific mission God has given them.  The final thing he does is to bring it all in context and so he tells the parable of taking a piece from a new garment to patch a hole on the old - it doesn’t match.  He then talks of putting the new wine in new wineskins - not old wineskins or all is lost.

To try to communicate what God says in your heart is a hard thing and never really translates into words like his Word speaking to your heart - but in looking at those two chapters side by side, here is what it said to me - the new wineskin is the new world - and we are still trying to put new wine, in old wineskins and it will never work.  We must let this world have its own expression of who Jesus is and free them from the past for the Gospel to spread.  This is a new world, and God wants to do a new work - but most of the church wants it done in an old way.  American pastors have learned to contextualize the Gospel in their communities - they still have a very, very, very ancient paradigm of global engagement - here are the implications and things God spoke to me about:

1.  We are now connected and the opportunity to fulfill the Great Commission in the world is a question of obedience, not potential or desire.

2.  Language, technology, communication, architecture, travel, all of it - must be marshaled strategically so everyone is a part, so it goes viral and the mission is completed.

3.  God expects obedience like Peter.  Even if we feel we can’t, we’ve tried and failed, or we are insignificant - he expects us to obey him.

4.  God gives the increase - not us.  It wasn’t Peter’s fishing techniques that brought in the flood of fish - but his obedience. 

5.  When we obey God, it is tiring at times, it comes under scrutiny and criticism - but obedience is what counts.  When we obey - it has a ripple effect to others for the good - when we don’t, it also has a ripple effect to others for the bad.

6.  God wants us to be fishers of men.

7.  Its about the least, the despised, and the rejected that God wants to touch and will use to touch the masses - not the religiously spiritual, connected, or “mature.”  In Jesus’ day, it was about him loving the tax collectors, prostitutes, drunks, etc.,  Today as Jesus’ followers, try loving atheists, homosexuals, or Muslims - you’ll be criticized, challenged, or even ostracized, but do it anyhow.

8.  We need to be after the sick and hurting people. 

9.  It is never the wine that’s the problem, but the wineskin. 

It is a new world, and that is the wineskin.  We, through faith, and in spite of our lack of faith, when obedient, are going to see God do things in the spread of the good news of Jesus that no generation since Paul has seen.  WHAT AN AWESOME, AWESOME, AWESOME TIME TO BE ALIVE - THANK YOU JESUS!!!!!!!!!!