There Has Always Been.......

The most important gift of being human is that we were created in the image of God to have fellowship and relationship with Him and that He gave us responsibility and authority.
God has always had a people even if we were only a twinkle of a design by foreknowledge in His heart and eye. However, for right now, I am especially interested in His people since the Truth came to earth...since he, being the fulness of the Godhead bodily came to us to redeem and restore the world...since the Light came to dispel the darkness...since the Word became flesh, since the writing and establishment of the New Testament as Holy canon...since the early church and its' apostolic foundation sprang from the midst of the early 'brotherhood' such as Peter, John, and Paul. Ever since, God has always had a people. There has always been a people for God---for the heart of God--- who carried the truth forward.

All down through the years and centuries, since the ascension of Jesus to the right hand of the Father, God has had a people. Not a people that were necessarily known by religious affiliation, but were known by God Himself, at heart, because they chose to seek Him and the center of His will. They sought to pass Him and the truth of relationship with Him forward as one would pass an inheritance along to the next heir. And so, the legacy of truth has been passed along from generation to generation even as a baton is handed off in a race to the next runner. But what is this truth? Nothing more complicated, yet so simple, but yet so reward-filled as the power of close fellowship with God through the conqueror Jesus Christ holding promise of restoration for this world by means of individual experience first.

Once I watched a movie about cavemen when they first discovered fire. These cavemen quickly discovered the value of fire for their lives. They discovered its value for warmth, for protection, and for its value in food preparation (an aid for sustenance). The cavemen tried to preserve even the first fire. Fearing they would lose it when its flames died out, they sought to preserve it by protecting its embers with the hope of reviving that flame.
Many Christians see Christianity as a religious responsibility or as a social duty or maybe a once-a-week experience with some good thoughts, actions, and words sprinkled along with it and as being something separate and external to their real personal life. But those that carry the treasure of fellowship like a fire do not see it so. This experience is their personal life; it is their identity; it is that which is central to their being and for being.

There is a spiritual lineage of people that have survived from generation to generation all down through the ages since the early church and have kept alive the sound word of God through their passionate embrace of His word and His communion. They loved not their lives unto death throughout the persecution that scattered the first church and yet protected the embers of truth through the cold centuries of the dark ages unto and through the renaissance withstanding the heresies of so-called enlightenment unto our modern day era of humanism, moral relativism, and multi-denominationalism.
These were those who kept faith alive in the face of great adversity as did our forefathers of old Israel and 'old testament' times who by faith "passed through the Red Sea....stopped the mouths of lions....out of weakness were made strong, became valiant in battle....received their dead raised to life again....were tortured, not accepting deliverance....had trial of mockings and scourgings..of chains and imprisonments....were stoned....were sawn in two....were slain with sword....of whom the world was not worthy....And all these, having obtained a good testimony through faith, did not receive the promise, God having provided something better for us, that they should not be made perfect apart from us...." And so, there you have it! These people and their message has endured from old testament times to the promise fulfilled establishing a new testament---which testament has now been bequeathed to our generation. These people are our heritage.
Who are these people? They are the true church. Oh, you won't necessarily find them organized into formal groups or ecclesiastical institutions with creeds and bylaws. However, they are a group with a common cause and mission and common denominator. They all may not know each other but they carry and transfer and keep alive the same message and will of God. They are the tie that binds. The tie that binds is by the Holy Spirit who has literally revealed the most powerful, all encompassing force in the universe in their very personal heart of hearts (do you know what I mean?).
In his book, The Torch of the Testimony, John W. Kennedy traces the history of the true church through Christian groups who remained outside formalized institutional religion down through the ages, chronicling the life of God and His word through these people calling them, in effect, torchbearers of the gospel. One reviewer of this book speaks of these people as those "who crisscrossed the timelines of history. You enter into their joys and sorrows, their struggles , persecutions and steadfastness in the face of peril. Your heart begins to leap as you identify with the spirit of Christ which comes forth from their lives. You rejoice, as if finding a long-lost relative, when you realize that it is from these that the torch of the testimony of Jesus Christ has been passed."(Tom Sigwarth, Book Nook).
And they weren't (and aren't)necessarily the most popular or notable or most spotlighted or heralded or most apparent in importance. Most people in America probably have seen a football game and know what a field goal attempt is. When that attempt is made, everyone's attention is on the kicker. However, of late, my attention has been drawn to the holder. If the holder doesn't catch the pass from center and correctly set the ball for the kicker, no points will ever be scored. No kick will even be made period!--- without the holder. However, you will never see him (the holder) get credit for those 3 points or read his name in the box score. The ages and centuries are full of people we do not know or have never heard of but who have held the heart-warming fire and life-saving truth of God and presented it to their generation and set it up to be passed on. They are our spiritual bloodline and ancestry. We are their successors--if we so choose to answer the call, raise high the banner and take up the sword---the real fellowship.
It is time for us to allow the embers of the fire of God to be blown upon afresh by the breath of the Holy Spirit and allowed to catch flame. We are the modern-day torch bearers of the testimony of the power of an endless life bestowed to us from the ancient of days.......and our generation is our watch. Let it not be said that the fire of God smoldered during our watch......and that is exactly what is happening in much of this great nation---little by little.
What is the anwer? :

There is something special....mysteriously holy about the heart of God.....about the center of His will. There is something about finding that special place with God. It is a place set apart from the dissonance of a world system that is progressively, day by day, choosing to find 'its' own way. It is a place set apart from the fears and labors of self. There is an almost unspoken, no-fanfare spiritual aura of having deep communion with the ancient of days. It is a cool, unrushed, unintensity, but yet charged with a warmth of realness, solidness, and security of being in the place you are supposed to be at the right time, but yet apart from time (time that is both self and world imposed). David, in the book of Psalms, mentions this place several times. He wrote, "be still and know God." He also wrote that "he who dwells in the secret place of the Most High shall abide under the shadow of the Almighty" and "He shall hide me in His pavilion; in the secret place of His tabernacle He shall hide me; He shall set me high upon a rock." This place is not found by the casual inquirer. Only those who seek will find it and be allowed to find it. This is not an elitist statement, message, or people. David wrote, "Oh, how great is Your goodness, which You have laid up for those who fear You, which You have laid up for those who trust You....You shall hide them in the secret place of Your presence." Another place he writes, "As the deer pants for the water brooks, so pants my soul for You, O God. My soul thirsts for God, for the living God" and "deep calls unto deep at the noise of Your waterfalls......"

People who truly hunger and thirst find it and are filled---God is faithful. These people who find this place bear witness of it----they can't help it----it's that special. These are people who don't necessarily run with the crowd of the world system--the cosmos. They don't ebb and flow with the tide driven and influenced by worldly-wise winds. Because of their walk with the Lord, their ears become attuned---they hear a different voice to live by that influences their thinking and renews, transforms and 'colors' their perspective and purpose. As a result, they do not fit into the mold of ritualistic religion that has lost its salt and life no more than Jesus fit in with the Pharisees. These are those who have learned and are learning to 'breakout' of that mold and 'breakthrough' by the power of the Holy Spirit which must always flow. Flow as water. Again, David said, "God has broken through my enemies by my hand like a breakthrough of water" (2 Chron. 14.11). In days of old, God had a people set apart that carried the ark of the covenant---the ark of his rest---symbolic of his presence and holiness. No longer does God reside in structures of wood, stone and metal. God does not thrive and flourish from the midst of anything man-made or perpetuated by the traditions of man. It is incumbent, then, for our generation to be sure to fulfill our role as spiritual watchmen. Let it not be said that they of the early 21st century were found sleeping on the wall while the enemy stole silently into the camp.
God has always had a people, as David, after His own heart. There has always been a people for the heart of God.

"In some countries today there is great concern among the large Christian bodies to make the Church popular. Every conceivable scheme is being brought into play in order to attract people to the Church. It is forgotten that the true Church can never be attractive to the world, and was never meant to be. It is something which is completely beyond the world's understanding. People are brought into the Church through the witness of the Lord's children who comprise the Church. When the life of Christ is expressed through a spiritual order, believers will maintain a witness that is spiritually effective. Others will be regenerated, and they will be added to the Church, not because they, as worldly people, were attracted to it, but because they have been subject to a divine change which enables them to enter into life on a higher plane. The Church's mission is not to fit into the world, but to see men changed so that they will fit into the Church.
The Church of the New Testament is no mere theory. It is a fact of the twentieth century, as it was of the first. The principles of the unchanging Word of God, having been demonstrated and tested for almost two thousand years, have proved themselves applicable to every age and every circumstance. The Church authoritative, holy, witnessing, invincible has continued and will continue, not in outward show and ostentation, but whenever the Lord has found a people willing to gather round Him in submission and obedience. It is a Church that is indissolubly one, bound by ties of the Spirit.
Amid the bitter conflicts and tragedies of so-called Church history, the life of the spiritual movement of the Church has flowed on through the ages. The splendid unity of a heavenly race, living a heavenly life passed down from spiritual generation to spiritual generation has never been broken. They are pilgrims and strangers still upon the earth, bearing the reproach of Christ outside the camp, pressing 'on toward the goal unto the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus'. They gather round Christ their Head, owning His Word their guide, bearing the torch of the testimony." (The Torch of the Testimony by John W. Kennedy)

Once again, and please forbear the repetition---It is incumbent, then, for our generation to be sure to fulfill our role as spiritual watchmen. Let it not be said that they of the early 21st century were found sleeping on the wall while the enemy stole silently into the camp. God has always had a people after His own heart. There has always been a people for the heart of God.

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