Amnesiac gods…getting back to joy
One of my favorite movies is City of Joy. I think it resonated with me so much because it captures the plight of humanity to overcome suffering by exchanging despair for a new identity clothed with dignity, and where there once was pain becomes, instead, a place of power, and one’s fear becomes joy.
You lose your joy when you forget your identity
As a nation and as individuals we forgot our identity and with it our purpose.
The United States was chosen and formed by God to be a city on a hill, a citadel of Light to a darkened world.
Those leaving for the New World included the Puritans. The Puritans were facing religious persecution because they believed that Jesus Christ is and should be the only recognized Sovereign of the church. At the time, the Queen of England was recognized as the sovereign of the Church of England. Puritans were also unique in that they threw off church liturgy in favor of pursuing a relationship with Jesus, emphasized submission to His authority as well as covenanting together as One Body, meaning they watched over one another’s souls: edifying, rebuking, sustaining, and equipping as needed.
John Robinson, the pastor for the Puritans wrote, of their upcoming departure from England to the New World, “Now as the people of God in old time were called out of Babylon civil, the place of their bodily bondage, and were to come to Jerusalem, and there to build the Lord’s temple, or Tabernacle…so are the people of God now to go out of Babylon spiritual to Jerusalem…and to build themselves as lively stones into a spiritual house, or temple, for the Lord to dwell in…for we are, the sons of Abraham by faith. (The Light and the Glory by Peter Marshall).
Many years later when the Colonies voted toward a Declaration of Independence, Samuel Adams rose and said, “We have this day restored the Sovereign, to Whom alone men ought to be obedient. He reigns in Heaven and…from the rising to the setting sun, may His Kingdom come.”
The Kingdom comes as we participate in the building of a spiritual temple, a process called sanctification.
To become a spiritual temple one must pattern themself after Jesus and become love.
Dear friends, let us love one another, for love comes from God. Everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God. 1 John 4:7 NIV
Love is a virtue and not a feeling. It is fed and fired by God- not by the favorable response of the beloved. Even when it doesn’t seem to make a dime’s worth of difference to the ones on whom it is lavished, it is still the most prized of all virtues because it is at the heart of the very character of God. By loving we participate in His Life and Essence.” (Excerpts from an article Rich Mullins wrote in July-Aug 1994 – Virtue Reality ).
And so we know and rely on the love God has for us. God is love. Whoever lives in love lives in God, and God in them. 1 John 4:16 NIV
For,
His divine power has given us everything we need for a godly life through our knowledge of him who called us by his own glory and goodness. Through these he has given us his very great and precious promises, so that through them you may Participate in the Divine Nature, having escaped the corruption in the world caused by evil desires. 2 Peter 1:3-4 NIV
Dear friends, now we are Children of God, and what we will be has not yet been made known. But we know that when Christ appears, we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is. 1 John 3:2 NIV
Jesus answered them, “Is it not written in your Law, ‘I have said you are “gods”’ ? If he called them ‘gods,’ to whom the word of God came—and Scripture cannot be set aside— what about the one whom the Father set apart as his very own and sent into the world? Why then do you accuse me of blasphemy because I said, ‘I am God’s Son’? Do Not Believe Me Unless I Do the Works of My Father. But if I do them, even though you do not believe me, believe the works, that you may know and understand that the Father is in me, and I in the Father.” John 10:34-38 NIV
Jesus gave them this answer: “Very truly I tell you, the Son can do nothing by himself; he can do only what he sees his Father doing, because whatever the Father does the Son also does. For the Father loves the Son and shows him all he does. Yes, and he will show him even greater works than these, so that you will be amazed. For just as the Father raises the dead and gives them life, even so the Son gives life to whom he is pleased to give it. John 5:19-21 NIV
Everyone who believes that Jesus is the Christ is born of God, and everyone who loves the father loves his child as well. This is how we know that we love the children of God: by loving God and carrying out his commands. In fact, this is love for God: to keep his commands. And his commands are not burdensome, for everyone born of God overcomes the world. This is the victory that has overcome the world, even our faith. 1 John 5:1-4 NIV
So, believe, and do as you see your Father do,
Defend the weak and the fatherless; uphold the cause of the poor and the oppressed. Rescue the weak and the needy; deliver them from the hand of the wicked. Psalm 82:3-4 NIV
For if you don’t, you will hear:
“Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only the one who does the will of my Father who is in heaven. Many will say to me on that day, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name and in your name drive out demons and, in your name, perform many miracles?’ Then I will tell them plainly, ‘I never knew you. Away from me, you evildoers!’ Matthew 7:21-23 NIV
For,
“The ‘gods’ know nothing, they understand nothing. They walk about in darkness; all the foundations of the earth are shaken. But you will die like mere mortals; you will fall like every other ruler.” Rise up, O God, judge the earth, for all the nations are your inheritance. Psalms 82:5, 7-8 NIV