After all of the books, sermons, movies, and even the words of Christ Himself, Jesus is still an uncharted land whose borders have yet to be defined. The unflinching honesty, mercy, compassion, vengeance, and wisdom left him an unpredictable mystery to the point that even when He told His disciples what He would do, they were still surprised when it actually happened. At His departure He promised that His Spirit would guide disciples in their lives from then on, providing the needed peace to those rare individuals who would take up that offer and in doing so follow the unpredictable whims of God as His love and glory cover the earth like water. If one claims to be a follower of Jesus Christ, you'd best keep your shoes tied and your hands open. Be ready to move and hold onto nothing. Nothing but Christ. When one holds fast to Christ the ability to enjoy life is amplified. We desire to possess but we often fail to enjoy that which we fight to possess. In Christ, we may possess little, but enjoy much. In this abundance of life we find hope. The fact that the collective mass of society rejects this hope is reflected in the church's methodology of marketing the Gospel to get the attention of that collective mass by any means necessary. Yet God sought to hide this eternal treasure in the simplicity of this mysterious homeless individual who could calm a churning sea with a word and make blind eyes see with spit and mud. What do you do with a man like that? Apparently, you kill him. I'm still learning what He meant when He said, "Whosoever will come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow me." His message waited for a time when hope was fading. It seems that time has come again.

It's one thing to talk or write about knowing God. It's entirely another thing to do. I may mistake writing for doing as well as one may read these words and ingest the philosophy without placing action behind the idea. I know God, but not as much as He can be known and my writing is birthed from a desire to push my limited knowledge to a limitless place of where the experiences that are had cannot be matched or manufactured. I don't, however, simply desire an experience, but God alone. Whatever experience, pleasant or unpleasant, that goes along with that, I welcome. I would give whatever necessary to have seen the era of Jesus Christ and His time here and what each moment's radical actions and reactions were that in such a short time changed the face of history forever. The finest promise in all of eternity is that He can be known and even desires to be. According to the Scriptures, He can be known by a child, yet one who has the mental capacity to gain wealth may find it difficult to even attain salvation, let alone knowledge of God. Perhaps the difference is this. A child doesn't know he needs Jesus yet he wants. A successful man may not want and have no knowledge of his need. Many people today recognize the need and want because they need. A child simply wants, not out of need but out of simple, focused, uninhibited, radical, desire. When it comes to knowing Him, serving Him, loving Him, Jesus calls us to radical desire. The term 'radical' is a mathematical term meaning "the root of a quantity". It's taken from the Latin root 'radix' meaning 'source' so 'radical' means 'to arise from the source (or root)'. The church must become radical again. If you, like me, are drawn to a deeper walk, then get radical, that is, get back to the Source and from there, arise.

Here's an email I received from friend today. Note the final line of this post, but read the email first.

Bill,

I thought a writing a book called "Why Christians Shouldn't Go to Church" or "Why Christians Should Avoid Church" or the bumpersticker version: "Preserve Christianity - Avoid Church"

The premise would be based on the realization that Church attendance is destructive, for the following reasons:

The Sunday morning gathering in a church building that we call "Church":

1) Is an artificial unBiblical contrivance of the late 4th Century that undermines the true fellowship that happens in homes.
2) Has encumbered the "Church" (corporate body of Christ) with debt.
3) Has reinforced the suspicion of the heathen that it is about money.
4) Relegates worship to a once a week 1- 2 hour experience.
5) Created a clergy and intimidated the laity.
6) Has left monuments to failure everywhere by having empty churches that are used for art museums and concert halls, reminding the heathen that no one is really interested in going to hear the Gospel anyway.
7) Seats people military style and makes one person the "main " contributor - the Preacher.
8) Allows laity to be non-involved.
9) Delays the decision for Christ - because the witnesser invites some one to church rather than saying, "Would you like to repent and give your life to Jesus Christ?"
10) Sets up pastors as a punching bag that dysfunctional Christians with latent hostility can target while they pretend to be in right relationship with God.

Nevertheless - "Be not weary in well doing -- knowing that your labor in the Lord is never in vain!" - God

(The man who wrote this to me is a Pastor and has been for 25 years.)