The Journey IS The New

Recently I shared an encouragement from God for the Pioneers to “keep swimming“. It received quite a lot of feedback in the various places it was posted and shared – including someone sending a clip of Disney-Pixar’s Dory singing “just keep swimming” which made me smile!
One person asked a question that I felt was really important and on so many people’s hearts right now: they asked if God had shown me what the New looks like. I mean, isn’t that what we all want to know? What IS the New?

It’s a great question, but I do think the problem with trying to clearly define the New is that as soon as anyone tries to pin down what it is, they immediately fail because we’re not there yet. Many of us have seen hints, or glimpses of what God is planning – He does love to share His secrets with those He loves, after all. I have shared a few here already this year: the new is about building people, not structures; it’s about pressing, not soaking; it’s about ministers not ministries. And there are a couple of other keys I have seen too. There are two in particular that I feel are central to everything else: if we can remember this one and tomorrow’s one, I believe everything else will fall into place.

You see the thing about the New is that God is deliberately not revealing it all in one go, but is rather revealing it one step at a time so that each person will go on the journey to discover it with Him. It can’t be taught by others (though we can share hints) but MUST be found personally through individual relationship with Him. For now at least the journey IS the New.

We are so used to thinking corporately and expecting our leaders or prophets to envision and then tell us a blueprint for ‘The Church’ for so we can agree and fall in to do our bit, but God is calling EACH of us to individual, Spirit-led relationship with Him. He wants to reveal the New to each of us in person.
As He does so I believe we will encounter others on the same journey (I am already seeing this happen in places) and we will then group together for mutual encouragement and shared praise to God. This is the Ekklesia. There are no shortcuts. A journey is a journey and it takes each person as long as it must. It cannot – must not – be theoretically taught by leaders: each individual must find their own way there. Leaders must simply encourage the individuals to press in and hear for themselves.

The further on that I press into the New, the more I am drawn over and over to the book of Acts. What we find there is the blueprint, the original DNA of God’s Church that sets the most reliable picture of His vision for the Church. We have such a distorted view of “the Church” that it is impossible to separate it from Sunday morning meetings (whether in old buildings with stained glass windows, or converted warehouses with clever lighting and sound systems). Our mindset really gets in the way of seeing God’s original plan. We build ‘churches’ and then gather people to fill them. God’s way is to build people who then meet together wherever and whenever they can – not contained in one building or one meeting, but spilling out into all society everywhere.

His is a mindset so far removed from where we find ourselves that it’s going to take a journey of epic proportions to shift to the promised New. It’s like the journey taken by the Israelites when they were liberated from Egypt by a series of plagues (sound familiar?). Physically and geographically it should have been possible for them to make the journey in less than a month. Instead it took them 40 years – because that’s how long it took to get Egypt out of them.

I pray it doesn’t take us 40 years to get the old ‘church’ mindset out of us. May we not be found grumbling and wishing we could go back to the ‘good old days’ or even just yearning for the imprisonment of the old because at least it was familiar. God is calling us all to the same journey – but although we are all heading in the same direction (some moving ahead, some lagging) that is no guarantee we are all going to make it. It is down to each individual to decide how they journey (and therefore whether they make it). All Israel were taken on the journey, like it or not. But only the ones who kept their eyes fixed on the Lord and trusted Him to keep His Word were the ones who made it to the Promised Land – everyone else died on the journey. Let’s encourage each other to keep trusting Him and follow His leading every step of the way, but regardless of what everyone else is doing, let’s make sure we ourselves are committed to journeying with God. Sure, there will be hardships and discomfort, but He will provide in amazing ways, and if we embrace the wilderness experience we will discover it to be the most intimate place of relationship with Him.

“This is what the Lord says: “I remember how eager you were to please me as a young bride long ago, how you loved me and followed me even through the barren wilderness” (Jer 2:2 – NLT)

God’s New Thing is not about the destination and how quickly we arrive: it’s about learning to journey with God. So let’s journey so well with God that we barely notice when we get ‘there’ (if we even do) because it will just be a continuation of our relationship with Him – THAT is the end goal!