Forged In the Father’s Image.

In Revelation 16:15 the King over all Kings and Lord of all Lords say’s, “Behold, I come like a thief.  Blessed is he who stays awake…,” blessed is the one who keeps his eyes open at all times.  Our Lord is describing for us as His Followers a spirit of vigilance and vision, an attentive awareness to this moment in Life.  Paul wrote along these same lines in Romans 13:11-12 and said, “Do this, understanding the present Time.  The hour has come for you to wake from your slumber [‘For the men and women of God to be stirred from their spiritual lethargy.’  We could define this as apathy, indifference, and complacency: our insensitivity to the things of the Spirit.], because our salvation is nearer now than when we first believed [What he’s saying is, ‘There is not a moment to waste.  The Parousia of Christ is right around the corner.’].  The night is nearly over; the Day is almost here [‘Day’ of victory for the Royal Battalion and evaluation at the Throne of God].  So let us put aside the deeds of darkness and put on the Armor of Light.”

The “Armor of Light” which was designed for us to shine the glory and grace of the Lord Jesus Christ into a world grown dark with the shadow of the Enemy is our role {designated by God} as Men and Women.  It is our Biblical Masculinity, and for the ladies, their God-given Femininity.  Each has a part, each has a place, each has a unique and wonderful role to play in the Divine Drama of human history.  We understand this is more than just Act II, Scene I of some high school play; this is real life in real Time in a real Conflict with real casualties.  All you have to do is take a look around you at the state of marriages and families and churches and relationships in the world today to see that something has gone horribly wrong.

What does it take to make a man or woman— forged in the Father’s image ...which is Jesus— and what might this person look like to the world around them?  This is a serious, and seriously relevant, question in a society full of little boys and girls in ‘big people bodies.’  The New Testament term most closely connected with Abba’s adoption of us as His chosen Sons and Daughters is huios, a word expressing privilege and position in the family, a word expressing ‘sonship,’ identity, and maturity {Rom. 8:14}.  I.e., Abba sees us now as full grown Sons and Daughters.  The last thing Jesus wants is to be dragging a ten-mile train of four year olds kicking and screaming into Eternity!  The time to mature into, and walk faithfully in, our Sonship… is now.

Allow me to state what is to most of us the ‘obvious:’ it’s entirely possible your father may have failed {maybe terribly} to instruct you, to guide you, to lead you down this Path.  After all, no father on Earth is perfect.  Your human father may not have even been around; he may have cut and run like so many others.  When you were a child, or in the midst of that vast nether-world, those years Pete Townsend and Roger Daltry called the “teenage waste-land.”  As horrible, as hurtful as that was, it doesn’t have to define who you are now.  Because I can tell you it hasn’t stopped your heavenly Father from loving you as you are, from providing for you where you are, and from protecting you until you’re in a position such as this: where, having realized you were helpless and hopeless to scale the peaks of life alone, you can discover what He wants you to be.  And all Abba has in store for those who follow Him.

This is critical, because we need the intervention of someone who can teach us, someone who can train us in how to be— like King David of old— men and women “after” Abba’s “own heart.”  We know this, from the heartbreakingly sad state of our horribly failed social experiment over the past 50 years: A woman can never teach a boy how to be a man.  Femininity can never bestow masculinity …much less Biblical masculinity.  And vice-versa.  What the Body of Christ needs at this stage in the Game, and the world at large, is good Kings and Queens, a passionate People of God willing to share their lives, their strength, and the years of collective wisdom, in the Cause of their King and for the blessing of His Body.  The man or woman who trains you, teaches you, disciples you into manhood or womanhood, must be one who has been there and who knows how to take you there.  Thus, in the end, the greatest example we can look to is the Lord Jesus Christ, the King over all Kings, the most magnificently Tender-Warrior to ever walk the Earth.

HJC	Ric Webb  |  Shepherd Heart’s Journey Community 9621 Tall Timber Blvd. |  Little Rock, AR 72204 t +1.501.455.0296 | hjcommunity.org
Heart’s Journey – where the Word and the Spirit are one.