Verbal Guillotine & God’s Bulldog an Article by Dr. Lalith Mendis
Home & Church was meant to work together closer than most realise. One is the extension of the other. You take to church what you have at home – laughter & trust or heaviness & suspicion. You bring back ethos of church to home – acquittal or indictment. So what is the charge in the atmosphere of your home church or home & church? Is it charged with condemnation, accusation, judgement, fault finding, accusing others, conducting court on relatives or believers, neighbours or work mates? Or is it full with mercy, forgiveness, ease, peace, give & take.
What will one feel when they come to your home? What will someone “smell” around you? You know everybody carries a presence – not only God. What is the presence you carry? For long as I can remember I carried a presence that puts people into defensive mode. Just the way Aldus Huxley acted like Darwin’s Bulldog I acted like God’s Bulldog for holiness! All knew. Barking & may be sometimes biting! How about you? This weekend I found a most amazing judgement moratorium settled upon me. I could not see or remember other people’s wrongs. Some kind of Jubilee blown thru my heart & mind. I feel rested.
Whatever the charge of the atmos (ethos) is, it will facilitate conduction of like kind. These days I am hoping our home church will carry the charge of mercy. Atmos is electrified with mercy. Altar is no more fire breathing – Sinai or Carmel style. We first say – down with Baal. Then we say down with Catholics. Then we say down with Anglicans & other older Protestants. Later we say down with Old wineskin Pentecostals who obstruct the new thing. It is a kind of bloody purge – of course not with the physical guillotine that Robespierre used on Danton & other multitudes of French nobility, but with the verbal guillotine of Pentecostal prophecy & prayer. You know I am a seven star Pentecostal. It is the unholy glossalalia that has caused so much damage. Fiery words in prophecy, witchcraft prayers, spiritual warfare missiles – pastor against believer, believer against believer, old revival against new revival, Toddley vs Oddley and so on.
Of course fire never leaves the altar. Lev 6:11. The same fire that scorches can produce the much needed warmth in bitterly cold seasons. Let church be the warm fire place everybody loves when the world enters nuclear winter. Everybody has pleasant memories about warm fire places or BBQ night. Remember the golden altar of incense – sweet fragrance on warm coals. Let’s be like that.
Yes let the church altar be the place for the sparrow & swallow to keep her young. Ps 84:1-3. Let Baca (weeping) turn to Berechah (praise). Let Marah (bitterness) turn to Naomi (Pleasant). Let streams arise in the Negev. And laughter fill our mouth. Ps 126. When God revered the captivity of Zion – O God the whole world is waiting for this. Dream again – happiness of God. John Piper’s famous theme – Christian Hedonism. I am having a jolly good time with God & God’s people – who are God’s delight. Excellent ones. Ps 16:6-11. All my boundary lines have fallen for me in pleasant places. In His presence s the fullness of Joy and at His right hands our pleasures for evermore.
