Supernaturally Natural: Rethink The Way We, The Church, Worships Corporately – Part IX
from Supernaturally Natural: Chapter 15 manuscript by Anthony Bachman
(First Section)
Stretching our mindset: Maybe we should look at the world through the Jewish, “lamad”, mindset rather than the Western Culture mindset, the experiential way rather than the intellectual.
Western culture has strongly influenced the way today’s Church worships and thinks. The early Church’s way of processing God and His Ways came through experience and the heart. Processing only through the intellect only came after the Roman influence became apparent later in the Church’s history.
The Jewish way of teaching, the lamad method, examines the heart and life’s daily experiences rather than the intellect. Saul, the Pharisee of Pharisees, had a resume containing being taught by some of the most phenomenal, famous rabbis of his day. This caused Saul to have great influence with the Sanhedrin, the Jewish governing body, until he supernaturally got knocked off his horse. All that Saul had previously learned in the natural became void. He had to experience new concepts like grace, mercy, forgiveness, humility, and faith before he could again teach.
Now Paul, he discovered how little he really knew about God. Only until he learned to experience God by entering His Presence to get fresh personalized revelation through the Holy Spirit of whom truly God and Jesus are did he get ready to propagate the Gospel as its ambassador. He had to learn to “know” God, not just know “about” God.
To the Jew, the lamad, the experience and conditioning of the heart, is central to understanding. Just read the writings of David in Psalms, or the love poems of Solomon in the Song of Songs, or the teaching and parables of Jesus who made his disciples “experience” living in God, in real time, in the present. God sees men through the “heart”. David cherished “the heart of God” and became known as “a man after God’s own heart”. Solomon wrote a romantic love ballad about the heart of God. Jesus’ mission on earth was to expose the “heart of the Father”, another important concept by which another entire book could be written. We need to examine a different mindset than just the western. We need to learn to know the “heart of the Father”, and experience what is supernaturally natural to Him.