Part III: Demolition… Ka-Boom! There She Falls!
Isaiah 57:14-27: It shall be said, “Build up, build up, prepare the way, remove every obstacle out of the way of My people.” For thus says the high and exalted One who lives forever, whose name is Holy, “I dwell on a high and holy place, and also with the contrite and lowly of spirit in order to revive the spirit of the lowly and to revive the heart of the contrite. “For I will not contend forever, neither will I always be angry; for the spirit would grow faint before Me, and the breath of those whom I have made because of the iniquity of his unjust gain I was angry and struck him; I hid My face and was angry, and he went on turning away, in the way of his heart. I have seen his ways, but I will heal him; I will lead him and restore comfort to him and to his mourners, creating the praise of his lips. “Peace, peace to him who is far and to him who is near,” says the Lord, “and I will heal him. “But the wicked are like the tossing sea for it cannot be quiet, and its waters toss up refuse and mud. There is no peace,” says God, “for the wicked.”
I love historic sections of cities, the “old section” of town that is rich in heritage and history. What happens though when it turns into the “slum” of the city. Slumlords become tenant renters never fixing up their place, trash is strewn throughout the streets, crime, prostitution, and drug selling is found around every corner. At this time the section of the city gasps for life, shakes in fear, and loses hope. Soon “death” hovers over the streets instead of “life”. Something needs to be done when so much “life is lost”! This is the time for renewal; cities call it urban renewal; churches call it revival.
Revival demands change: individual changed lives as well as structural institutional changes. If we keep the same institutions, we get the same results, and the slum mentality will remain in a new environment until it eats away at any progress that was made. Often total demolition is a necessity before renewal can be birthed or maintained.
Isaiah pointed out that to “build up, build up,” first “ remove every obstacle out of the way of My people,” needed to happen. Demolition to religious structures had to be done before renewal was to begin. The Tabernacle had to give way to a Temple when the nation Israel was established. The Temple eventually had to be destroyed, never to be rebuilt, when Christianity was birthed because Christianity professed that the believers’ bodies were the temples of the Holy Spirit, not physical structures. Old structures had to give way to new ones. The previous “Books of God” were now called “the Old Testament” giving way to the new “Books of God” called “the New Testament”. Old influenced the new, but a time came for the old to be old, gone, done away with, “Ka-boom”! It was replaced by something new, something better! That is how God has worked historically as recorded in the Bible, and will continue to do so!
I have written blogs in the past on excerpts of a manuscript I have written called “Metamorphosis” where I believe the Church is going from their current caterpillar stage into a cocoon stage that will “restructure” what a caterpillar looks like. In fact what comes out of that caterpillar will not look like a caterpillar at all; it will be a butterfly, a completely new structure. The old will be gone; behold the new!
What will this new structure look like? Well that is what almost 500 of these blogs have been written about. I believe we will have a new structure build around the five fold as passions, beliefs, and points of views of average, normal believers in Jesus Christ who have linear relationships with each other of “laying down their lives for their brethren.” This sacrificial love will transform the way we do Church in function, worship, and personal relationships. It will be revolutionary in our thinking, because it will be a new structure. Old hierarchal clergy/laity structures will fall as well as institutional, organizational mindsets based on those structures.
If everything we do becomes relational, either vertically with the way we worship the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, or horizontally, the way we accept one another, it will force us to rethink how we do Church, what is the Church, and demolish old mindset while openly receiving new ones, new revelations as the Holy Spirit reveals.
“Ka-boom”! Another structure falls, another organization, but in its place a butterfly, an organism suitable for flight into the heavenlies, replaces it, a better structure, a better form, a re-form, a newness: revival!