Finding the Body

What is the Body of Christ? How do we find it? More importantly than that, how do we experience it? God's Son has power in His presence. Just touching Him with faith results in miracles. So how do we touch Him now? What is our opportunity to experience His presence? Not just some “tingling” sensation, or abstract feeling, but the real deal.

Most of us have heard the rhetoric, read the passages, even experienced community that is the foundation of the Body. But what of fundamentally life changing empowerment through that Body? Can you point to it in your life? Does the hunger for unlimited life consume you? Do you want to see the Body materialize more than anything? To see power unleashed?

I have that desire. It has been implanted in me. But I suppress it sometimes. Ignore it other times. Practical life obscures my sight. And other times when I think of it, I experience fear and frustration at my own lack of surrender to it. But we can find a way out of that prison of self.

What do I mean? We are trapped in ourselves, unable to escape from our past, present, behavior, guilt, desires, choices, everything about us. Yes, there are some things we can change. I can learn new things. I can learn new skills, make new friends. But I can not control and modify the depths of my soul. It would be like trying to change both shoes while standing up. You can untie them, try to jump out of them. But you can not take them off without lifting a foot.

Our soul is even more complicated. You can't “step out of it”, or even get a good picture of it yourself. Much the same as listening to your own voice recorded, or looking at a video of yourself from behind. Most people generally think “I don't sound like that!” Or, “Do I really look like that?” There are things in your soul which you can not even see, so how do you fix them? Even more interesting, there are things in your soul that are completely hidden from anyone but God. Tell me, how do you fix those?

Well, we can find amazing guidance in an unlikely place. I want to examine two statements, keeping in mind it is the Spirit of God that shows you the Word of God, and that word can come from anywhere. Okay, first is this:

I had heard of thee by the hearing of the ear; But now mine eye seeth thee: Wherefore I abhor myself , And repent in dust and ashes.

Lets reiterate that. Speaking to God, “I heard of you in the past, but now I see you. My self is wrong, I push myself down in need of forgiveness, cleansing.”

That is a bit rough, there is more to the sack cloth and ashes, more to repentance, but we can grasp the most important concept that there is nothing Job can do but give himself to God. He can not fix himself, can not even create his own peace. Can not make his own faith. He is completely stripped, and has no argument, self justification at all.

How did this happen? How did he get to this expanded self awareness? By seeing God with his own eye. Actually seeing God breaks through our mental computer that is alway measuring ourselves. We are constantly comparing ourselves to others, our own standard, societies standard. It is a ingrained, automatic behavior. You can not stop it completely. It is one of those things deep in the soul. And God opened Job's eyes, he saw the perfect man, and the reaction broke through his mentality, behavior, and circumstance.

We can see God as well. He is right here, living inside His body. We can seek Him out. Just ask to see Him. It is no mystery. God is not hiding up in Heaven. Be ready when you do see Him, because you can not compare. You will be brought low. Just that vision will change you forever. But do you expect anything less? Don't be entrapped by the religious dogma that only some special people see God here, while they are alive. And that when you die you will finally get to Heaven and see God. He is living in His body, right here among us. You can see Him now. Challenge yourself to answer this if it bothers you. If you find it offensive, ask God to reveal His body to you. Ask God for a measure of faith to see the body.

What did Job do after this revelation? After being brought so low. His self did not endure. It was destroyed by the vision of God. Consider all that Job endured, all the loss, pain, suffering. But through it all he endured. It was not until he argued his case, justified God's allowance of such circumstance that God appeared. No, it was not the trials that made him strong. And it was not the trials that broke him. The natural man can endure. That is scary in and of itself, that we can endure until death in our corrupted selves. No, the natural man, Job's fundamental existence was crushed when he perceived the Lord.

So how did he break free of himself? Well, there is a simple explanation a bit further down the section:

And Jehovah turned the captivity of Job, when he prayed for his friends: and Jehovah gave Job twice as much as he had before.

Job prayed for his friends. He was completely broken, sackcloth and ashes time. At the very end of himself, with nothing left. And God tells Job to pray for his friends. Where did Job get the ability to step outside his soul, his situation, his natural conscious and take up the plight of his friends? God changed Job fundamentally at that point. Oh, we can have concern for others, naturally and through the Spirit. But no man can exist outside of the natural boundaries of the soul without having some other life inside.

I can't begin to express my amazement and wonder at this simple principal. God wants always to build up the Body of Christ. The mechanism for that construction is when the eternal life force is exchanged between us. When you find something of Christ in me, and I find something in you. When we turn and act in the Spirit of God towards our brothers and sisters, we are touching the heart of God's will. Job was released from his captivity. Not when he had the vision. But when he walked in God's will.

Burn this into your heart. Finding the cross, experiencing death, realizing how ineffective the natural man is, and that you are that natural man, does not set you free. Freedom comes by practicing the body life. Oh how my natural being fears this. There is no shelter for the self in the body. We are fully exposed for what we are. Broken, ineffective, corrupted beings. And it is going to be painful sometimes. But will God forsake you? Are you alone, the only person to be exposed as a failure? Of course not.

We absolutely must find the resurrection life. We need to hear God tell us to pray for our brothers and sisters. We need to let the life of Christ penetrate through the habits, religious behavior, the very shells that surround us from the inside and pour out that life into our friends. This will unlock the prison of self, this will restore the man, a new man. Nothing is closer to the heart of God than seeing the body of His son increase. Desperately search for that body. Review your whole life as a Christian in this context: “Did I find the Body of Christ?”

Finding the body is not about sitting in a pew on Sunday. It's not about touring the "Holy Land". Not four years of seminary, giving to the homeless shelter, going on a mission. We can exist as Christians, devoting our entire lives to God, and never see God. In fact, many other things that are the trappings of the Christian life are just that, traps to hinder you from seeing God. They can be very good things, good things are the perfect distraction from God's true purpose. Find the body. Pray, cry out, pound your chest until God gives you that vision.

Lord, may these words and thoughts be useful to you. May my own path draw closer to your desire. Bless each reader with a renewed measure of faith. Faith enough to believe, faith to act on your word.