Wednesday, March 20, 2013
Lava or Living?
There is a great difference between having rivers of living water well up and flow out of our inner most being, and having reactionary lava flows erupt out of our frustration and vexation against injustice.
I have sadly mistaken the later for the former and hope that my own confession will save many others from my same error.
Unseen tectonic plates beneath the surface generate powerful friction that melts rock, builds up heat, and results in powerful forces that shake the earth. This underlying tension can suddenly find or create its own vent and cause an eruption that may continue for a long time.
Intellectual eruptions can similarly have their origin in deep feelings, passions, and pent up frustrations that can inspire years of "reactionary expression"!
Sadly, the inspiration beneath these intellectual lava flows is often more pent up animosity against perceived wrongs than grace filled love and hope offered in the Spirit of peace. These fiery intellectual eruptions serve a purpose, but only after the magma cools and erodes into useful soil; this will often take many years.
Rivers of living water, on the other hand, spring up from the midst of our spiritual paradise with God. Their deep and rich source is that quiet, tranquil, sweet communion with our heavenly Father. This is why these flows bring immediate life and grace everywhere they touch. Living waters carry the nutrients of God's mercy, hope, and love, that have been born out of the grace received from the life of God.
Lava flows are powerful, but also dangerous and destructive; river flows are life giving gifts of peace and grace. Both lava flows and artesian flows can spontaneously well up for long periods of time, but the results they produce are dynamically different. Lava flows of intellectual reaction against perceived wrongs will melt many people into a movement that can gouge huge new features in the social landscape.
Churches can be swept away, ministries consumed, reputations obliterated, and fellowships divided, and sadly those reacting against these perceived centers of injustice will rejoice at the perceived progress being made rather than mourn the destruction it leaves behind. No one denies that
volcanoes can be brilliant, and so many intellectual lava flows also seem dynamically inspired. Some can even erupt unabated for many years; however, we are not called to be lava flows.
We are called to be filled with the Spirit of Christ, so that the life of Christ will well up from within, carrying our rich fellowship with the Father and the Son to others in a life imparting flow of mercy and grace. This too will change the social landscape; the main difference is that it will not take years for time and nature to erode our intellectually inspired lava flow into something truly beneficial.
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