A Quick Word Picture...IMMERSION

10/31/2006

The confluence of two contiguous events in the last 24 hours makes passing these thoughts on rather irresistible. :)

Early last evening I was speaking with a Spanish instructor who mentioned the near essentiality of “IMMERSION”—living in the middle of the Culture and continual day and night practical use of the Language—in order to ever REALLY learn the Language of any People.

Tonight, while witnessing the Second Birth of a new sister, “translated from the kingdom of darkness to the kingdom of the Beloved Son,” one of the Saints present for that Party mentioned the same thing, nearly verbatim! Thus the need for this note. :)

THIS is the Reason why GOD said that He would build His “CHURCH that the gates of Hell could not prevail against” (Mat.16), and that we were to be a PEOPLE (1Peter 2, 1Cor.12, Eph.2-5)—not simply well-meaning sincere “individuals” floating around “doing our own thing.” It is really all pretty obvious, with this picture to light our path. Father has continually given us “shadows that find their reality in CHRIST”—and in this case, the desire to truly comprehend and be fluent in an earthly language, “immersion” is necessary. We will never REALLY know an earthly language with an hour or two of “study” or “instruction” or “meditation” now and then, while living in a very different world than the language we are attempting to learn. In order to learn the ways of Jesus, a new culture, a new reason for living, a new name, a new species, “all things new” —God’s Plan is IMMERSION, not wandering and incidental contact with “religion” on some pre-set schedule for a pre-set amount of time. That’s silly, as well as unBiblical. GERMAN or SPANISH class in High School is not “Sunday, once a week, for a two hour mostly listening (not participation) session.” Language class is generally a DAILY class—and even daily for an hour appointment doesn’t work very well! My first experience in a train station in Germany made my four years of High School German instruction, even with all “A’s,” seem juvenile and absurdly inadequate. It takes IMMERSION to learn any “language”—by God’s Design!

Read Acts 2:42-47, 1Cor.12, Heb.3:12-14, Gal.6:2, and the multitude of the Scriptures that speak of “God’s Intent: NOW through the CHURCH” (Eph.3:10) to be “joined and knit together by every supporting ligament”—and you’ll see why so many genuinely Blood-bought Saints never grow past baby-hood in the comprehension of and fruit in the Lamb of God and His Righteous Reign and Power and Love and Light. They never learn HIM without the IMMERSION that Jesus demonstrated with the first disciples and commands (out of His love and wisdom) for us.

God’s Plan has never ever been “attend a service once or twice a week” and then you’re on your own to live in the heathen world and with biological relatives for the other 300 out of 365 days in a year. GOD’S Plan is that we “contend as ONE MAN for the Faith” and “of one accord and one mind”—as “a hundred mothers, brothers, sisters”—not as “attending a language class for an hour or two, a day or two a week.”

Just as a large number of bundled :) Saints tonight participated in the Immersion, the Baptism of a new disciple of Jesus—we also committed to her our IMMERSED DAILY LIFE, just as any real family would commit this to a newborn. :) “We being many are ONE!”

Immersion is the ONLY way to really learn any language, whether the “shadow” of earthly languages, or the TRUE LIFE IN CHRIST that Father wants for those who would become as His Son, in Love and Wisdom and Truth. It’s just His way. “He came to be WITH them, that He might send them out.” “He DWELT for awhile AMONG us.” “The LIFE (not words and meetings) became the light of men.”

Commit your LIFE to those you love and those who profess Jesus—and don’t ever let anyone convince you that you can “attend” them and it still be “church”! Dig in to LIVES, and love them into greatness, day by day, night by night, whether they think they want that or not. It is GOD’S COMMAND, and in everyone’s best interest, then, to please Father and to be released into a maturity—and Life that satan will hate. :) That is the ONLY kind of Christianity in the Bible, anyway. There IS no “attend a class” or “service” and “do a good deed” kind of Church in the Bible. That’s a man-made Laodicean concession to love of the world and clergyism. Try God’s Way, if you’re not already. And go deeper still, if you think you are! Immerse yourself daily into the lives of those in the Body of Christ! “Confess your sins one to another... that you may be healed.” “Bear one another’s burdens and so fulfill the Law of Christ.” “Admonish one another daily.” “See to it brothers that none of you have an unbelieving heart.” Be “in the pains of childbirth until Christ is formed” in your brothers and sisters, “wrestling energetically to present one another complete in Christ.” Don’t think you can learn very much at all in the School of Christ by some appointment on the calendar, nor can you be of any real use to God limited to the unBiblical “attendance-based” form of religion. Go WAY past that—into IMMERSION, as a “mother, brother, sister”! You’ll find that you will grow more into the image and likeness of Jesus in a year—by laying down your LIFE for others 24/7 and getting out of your comfortable cocoon—than you ever could in three DECADES of videos and attending classes. And, “THIS is HOW all men will know you are My disciples—by the love they witness that you have for one another.” :) It’s just God’s Way, and easily illustrated and confirmed by the “shadow” of the only real way to learn an Earth-Language such as Spanish or German. :)

Love to all, in the Lamb of God, and Pioneer of our Faith, the Second Adam... Jesus.

 

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