WE

“And after he had seen the vision,
immediately WE endeavoured to go into Macedonia…”
ACTS 16:10

Up to this point in the book of ACTS we read of the movings of God from the vantage point of a third person; suddenly we see the interjection of the word “we”! No longer was Luke a spectator of the things God was doing in the earth, he had now become a PARTICIPANT! The River of Life had drawn him into the LIFE and the CORE of what was happening. He went from beholding to becoming. He went from an independent solitary individual to a vital involvement in what God was doing at that moment. TRUE LIFE consists of being in RELATIONSHIP and functioning within the Body of Christ. Men who isolate themselves from the flow and the everyday concourse of relationship with HIS BODY become stagnant and barren. It is in dying to ourselves, our individuality, and our inability to relate to those who may not AGREE with all that we “SEE” that we are enlarged and grow to the place of bearing fruit.

“Except a corn of wheat fall into the ground and die,
it abideth alone: but if it die, it bringeth forth much fruit.
He that loveth his life shall lose it;
and he that hateth his life in this world shall keep it unto life eternal”
JOHN 12:24 – 25

The “corn of wheat” MUST fall into the ground and DIE if it is to bear fruit. The word used here EXCEPT means that there is NO OTHER PROVISION OR WAY for fruitfulness to be experienced! This is God’s way; it is the WAY OF LIFE for it is the WAY OF THE SON. The context here is one that leaves no mystery as to what is meant… “HE THAT LOVETH HIS LIFE SHALL LOSE IT…” The reason so many fail to bear fruit is because of a refusal to die; a refusal to become involved in the flow of HIS life to those around us. The narrative of such a life never goes from “I” to “we”. Somewhere along the path of life there was a disconnect and a severing of one’s self from God’s entire purpose.

Moses MUST RETURN to Egypt. Nehemiah must return to see the waste places of Jerusalem restored. Because of LOVE, God must SEND HIS SON back into a world that was lost and dead through the awful consequences of wilful SIN. SIN that brought men into the horror of SELF LOVE, SELF WILL and SELF SEEKING. That Love of Self that causes men to live in the narrow confines of a life that is ever looking for its own “comfort”, that is ever seeking “acceptance” and that is ever withdrawing from the challenges of relationship and life.

Jesus the SON of God could sit with sinners, move about effortlessly within the market places of this world and be amongst the broken lives of humanity and the horror of the “self righteous” ones of HIS day. It is by the expression of HIS LIFE and our involvement with those around us that we become “the light of this world”.

“For we being many are one bread, and one body:
for we are all partakers of that one bread”
1 CORINTHIANS 10:17

Brian Troxel