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| Downtown Monroe |
This coming Sunday morning at Redeemer I am going to preach on the availability of the kingdom of God. I am also going to pray for someone who wants prayer for healing, physical or emotional.
We have been seeing people healed during our Sunday morning services. As more than one person told me last weekend, "it's only just begun."
This is about the invasion of the transcendent realm of God into our ordinary space and time. We are encountering this, and it is persuasive. This is more persuasive than staged religious activity.
God's presence, his nearness, his love, his transcendent whatever, manifested itself to me. That's how I began.
This places me in good existential company. This is how Saul became Paul. One day Saul the Jesus-Hater is walking on a road in northern Israel. Then, Somebody touched him. There is nothing like a transcendent experience to change a life. [1] This is the thesis of my coming book Leading the Presence-Driven Church (late summer).
This is what will ultimately win the day.
[1][1]
See, e.g., John Jefferson Davis, Worshipand the Reality of God: An Evangelical Theology of Real Presence. See
especially the section “The Ontology of the Worship-Event: Cyberspace
Analogies.” The lure of a video game like “World of Warcraft” is immersion in
“a realm of transcendence or ‘soul space’ where the limitations and constraints
of the physical world do not apply.” (Kindle Location 1072)
