We gain knowledge but reject communion.

We worship ourselves and call is self-care. We convince ourselves that the fear of the Lord must be shame to be rid of. We lose reverence for the sake of becoming so casual about God that nothing separates us from what’s popular. The cool substitutes sainthood. Only what moves our senses is called beauty. Goodness is disqualified except for social justice. And that is valued without core virtues but with worldly values. Truth belongs to those who did get the expansion of the common consciousness.

We need a new Benedict. What did he do? He put a monastery lifestyle to cultivate God’s presence through praying the Word, communal pursuit of the Holy, preservation of the knowledge of the natural as the extension of the supernatural. Around that core he called on people who would build a village around the center that treated humanity with dignity of child like nature that would create mature lovers of Jesus. Like Moses leading the whole nation, with its tent of the presence and the Holy of Holies, he wanted to gather a people seeking God but living family, career, social lives. He knew the desert life is their predicament before their minds and hearts can be fixed not on the promised land but on the promised Savior. Only then they would be able to preserve in their memory the one thing needed and to act it out in any environment.

We so greatly need the supernatural now bc we have neglected the natural coming from it. The core of our desire to see the glory of God among us is dissatisfied and needs to be established. We long to return to the undistracted gaze and to fix our eyes on the Presence. Yet in the long range, training in tending to the supernatural makes us priests, all right, but not yet kings or prophets. Kings must rule their own kingdoms. The unconquered kingdoms of their own lives, although mesmerized by the power of God revealed every now and then among them, can not sustain its life without prophetic conditioning. Prophetic response is to come out to the desert to live lives integrated with the Holy One so when the time comes to enter the Holy Land we can provide unified community of believers who pursue the glory of God, not their own. The equipping that does not transform looks like temporary injection that cures the disease but not the patient.

If we train people to just desire the supernatural and follow Jesus’ example from few chapters of the Gospel it might be short sided. The whole Good News remains to be applied.

The same people that sign up for the tribe following miraculous passover through the sea, will build golden calves and worship them for their lack of discernment and functioning in the old man skins. They will still remember the onions and want the old conveniences with the new promises. Their fragility will not be healed without prophetic wisdom. Without requiring of them to live in a communal setting where the camp moves where the cloud or fire goes, we just share the practice without container.

The glory wants to rest on a community but we started preaching individualistic anointing which idolizes personality or gifting over the character. We worship effectivity and we brand productivity models thinking they build the Kingdom when we build our own palaces. We exchange the contemplation of God for the applause of the idol-worshippers and call it growth. Love is not loved. It’s exploited and drenched out of its power. We live fragmented and explain all aspects of it. We are afraid of being known as weak and needy and we are paying price for it. We don’t go to the mountains to seek God, we go to the platforms to convince others of our impact.

How long to sing this song?