Gayle is away…

Choice of sub-title:

• how sad am I?
• my companion is a dog.
• can I keep the apartment clean?
• getting on with work unhindered.
• will I do more Zooms than she normally does?

Actually this post has nothing to do with her being away (on work) but a way in to tie why I am interested and committed to her work and how it relates to my previous post of miracles and great patience… in other words, posts need a title and I need a way in to write what I want to write, so quickly moving on…

Gayle has been working into the business world seeking to bring about (firstly) culture change within some pretty much hard headed ‘bottom line is profit’ corporations. She is uniquely qualified for this – not qualified by academic study – but by the timing, opportunity and her history coming together in this time. I have long had the focus on how do we see genuine transformation, not simply can we stick ‘Christian’ in front of business, and then take a proportion of the profit and put it into mission work. That might be a step in the right direction, but I think beyond that I am asking how can we see society itself transformed. A number of aspects push me that way:

Paul did not (my opinion and reading) help catalyse Christian communities to keep them separate from the wider world so that one day they might catch the bus and go to heaven, but that they were formed as the body of people who were present to shape the wider community – yeast in the bread. I consider his lectures over two years in Tyrannus’ hall went considerably beyond a set of spiritual laws, but given the resurrection of Jesus it led to an outline of what ‘new creation’ looked like. The vision he carried which was in opposition to the propaganda of Rome was so profound that even ‘Asiarchs’ who did not ‘convert’ wanted to preserve his life.

I can only respond to ‘let your kingdom come on earth as in heaven’ as having a final fulfilment and also present manifestations, hence I look for areas where there will be some evidence of that ‘on earth’, and certainly not through a ‘christianising’ way as we might find within the popular ‘seven mountains of influence’ ideology.

New inventions that speak (to those of faith) of the deposit of the creative God in humans, with great patience, that does not rob the future for today’s prosperity, but follows the pattern laid out of ‘seedtime and harvest’. That would be ‘apostolic’. New economy, not based on the trade of ‘buy and sell’ thus reducing the scope for the antichrist spirit to be present. I am looking for signs… signs in the corporate world of an apostolic spirit being present. And if slow to come… I will need patience, and probably also putting my ‘tackety’ boots on to see if those corporate strongholds won’t just move out of the way!

So Gayle is away, and when I first encountered some of what she is now involved in I said to her – this is not for me (beyond my understanding and ‘pay grade’) but it will be like a hand in glove when you encounter this. I am not away, but the impact of what she (and I am sure a growing number globally) is involved in is where my focus lies. I have many questions, the core one (at the moment) being can we really see a shift without confronting the corporate spirit within organisations… of course I would love to get my hands into that one! But moving on quickly, miracles and patience. Innovation – producing a before and an after – might be pushing into the ‘signs and wonders’ realm but the patience is so lacking. Indeed the Western drive for progress comes at a cost, and it is there that we have to consider what the OT confronted – Moloch – is very present. Why sacrifice of children? It was to get the favour of the gods now, so the future was sacrificed. Now, now, now – the opposite of patience. Progress – and profit – but at what cost? And the idea of not believing in ‘gods’ is not a journey we have made: ideologies.

I do believe we have entered what I term ‘the great unravelling’. A train wreck is taking place, dots not connecting in what has been built within ‘the church’, particularly within the charismatic, happenning end of our faith. But it will not stop there. Manifestations will appear in the economic realm (the area where the signs take place when there is a shift of powers spiritually), so major bank failures, new economic polarities that spark conflict. In other words much of the Western world’s security will be shaken… the sacrifice of the future for prosperity now is running out of road (homo sapiens have sadly become future eaters).

My date of birth confronts my fantasies! One fantasy is that I am nowhere close to entering the second half of life… DOB says ‘wake up’. That together with what I wrote above leads me ‘Gayle is away, and I am focused on what is rising that can sow into a future transformation’.

I do believe we can see a change to economic structures, to the empty shell of the democratic process, to the increasing gap between rich and poor, to the issues of racism and immigration. Changes not simply within the Christian world, but that the leaven will infect the whole loaf.