A paradigm is a way of framing one’s existence. Within Christianity today there are many, but I want to highlight one and contrast it with my own paradigm.

The paradigm is the belief system, that all we need to do is pray more, intercede for our cities and nation, gather together more, be more authentic and relevant in our Christian lives and that the signs of the times are showing that Christ is on the way.

My paradigm is that we are stopping God do what God wants to do. I have to quickly say that God of course is sovereign and God will do whatever God wants to do. But although God is sovereign, God allows us to choose whether we serve. Thus for the children of Israel God’s plan A was the Promised Land but the Israelites chose the Wilderness. They delayed God doing wanted God wanted to do for a generation.

What was the problem with the Israelites then, and the paradigm of, “all we need is to pray more, intercede for our cities and nation, gather together more”….In my opinion they both don’t diagnose the real problem. Prescription before diagnosis causes malpractice.

The real problem in my paradigm is that God’s people had and have allowed unbelief with its symptoms of fear and worry to become socially acceptable. In other words God says to the children of Israel go into the promised land and they said the people are giants, God says today go and make disciples, we say we are afraid that they might reject us, or that what we have to offer is not authentic enough. We cannot see our own ubelief/sin and so we are locked in a shame fear control cycle.

At it is heart, shame is abandoning God and we become afraid that people might find out, so we control the situation by keeping busy. The children of Israel walked in circles and we today walk in initiative after prophecy, after intercession, after festival after major prayer meeting. This is not a criticism of any of those activities merely to say it is ….

The sin of unbelief, which keeps God’s people from finding their true identity in my paradigm is the problem. This is delaying God. We have put the cart before the horse. By emphasising the activities of Christianity, prayer, intercession, prophecy, unity and evangelism we miss the point. We need to search out everything that is blocking our relationship with God, sins of commission and sins of omission, confess and turn in the opposite direction. That’s the paradigm I believe God has led me to at the moment. I don’t say it is perfect, but I have seen once you tackle unbelief ordinary miracles start to occur.

This entry was posted on Saturday, November 26th, 2011 at 7:03 am and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.