RIDDLE: WHY DOES THE NEW TESTAMENT NEVER TELL US TO CHOOSE FAITH IN CHRIST? The answer might shock you. There is a difference between willpower and willingness-power. Choosing requires willpower. Effectual faith requires willingness-power. The former is man striving. The latter is God abiding. A GERMAN WORD THAT EXPLAINS IT ALL: GELASSENHEIT! This beautiful German word simply means letting-be. But this meaning has blossomed in the Holy Spirit over the last several hundred years. The word was much used by Christian mystics like Meister Eckhart, Protestant Reformers like Martin Luther, Anabaptists like Hans Denk and philosophers like Martin Heidegger. It is a perfect word for a perfect concept. The concept itself has been known by other words in other languages, but lets look at it afresh and anew. GELASSENHEIT is an attitude, a posture of the soul, an approach to reality whereby we completely OPEN ourselves up to the awe and mystery of God. And not just occasionally but all the day long. It has been called by William Barret an enchanted existence where everything belonging there returns to that in which it rests. It is all about perception. GELASSENHEIT gives us dynamic spiritual perception which, as Eckhart said, penetrates all things and finds God there. We no longer turn away from the things we fear or which tempt us. Instead, we courageously look directly at them BECAUSE of our unshakeable confidence in one fact: God is a free, out-poured indwelling good, activating power in all things, which dwells in all creatures and brings about all in all. Sebastian Franck. Do you see? We are all Daniels in various lions dens of difficulties, but God is in the center of them all waiting for our faith to let His glory shut every lions mouth. GELASSENHEIT knows that the seed of Christ is pulsating at the center of every circumstance we face, waiting to be activated by our faiths perception of Him. As we perceive the Lords IMBEDDED PRESENCE in all events and circumstances, we are then able to help HARVEST that presence to SPROUT blessing, power and love into the current need. John Wesley believed that Gods delivering presence had to be catalyzed by the prayer of faith BEFORE He could openly manifest upon the earth. However, the prayer of faith is not accomplished by the willpower of men but rather by the willingness-power of GELASSENHEIT. This concept is really just another word for meekness. But this is not our mothers meekness as it has been taught in Sunday School lessons about being good little boys and girls. No, this meekness is virile, brave and unflappable. It is gutsy abandonment to robustly yield every fiber of our being to God. It is the type of muscular meekness which Jesus said would inherit the world. So where is the dynamic of GELASSENHEIT described in Scripture? Everywhere! The central meaning is that of letting the glory of the Lord be revealed in all our ways. It is our letting-be of Gods glory, in other words. Scriptures speak in many places of our letting Gods glory be revealed in particular situations of need. Colossians 3:16 speaks of letting the word of Christ dwell in us richly in all wisdom. Romans 6:12 says to let not sin reign in our mortal bodies. Philippians 2:5 encourages us to let the mind of Christ be in us. One translation of John 9:3 has Jesus essentially telling his disciples to stop reasoning whose sin caused the mans blindness, but instead to LET the glory of God be revealed NOW through the blind mans immediate and spontaneous healing! So many New Testament imperatives are phrased with the word let rather than the word choose. Do you know there is not one New Testament verse which instructs us to choose Christ, choose obedience, choose Gods will, or choose Gods Spirit? The only place in the New Testament where a disciple is said to have chosen Christ to any degree was Mary. While Martha chose to work in the kitchen, Mary is said to have chosen the good part, which in this passage merely meant posturing herself to listen at the Lords feet. As this is the ONLY passage that EVER mentions the word choice on the part of a New Testament believer, it is clear that the word is conspicuously absent from all the Gospels and Epistles. While the word choose is used in the Old Testament with respect to keeping the law, such as in Deuteronomy 30:19, choose does not survive into the New Testament framework, at least as far us being the choosers. Christ is the only chooser. We are the chosen who are now merely letting-be the glory of God in our lives. Self-righteousness endlessly chooses while the righteousness which is of faith continually rests in letting-be. Rest assured they are not the same, and their difference makes ALL the difference in the Spirit realm. Letting does not equal choosing. And it is the concept of GELASSENHEIT which reveals the crucial distinction. In John 15:16, Jesus said Ye have not chosen me, but I have chosen you, and ordained you, that ye should go and bring forth fruit, and that your fruit remain: that whatsoever ye shall ask of the Father in my name, He may give it to you. In all the thousands of converts in the New Testament, it was never said that any of them chose to become Christians. Rather, they received the Lord or received the things of the Lord. God chose them, not vice-versa. But arent we to use our willpower to choose to follow Christ in all our ways? In a word---- nooooooooooooooooooooooo! It may sound pious and noble to choose our way into the Kingdom of God, but this is totally anti-Christ. Rather, we are called to rest, to let, to yield, to allow, to consent, and to behold the movements of God. In John 5:19 and 30, Jesus tells us that all of His actions were based not on what He chose, but rather on what He perceived the Father was doing in the situation at hand. He merely yielded or let the glory of the Father be channeled through, in, out, around, and toward Himself. This is the very essence of GELASSENHEIT. So then, perhaps the problem is not WHAT we choose, but rather THAT we choose. Choice itself is the problem. It is the very heart of self-righteousness. William Law famously said, Our own will separates us from God. No, rather, our own will IS separation from God. Interestingly, one of the Greek words for choice is hairesis which is translated heresy in the New Testament. Heresy is the word used to describe serious spiritual error. Perhaps true heretics are self-willed choosers rather than Spirit-yielders. When Jesus told the Father, not my will, but thine be done, He was rejecting the heresy of choice. It may well be that Adam became the first heretic when he chose to live by the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. This tree had two fruits to choose from, good and evil. Choosing brought Adam and us nothing but death. Before the fall, Adam was making no choices of good and evil. He was walking in intimacy with God in the garden without struggling with any strife, lack, ambition, or self-conscious awareness. But, in the wake of the fall, Adam became afflicted with the fear, failure and toil of choosing. God desired Adam to live solely by the tree of life. No two fruits here, only one-- the life of God in Christ Jesus. The tree of life was the GELASSENHEIT tree. The tree of the knowledge of good and evil was the tree of choosing. God initially gave Adam the freedom of letting-be (GELASSENHEIT), but Adam allowed Satan to twist, distort and mutate that freedom into the cancer of choice. Adam went beyond the proper boundaries of his God-given freedom and became self-righteous, self-centered, and self-separated from God. Instead of letting-be the Fathers choices for us, Adam usurped choice itself from God and began choosing his own ways. And death entered the world. But Jesus brought back GELASSENHEIT to fallen man in order to fully reconcile us to God. As the second Adam, He perfectly modeled GELASSENHEIT for us in His earthly ministry, especially in the Gospel of John. He perfectly taught us GELASSENHEIT in the Sermon on the Mount. He then perfectly imparted GELASSENHEIT to live within us by the power of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost in the Book of Acts. So now, what fallen man thinks he has is freedom OF choice. What renewed man knows he has is freedom FROM choice. GELASSENHEIT is that freedom. It is the Sabbath rest from our own works which remains for the people of God (Hebrews 4:9). It is the light and easy yoke of Jesus (Matthew 11:30). It is the meekness that inherits the world by dominating it with the power and love of God (Matthew 5:5). It is the mind of Christ we now have (1 Corinthians 2:16). As the song says, LET IT BE!
Posted on: Thu, 17 Oct 2013 11:18:06 +0000
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