I am finding it helpful to articulate stages in our spiritual journey. Part of this is about having a clearer understanding of where I am personally and where the church is as a whole, so as better to understand how God is parenting us.
There are so many hidden and not so hidden metaphores for maturation within scripture. But the one that God is impressing on me is about coming to know and enter the Life of Christ. First His deliverer/ saviour aspects; then His Teacher/Rabbi parts; and then into His Sonship and out into His Kingship. Jesus is subtle and complex and there are many more parts of Him which we will only barely grasp as we pass over more completly into His World. But these I believe we can begin to enter here.
I am focusing a lot on the sonship phase of development currently, as I believe it is where He wants His Church to be now. It is in this stage that we enter more of His Inheritance. It is the stage of posessing the lands which are the pleasant lines of our own inheritances. The Church has historically come through its first two stages of knowing Him as Deliverer, and then teacher, but since the reformation it has been asked to come more fully into His Sonship. This is His Priesthood as well.
God is growing up His Church. It is progressive, so it is not the right course to want to go back to earlier developmental stages. We are to be in the one He is revealing and completing in our day. This is our sonship phase. God is able to accomplish the generation of His Purposes even when many do not enter them. But I believe in our day, He is asking us to enter this sonship phase, which has to do with coming into the fulnes of the Head, and having the joints properly fit together.
I will be writing more on the spiritual development of the church as a whole, and try to fill in a historical perspective. This is largely the desire to know the whole story of His People and see where we are at in this story, so as to receive the things we need for this chapter of it.
