I have been thinking a bit about the fact that we (the Church) are the Bride of Christ. Then I listened to Frank Viola talking about it and then the subject came up in our prayer meeting on Wednesday night. One of my friends started praying about it, and she was obviously feeling something very strongly from Holy Spirit as she was praying.
The interesting thing in the prayer meeting was that the whole concept of us as the Bride of Christ set everything else that we had talked and prayed about in context. The issues that had come up for prayer were bereavement, personal struggles, work issues, opposition, difficulty, illness – all the usual stuff I suppose.
The truth is, that we are betrothed/chosen/engaged; and one day there will be a wedding feast; and in the meantime we are being prepared to be that wonderful Bride of Christ. The preparation process is difficult sometimes.
When a bride prepares herself for her wedding, undoubtedly lots of effort goes into the process. A dress needs to be chosen, shoes, jewellery; hair needs to be done, make up and maybe even some dieting before the big day. But this is all superficial stuff. The preparation that God wants to do in us goes far deeper- it involves changing our character rather than our outward appearance.
And to mould and perfect our character, God is quite happy to make use of any and all adverse circumstances that come our way. Paul understood this when he said “our light and momentary troubles are achieving for us an eternal glory that far outweighs them all” (2 Corinthians 4 v 17).
Paul’s ‘light and momentary troubles’ included arrest and imprisonment, persecution, rioting, being stoned and left for dead, cold, hunger, hardship and much more. But he knew that despite all this, two important things were happening. Firstly the Kingdom was being established wherever he went, and secondly Christ was being formed in him – the nature of Jesus was being formed in Paul. That is what Paul calls ‘an eternal glory’.
There is much talked about, written about and preached about today about ‘victorious Christian living’, about living in victory, about being victorious over our circumstances. Sadly, some of it is tosh, but it has an appeal in western style liberal cultures where people have been brought up to expect life to be without difficulties, as a right. This line of thought has been ‘christianised’ resulting in teaching which says that our expectation should be that God will always protect us from difficult circumstances, that He will always prosper us etc etc, and to experience anything less is not to be a victorious Christian. According to this version, the Bride is one who has escaped difficulties.
The truth is quite different. The true Bride of Christ is not one who has escaped, or been protected from, adverse circumstances. The true Bride of Christ is the one who has come through adverse circumstances and pressures and has grown in character, has contributed to establishing the Kingdom and has remained devoted to Jesus. Ultimately, as Revelation 12 v 11 has it, “they did not love their lives so much as to shrink from death”.
Paul was one who learnt how to be victorious despite the circumstances, and importantly how to “give thanks in all circumstances, for this is Gods will….” (1 Thessalonians 5 v 18).
God’s eternal purpose is to get a bride that is worthy of His Son. To that end, He is busy preparing the bride, not shielding her. He is determined to get it right; divorce further down the line will not be an option. And the other side of that coin of course is that the Bride wants to be ready and makes an effort to get herself ready, knowing that this is not just for a lifetime – it is for eternity.
So, we come back to the fact that although you and I are part of the Bride, the Bride is much bigger than you or I. The Bride is the Church, and Fathers’ eternal purpose is to prepare the Church to be a fitting Bride for the Son whom He loves.
That means that the most important things for the Church will be things like character, depth of love for Jesus and for each other and a consuming desire to know Jesus. Less important are things like style of meeting, structure, etc. Even seemingly really important things like evangelism, revival or harvest are not as important as character issues. The Groom loves his bride for who she is, not for what she can achieve.
Next week I want to look a little more at how God is preparing the Church, and also some aspects of the perfect Bride that God is after that might surprise you.
Church is out there 