29 January 2022
It's not meant for mass appeal.
Nobody has to tell me I'm way out on the fringe. I'm used to being treated like a crank. Some of us have come to view ostracism as a blessing. While I do have a few covenant brothers and sisters, they are all virtual, in the sense that none of them have ever met me face to face. The nearest is hundreds of miles away.
It's not as if I set out to alienate myself from the world. All I've done my whole life is obey as best I could the call of God. It has taken me farther and farther away from the mainstream. This isn't a glamorous or cool thing. I'm not particularly fond of isolation. However, I'm perfectly willing to endure it for the sake of obeying my convictions.
I'm not suggesting that's what will happen to you if you embrace the Covenant boundaries the way I do, but I will tell you it's highly likely. Count the cost.
My convictions still tell me that there will come a day when a significant number of folks will come looking for this kind of faith walk. Right now, that day appears to be a very long way off. The only fellowship I have with people of like faith will be online for quite some time yet. And even then, it won't be very many of them any time soon.
Up until quite recently, I wasn't too sure about any kind of timeline for this particular issue. But over the past few days, I've sensed it being brought home to me that I need to get ready for the long haul on this track. We'll face some other kinds of trouble in America before the Lord is ready to provoke an exodus from the mainstream churches.
I've been praying about this quite a bit since about the end of this last summer. I've been giving it serious attention, asking the Lord to stir the fire in my area. I've been asking Him to grant at least a couple of local fellow believers. Recently He said, "Sure, but it will be a while yet." I received a vision of walking alone for some time to come.
So that matter has been settled and there are other things to pray about. I'm sure I'll encounter fellow believers in that broader sense of folks who can see my faith, but have no clue about my teaching, nor would they have the capability to absorb it. That's okay. It's not up to me who decides that this is what God wants for them. There can be fellowship, if not actual communion. I'm not going to dump heavy faith demands on people who aren't ready for it, or not called to it.
Nor do I go around thinking that there's something wrong with their faith. I'm not better, but I do have a tough mission. I belong on the fringe. If everyone else was out here, it wouldn't be the fringe any more. I didn't seek this, but it is my place in His Kingdom.
My appointed mission is to those who know they can never be mainstream.
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