Fractals
When I was in college, I became fascinated with fractals for a while. As a geology student, I learned that often times fractals appear in God's creation. For instance the leaf of a tree often resembles the shape of the actual tree. If you hold up a leaf and look at it next to the tree it came from, you will see a similar shape. With fractals, the qualities of the parts are similar to the whole.
Jesus' eternal companion, the Church, is fractal, too. God fashioned your heart individually. I say this all the time, but it is worth repeating to myself all the time: no one is like me or you. No one can respond to God like me, no one hears His voice quite the way I do, no one accepts or tastes His love like I do, and no one's worship "smells" quite like mine to God. I am His favorite Tom Stolz, Jr. There has never been, or ever will be, anyone else like me in this regard. There will never be another you. God made you just the way He wanted. His design was perfect for you, inside and out.
We are fractal in this way to the body of believers God has assigned us to. God has assigned you to a local body. He doesn't care so much about how good the music is, or the preaching, or how talented the Sunday school is at making your kid laugh...God has assigned you to a church because He sees the chemistry of the believers there. He desires to fashion your local body to respond to Him uniquely. To interpret His love uniquely, and to flow love back to Him and others uniquely. He has hand selected you, like a flower, to be in a church, like a bouquet designed for Him to enjoy. 1 Corinthians 13 love is the rubber band that keeps the stems together, and the Holy Spirit is the water that keeps the flowers fresh!
But just as people are to be together, local bodies of churches weren't made to be alone, either! Your church is fractal to the church in your city.
The Bible says we are loved individually, but we are also combined with others in life by design. God loves the fragrance of the flower, which finds its fullness in the bouquet designed by God!
Loneliness is devastating to those who have experienced it. When an individual is cut off from others, fear and delusion often set in. Reality is easily distorted for those on their own island. The same is true of organizations. God created us to live together...with Him, and with each other.
God is showing me how He sees unity among believers. If you want to please Jesus, you will agree with Him about unity. Unity was one of the last things Jesus prayed for (you want to pay attention to what God prays for!) before leaving His disciples to go to the cross. This is how Jesus feels about unity:
John 17:20 “I do not pray for these alone, but also for those who will believe in Me through their word; 21 that they all may be one, as You, Father, are in Me, and I in You; that they also may be one in Us, that the world may believe that You sent Me. 22 And the glory which You gave Me I have given them, that they may be one just as We are one: 23 I in them, and You in Me; that they may be made perfect in one, and that the world may know that You have sent Me, and have loved them as You have loved Me. 24 “Father, I desire that they also whom You gave Me may be with Me where I am, that they may behold My glory which You have given Me; for You loved Me before the foundation of the world.
Jesus said when the Church is united, with a locked gaze on God, that the world will see it and it will be so miraculous the world will KNOW Jesus was sent by the Father to save the world. Not only does our beautiful arrangement of individuality smell and taste good to Jesus, it actually is the "promised witness" to the world. The final statement of Jesus divinity to the unbelieving world.
This IS part of God's end-time plan. In the book of Revelation, Jesus addresses seven distinct end-time churches (chapters 2 and 3) before He unfolds His plan to bring great tribulation to purify the earth and drive evil off the planet. At the end of Revelation, Jesus addresses one unified church, the pure and spotless Bride, who has made herself ready in the midst of unprecedented trial and victory! The church goes in divided, and comes out as one!
The efforts we make today for unity in Jesus' true church of believers, who hold to the basic truths of salvation, holiness, and grace, will last through the fire of tribulation and into eternity!
There is only one way this sort of unity among believers is possible: prayer. It takes God to love God...for people, families, churches, cities, nations, and the end-time bride. It is a realization of 1 Corinthians 13 that will hold us all together!
1 Corinthians 13:1 Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I have become sounding brass or a clanging cymbal. 2 And though I have the gift of prophecy, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and though I have all faith, so that I could remove mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. 3 And though I bestow all my goods to feed the poor, and though I give my body to be burned, but have not love, it profits me nothing. 4 Love suffers long and is kind; love does not envy; love does not parade itself, is not puffed up; 5 does not behave rudely, does not seek its own, is not provoked, thinks no evil; 6 does not rejoice in iniquity, but rejoices in the truth; 7 bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. 8 Love never fails. But whether there are prophecies, they will fail; whether there are tongues, they will cease; whether there is knowledge, it will vanish away. 9 For we know in part and we prophesy in part. 10 But when that which is perfect has come, then that which is in part will be done away. 11 When I was a child, I spoke as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child; but when I became a man, I put away childish things. 12 For now we see in a mirror, dimly, but then face to face. Now I know in part, but then I shall know just as I also am known. 13 And now abide faith, hope, love, these three; but the greatest of these is love.
Jesus' eternal companion, the Church, is fractal, too. God fashioned your heart individually. I say this all the time, but it is worth repeating to myself all the time: no one is like me or you. No one can respond to God like me, no one hears His voice quite the way I do, no one accepts or tastes His love like I do, and no one's worship "smells" quite like mine to God. I am His favorite Tom Stolz, Jr. There has never been, or ever will be, anyone else like me in this regard. There will never be another you. God made you just the way He wanted. His design was perfect for you, inside and out.
We are fractal in this way to the body of believers God has assigned us to. God has assigned you to a local body. He doesn't care so much about how good the music is, or the preaching, or how talented the Sunday school is at making your kid laugh...God has assigned you to a church because He sees the chemistry of the believers there. He desires to fashion your local body to respond to Him uniquely. To interpret His love uniquely, and to flow love back to Him and others uniquely. He has hand selected you, like a flower, to be in a church, like a bouquet designed for Him to enjoy. 1 Corinthians 13 love is the rubber band that keeps the stems together, and the Holy Spirit is the water that keeps the flowers fresh!
But just as people are to be together, local bodies of churches weren't made to be alone, either! Your church is fractal to the church in your city.
The Bible says we are loved individually, but we are also combined with others in life by design. God loves the fragrance of the flower, which finds its fullness in the bouquet designed by God!
Loneliness is devastating to those who have experienced it. When an individual is cut off from others, fear and delusion often set in. Reality is easily distorted for those on their own island. The same is true of organizations. God created us to live together...with Him, and with each other.
God is showing me how He sees unity among believers. If you want to please Jesus, you will agree with Him about unity. Unity was one of the last things Jesus prayed for (you want to pay attention to what God prays for!) before leaving His disciples to go to the cross. This is how Jesus feels about unity:
John 17:20 “I do not pray for these alone, but also for those who will believe in Me through their word; 21 that they all may be one, as You, Father, are in Me, and I in You; that they also may be one in Us, that the world may believe that You sent Me. 22 And the glory which You gave Me I have given them, that they may be one just as We are one: 23 I in them, and You in Me; that they may be made perfect in one, and that the world may know that You have sent Me, and have loved them as You have loved Me. 24 “Father, I desire that they also whom You gave Me may be with Me where I am, that they may behold My glory which You have given Me; for You loved Me before the foundation of the world.
Jesus said when the Church is united, with a locked gaze on God, that the world will see it and it will be so miraculous the world will KNOW Jesus was sent by the Father to save the world. Not only does our beautiful arrangement of individuality smell and taste good to Jesus, it actually is the "promised witness" to the world. The final statement of Jesus divinity to the unbelieving world.
This IS part of God's end-time plan. In the book of Revelation, Jesus addresses seven distinct end-time churches (chapters 2 and 3) before He unfolds His plan to bring great tribulation to purify the earth and drive evil off the planet. At the end of Revelation, Jesus addresses one unified church, the pure and spotless Bride, who has made herself ready in the midst of unprecedented trial and victory! The church goes in divided, and comes out as one!
The efforts we make today for unity in Jesus' true church of believers, who hold to the basic truths of salvation, holiness, and grace, will last through the fire of tribulation and into eternity!
There is only one way this sort of unity among believers is possible: prayer. It takes God to love God...for people, families, churches, cities, nations, and the end-time bride. It is a realization of 1 Corinthians 13 that will hold us all together!
1 Corinthians 13:1 Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I have become sounding brass or a clanging cymbal. 2 And though I have the gift of prophecy, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and though I have all faith, so that I could remove mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. 3 And though I bestow all my goods to feed the poor, and though I give my body to be burned, but have not love, it profits me nothing. 4 Love suffers long and is kind; love does not envy; love does not parade itself, is not puffed up; 5 does not behave rudely, does not seek its own, is not provoked, thinks no evil; 6 does not rejoice in iniquity, but rejoices in the truth; 7 bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. 8 Love never fails. But whether there are prophecies, they will fail; whether there are tongues, they will cease; whether there is knowledge, it will vanish away. 9 For we know in part and we prophesy in part. 10 But when that which is perfect has come, then that which is in part will be done away. 11 When I was a child, I spoke as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child; but when I became a man, I put away childish things. 12 For now we see in a mirror, dimly, but then face to face. Now I know in part, but then I shall know just as I also am known. 13 And now abide faith, hope, love, these three; but the greatest of these is love.
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