How you process information guides your response to a revelation and brings you into implementation or stalemates revelation in a scrapbook. There is a reason for our desperate lack of implementation.
God employs linear, circular, and spiral thinking in revelation processing, depending upon the role the recipient of revelation fills. ((I’m oversimplifying these technical terms and making no effort to enter into the massive body of work done to discuss them philosophically or psychologically.)
Apostolic and prophetic who pioneering should become more spiral in processing revelation while surrounding themselves with operational integrity gurus who think linear and artistic creative people who think more in what is commonly called “circular.”
In their purest forms, they are all three detrimental. However, in their applied forms, they are information processing filters that bring higher insights to the implementation of revelation.
Too much linear thinking tends to structure at the expense of creativity. God has such structural components, for sure. But, on the other hand, too much circular thought defies all logic and begs the question without considering different outcomes. This form of processing information might be the most common weakness of prophetic people and the tendency to jump to conclusions because there is no implementation at all.
“I dreamed, and it is true because dreams are revelations of truth.”
“This man is violent because all men are violent.”
A doesn’t prove B because B goes right to the beginning, A.
“I hear from God, so God said what I heard.” This conclusion leads to “God wants me to know everything, so everything I know is from God”–a mental health issue.
Too much spiral thinking confuses people who tend toward information processing that is overtly linear or circular.
Since God’s thinking expertly balances and incorporates all three in proper–an infinite application of infinite awareness–we do well to step over into God’s way of processing information by surrendering to the Holy Spirit for spiritual wisdom.
I know good leaders who enter into this spiritual wisdom, a form of strategic thinking that involves the Holy Spirit and the renewed spiritual mind’s access to the mind of Christ for processing information who also step out of that mode at times to apply human-only thinking things of God’s kingdom.
When they do, they head into headstrong dead-end detours where they cannot hear or see well in spiritual perspectives, or they wander into a “jump to conclusions” oddities that lack enough logic to apply and implement. Or, they spiral to the point that no one can understand what in the wide world they are talking about.
We have entire systems of teaching that reveal these exaggerations. First, we look for ultimate truth, expecting God to exhaust subjects God knows are distractions to implementable truth. Second, we look for conclusions by starting with the outcomes as if God alone will produce them, accomplishing nothing more than conceptual art representations, or simply saying these things come “the realms.” We spiral up and down and between these two extremes and look like a man in the desert on a horse with no name who forgets to come in from the rain.
Solutions offered by the Bible: do not devalue prophesying, but do not jump to the conclusion that there is no revelation of evil in it–“the very appearance of evil” phrase should read differently but is part of the “keep what is good and trash what is revealed to be opposite” aspect of the equation that includes “Do not pour water on the burning fire of the Spirit.”
While writing Original Ekklesia, I challenge linear and circular thinking with spiral thinking. I use linear thinking, and I observe circular thinking. I attempt to incorporate spiral thinking to allow ideas from God that have become outliers back into the processing of Divine information.
If you write about ekklesia from a structure, you tend to exaggerate your structural integrity in your linear thinking.
- Ekklesia becomes a prayer meeting if you write from a prayer movement perspective.
- Ekklesia becomes a house church movement if you write from a homogenous church-growthism perspective.
- Ekklesia becomes a doctrinal idolatry symposium on your systematic distinctions if you write from the perspective that your group has the right to exist separately from the rest of the kingdom because you have discovered the ultimate integrity of Truth.
Ekklesia cannot be understood as a revelation of God’s rule and dominion on Earth, as the kingdom reset of Messiah, King Jesus if you start with A as something other than the original design and definition of kingdom culture the context for the ekklesia.
The Roman error does present an “about as little Jesus as possible” approach to churchism. However, one is hard-pressed to find a deacon-possessed church that has much more Jesus available.
“The early church had no building because there was no building for the early church to meet in.” Nope. They used buildings from day one and never had a problem using a building at any time in history. They indeed spent money on buildings. They never once said that a small group in a domicile was an ekklesia. They noted that an ekklesia could be identified by an Oikos in Rome and other places.
“The word ekklesia in Jesus’ mouth was a Greek word, and we need to look for the original Hebrew or Aramaic because Jesus didn’t speak Greek.” Nope. We need to recognize that Holy Spirit determined the word we should study to understand ekklesia. We should stop even using the word “church” because it has no meaning that assists or expands or alters the meaning of ekklesia as Jesus says it.
“All kingdom leaders have equal authority because the King gives all kingdom leaders the same authority.” Nope. Functions and job descriptions of kingdom leaders require some to exercise a broader scope of authority with more authority to bring other leaders into account.
Jesus thinks the same way now as He did then. He didn’t make design adjustments. He didn’t surrender the design to humans. He didn’t plan on His representatives improving on His design and definition.
