This is the second part of a transcribed tape message by Jack Gray. In the first part of this message Jack describes the journey that the Lord had led him and Margaret. For the sake of those who may be reading this issue of New Wineskins for the first time we repeat the last paragraph from the last issue; Click here to read Slaves of the System or Servants of the Spirit (PART 1)

"The Lord was saying to me that the way of Jesus is the way of the cross. He was saying, 'You have understood the cross in relation to salvation you have understood it in relation to Jesus dying for your sins - you have understood it in relation to the death of the old man and being crucified with Christ. But you do not understand it in relation to church life as you know it.'

I sensed what the Lord was saying to me was, 'I want Church life as you know it and as you have been brought up to it - as you think it is and should be ... to die. I want all that to die. I want it to go to the cross to die - and be buried - and then I will be able to give you something better.'

That was powerful - let it all die! Lay it down and start again as if you knew nothing about church - zero - NO WINE!

I thought about Peter and I saw that Peter was very religious in what he said to Jesus. He said, "God forbid Lord!". He called on the name of God and he called Jesus Lord. But Jesus cut through all of that and said, "Get behind me SATAN - you are a HINDRANCE to me." And I saw that when the Lord spoke that word - many of us would have been like Peter. We would say, 'God forbid it Lord!!! - that should never happen to my church - our fellowship. It could never happen to our music group or our drama group or whatever'. And I can hear Jesus saying, "You are hindering me. Get out of my way."

The next thing that came to me was in Hebrews 12 where it says that Jesus - for the joy that was set before Him, endured the cross, despising the shame and sat down at the right hand of God. I saw two things. I saw that there was an enduring of the cross and there was an enduring of the shame. Now to endure the cross - to die on the cross is not easy. It is painful. It is a slow death and it is a hard death. I saw that religious death dies hard. It doesn't like to die. And if the Lord is speaking that to churches today, it will be a deep and painful experience for many Christians and many churches to go through.

Then there's the shame. What was the shame of Jesus? Well a major part of the shame that Jesus went through was that the religious leaders of His day stood around the cross and mocked Him and said, "If you are the Son of God why don't you come down from the cross.". This is a major part of the shame. I saw that if we did what the Lord was saying to us we would receive the same treatment and that people would stand and say, 'Oh yes, look at these fellowships that start up and then disintegrate.' But then what was beyond that? It was the joy of the resurrection. It was Pentecost and the joy of that new life that was to come.

Then the last word that I got from the Lord that morning was from John 12. "Except a grain of wheat fall to the ground and die, it abides alone. But if it dies, it brings forth much fruit." And by the time this was over I was weeping before the Lord and shaking and trembling. I went up to my wife and said, "Honey, the Lord has spoken to me and I know what I have to do." And as I shared with her I felt the whole weight of it begin to lift from my shoulders and I said that the first thing I should do was to go and share it with the senior elder in the church. I went to see him and shared it with him and he said, 'Well I believe you have heard from God, but I don't think it is for us. It's not for the fellowship - maybe for you, but not for us."

I told him that we had planned to meet with our group the next evening and I asked him, "What do you think? Should I share this with the group?" He said, "well I believe that if it is in your heart Jack then you should share it." So the following evening we had a meeting and I shared with them and said that I believed that we shouldn't stay too long and discuss everything off the top of our heads but rather go home and pray about it and seek the Lord as to what we should do. A number of people shared that their spirits said Yes to what I had spoken and then one of the members of the group spoke and said, "Last night when we went to bed my wife had the Lord speak to her and she got out of bed and wrote down what the Lord said to her." Then the woman pulled out this piece of paper and this is what she read out;

"My children will you listen - will you hear my voice? Stand before me and make your choice. Will you follow the world's ways or follow my own? Will you build your kingdom or establish my own? For I set before you a path few have trod and this leads to the very feet of God. I set before you a way unknown. Take this way and make it your own. In me delight - find your pleasure in Me. My way is light and life and truth. My way depends not on your situation. I have provided and it's up to you to take the provision. Follow me and you will walk in newness of life. My ways are not your ways - if they were I would not be God. My ways are far greater than you could imagine. They extend far further, far wider than you can take in. I need your whole heart - your whole strength - your entieity. Hold nothing back and you will receive in totalness. My children I love you. Set your feet in my steps. Dedicate yourselves totally to me and I will establish what I have begun."

So we really knew God had spoken to us because this woman had no idea what I was going to share and yet this word seemed to confirm the things that I had shared with the group. We stood around and committed ourselves to the Lord and then we went home.

That night I didn't sleep too much and Margaret woke me and said, "You know what's going around in my head? - it's a song, 'We are standing on Holy ground'." So I got out the Bible and read from Exodus ch 3 which is about Moses and the burning bush and the Lord appeared to him in the bush saying, "Take your shoes off your feet - you are standing on holy ground." Then the Lord commissioned Moses to go to Egypt and set His people free. The Lord said, "I've heard their cry, I know their bondage and you're to go and set them free." - and I saw that the holy ground they were standing on had to do with setting God's people free. Later on that day I read about the bondage the people of God were in. It was a bondage to bricks and mortar - and when you think about many churches in this country today - there is a great bondage to bricks and mortar.

The second holy ground was in Joshua ch 5 when the children of Israel had crossed the Jordan and they were before Jericho and Joshua was wondering how they were going to take that city. No doubt he was trying to muster up all his military knowledge and plans - when a man appeared before him with a drawn sword in his hand. And Joshua said to him, "Who are you? Are you for us or for our enemies?" and the man said, "Neither, but as the captain of the hosts of the Lord I come." and Joshua fell flat on his face before him and said, "What do you want your servant to do?" and the Lord said, "Take the sandals off your feet for you are standing on holy ground." So the context of this passage was the leading of the people of God into the promised land and into their inheritance. Also both of these things - the situation with Moses and also with Joshua - had to do with a death and resurrection experience. Moses bringing the people through the Red Sea, and Joshua bring the people through the Jordan.

So we really saw that the context of these experiences were in keeping with our experience. Later that morning I was having a shave and the Spirit began to speak to me, "Do you remember that verse in John about the wind?" - and I said, 'Yes, Lord', and I spoke it out - "The wind bloweth where it listeth and you can hear the sound thereof and you cannot tell whence it cometh or wither it goeth, so is everyone who is born of the Spirit." And the Lord asked me -'What do you think it means?' So I said, 'It means that the Spirit is like the wind.' The Lord then said to me, 'Will you say it again?' So I began, 'The wind bloweth where it listeth ... and I got to the bit where it says "So is everyone who is born of the Spirit." Then I saw it - it's not just the Spirit that is like the wind, but EVERYONE WHO IS BORN OF THE SPIRIT!!! The Lord was showing me that this is how the church is meant to be - like the wind. Led by the Spirit. The Lord said to me, "Can you put the wind in a box? Can you put a fence around it? Can you build it into a structure? You can't! IT'S FREE, IT'S UNPREDICTABLE - IT'S POWERFUL!

We had been listening to a news item from the synod of one of the big churches in this country - and while I'm not wanting to decry that particular church, I sensed the Lord saying, "Do you think that this church is like the wind?" I said, "No Lord, for it's got it's HQ in Wellington - it's got a man at the top and a big pyramid structure of hierarchy. It's got a building in each town with it's own special name over it and you could take the whole thing and put it all in a box and say, 'Here it is!' IT'S NOT LIKE THE WIND AT ALL!'

Then I began to think of the church in China and compare this with that. Now the church in China had 150 years of missionary work - and some mighty men of God brought the gospel to China. But they also brought the institutional church to China and they built church buildings and hospitals, seminaries and set up the whole institutional thing. Many people of God were in it - don't think I'm decrying it all. But when the communists took over in 1949 there were about one million Christians in China and they destroyed the entire institutional church - IT WAS SIMPLY WIPED OUT! All the church buildings were closed and put to use for the communist interest. All the pastors were imprisoned. The hospitals were closed. The seminaries were closed. The whole institutional thing was demolished.

Was that the end of the church? No - God had a church like the wind which He had already sown. There were men like Watchman Nee and others that had established churches that met in homes. They didn't have a hierarchy, they didn't have an organised structure - they were just Christians meeting in homes and the authorities couldn't lay a hand on them because there was nothing they could box in. They were like the wind. If they did manage to grab a bit of it here - well the rest of it simply moved over to there. And what has happened over the last 50 years? In the last 50 years the church in China has multiplied to 50 million. Some estimate that this figure is too low. Now that is a church like the wind.

After I had finished shaving that morning Margaret and I were in the kitchen and a friend rolled up the driveway. It was the same woman who had shared the prophetic word the night before. She came in and said there was something else the Lord had given her but that she had held back from sharing it. She said the Lord had spoken to her from John 3:8 about the wind - that those who are born of the Spirit are like the wind.

We knew beyond a shadow of doubt that the Lord had spoken to us.

Four couples of the group and one single person decided we would obey the Lord. I counselled the others that if they were not 100% certain that God had spoken to them personally they should go back to the care of the elders of the fellowship. So the small group of us stopped all our religious activities and began to walk on with the Lord - fellowshipping not in formal meetings but having meals - just being together, going to the beach together, sharing together etc.

The Lord began to bring other people to talk to us and we began to have some quite amazing experiences as we gave each day to the Lord and said, 'Well, Lord, whatever you want to do and whatever you want to bring - we will receive it from you today.' We have church sometimes 3-4 times a day - any day in the week.

I have begun to experience fellowship in a different dimension. It's fellowship that is eyeball to eyeball with my brother or sister. It is an opening of the heart one to another. I have also found that I have had to have been willing to lay down my teaching ministry. I had to come to the point of saying, 'Lord if I never teach again in a public way - that's OK.' My teaching ministry hasn't finished because now I sit down with people eyeball to eyeball and I find I am able to minister out of the deposit God has put in my heart - and I find it is much more directly suited to the need of the person opposite me.

So that's where we are at now. I know it isn't an end point. All I know is that the Lord has shown us; First the death - and then resurrection.