Cloud by P. Ravenhill

Have we thought of the Cloud?
By Paul Ravenhill

Led... by a Cloud...

God led
Abraham on a journey.
Moses to live for forty years in an empty land.
Joshua to take possession of an unknown land.
Elijah to do battle with a kingdom of tyrants and an apostate nation.

God is the God of the NEW, as He did with Abraham, Moses, Joshua and Elijah He desires to guide us to new spheres of experience with Himself.

It was a cloud which guided the people of God, which led through a vast and empty desert land to a land of promise - a Cloud without specific dimensions, without solid borders. A Cloud, not limited to earthly location, not subject to human taming or bound and anchor to human needs, but floating and moving, lifted in the skies above the earth.

We live in a technological age where everything must be measured, qualified or quantified with great precision; where our perspective of all things begins form fixed reference points in the Earth. This way of thinking has come to infect the church. We extrapolate from our experiences on the state of the world, the last days, and even the work of God... but, paradoxically, the truth remains that as a people we are far from knowing God and His work in any but a superficial way. As the Jews in the time of Jesus, we are bound by our traditions, customs and mental ruts. The human mind is the judge today which passes judgment on the times and operations of the spiritual world... We are far, today form the spiritual conditions necessary for God to bless us as a people.

Instead of the knowledge of God in the church there is merely a desire that He come to where we are, and bless us.

But in the Kingdom of God there are three things which are essential

hat the King be PRESENT
That the King be RULING
That the King be WORKING

We sing songs, we listen to sermons, but I ask myself, can we really say that God is Present?
We take part in activities of the church, but can we say that God is Ruling?
We have a full itinerary of projects, but can we say that God is Working?

Brethren, it is high time for us to lift our eyes
from the things of the earth which surrounds us and fix our eyes on the moving, the leading of the Cloud of the Presence of God.

I fear that, in the most real sense, the Cloud of God has lifted from our midst and that before God can return we are going to have to prepare Him place.
If there is no disposition to seriously accept these conditions,
it remains only for God to take things into His hand and cause us to
find this place through judgment.

Then we may see "with open face" the King in His Glory and His limitless work.