Camping Out

The excerpt below is from Beyond Church by Steve Simms. It’s an easy read, highlighting the meaning and purpose of ekklesia, with emphasis on practical guidelines on how to do life together.

“He (Jesus Christ) is the head of the body, the ekklesia; He is the beginning and the firstborn from among the dead, so that in everything He might have the supremacy.” Colossians 1:18

As we have seen, the key to ekklesia is supernatural revelation from God – this is the rock that Jesus refers to in Matthew 16. To move beyond church and into the experience of ekklesia, we need to continually cultivate and create an environment where people can experience God’s revelation and then freely share what God has shown them.

The transformation from church into God’s glorious ekklesia is gradual – “from glory to glory” – step by step. It is a process of coming out of our comfort zones and out of our worldly methods of human organization and control. It is also the ever increasing movement into and submission to God’s light – His supernatural revelation.

However, too often we have settled into familiarity and tradition and have camped out there, not wanting to grow forward with the living God. We have acted like the rebellious Israelites in the desert who didn’t want to move forward when God wanted them to follow His cloud by day and fire by night. Together these two quotes help to make that point:

“Ekklesia is a compound Greek term. The prepositional prefix ek means out and kales means to call, thus the compound word means called out or a called-out group or an assembly.” – Sujit Mani

“There is no such thing as a call from God that is not a call out of the world. The church is ekklesia. In the divine intention there is no klesia which lacks the ek.” – Watchman Nee

So how can we answer God’s call out of our comfort zones? It is not easy. Jesus put it this way: “Then Jesus said to his disciples, ‘Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross and follow Me.'” – Matthew 16:24

To experience ekklesia, we have to deny ourselves. To deny self doesn’t mean to defeat yourself. Many people deny God, but they don’t defeat Him. No. To deny yourself means to ignore yourself – to set aside your own feelings and desires and to flow with God instead, whether to or not.

To take up your cross means to freely embrace your own execution your own death. It moves beyond ignoring your emotions and desires for a little while and into freely accepting the death of your feelings and desires.

Follow Me means much more than making a mental ascent to the doctrinal truths about Christ. It means to literally follow and obey His present day promptings, leadings, and/or nudgings in your heart, whether you want to or not. It also means to obey and be faithful to the commands in the Bible and not to your own will.

Ekklesia requires us to follow Jesus not just with our verbal allegiance, but also in the way that we live our day to day lives. Jesus said: “Very truly I tell you, the Son can do nothing by himself; He can do only what He sees His Father doing, because whatever the Father does the Son also does.” – John 5:19

In order to experience ekklesia, we need to follow Jesus in the same way that He followed the Father being continually aware of His will and obeying His will instead of our own. That’s why ekklesia requires revelation. It is easy to follow our own agendas and programs. We need the Holy Spirit to show us where we are stuck on our own way.

John the Baptist, the forerunner of Jesus, told us how to “prepare the way of the Lord.” John the Baptist said: “He must increase, but I must decrease.” (John 3:30) That’s why James, the half-brother of Jesus said: “God opposes the proud, but shows favor to the humble.” (James 4:6)

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