Vision

"In the year that King Uzziah died, I saw the Lord..." Isaiah said (Isaiah 6).
Job, too, saw the Lord after a season of loss, illness and grief. "My ears had heard of you but now my eyes have seen you." (from Job 42)
The Apostle Paul, sentenced to isolation on the Isle of Patmos because he held onto the faith wrote, "I saw...the First and the Last...the Living One" (from Revelation 1).
And in the period following the year that a church tossed me out, I, too, was given a series of visions that only now am I beginning to understand. In hindsight, I see that God was there and He was loving me. That painful uprooting took me out of an unhealthy church and brought me into a vibrant, life giving support web built by believers under the guidance of an active Designer.
Now having been a participant in three healthy churches where people of faith fall on their knees before a holy God and arise completely changed, I see how God's church is supposed to work. In a God-centered church, God IS exalted. His vision, His message for individuals is not clouded by "Thou shall nots," condemnation, alienation, apathy or insensitivity to needs. Instead believers are led to the Word, led to seek God for themselves and allowed to be changed on God's time table according to their own unique need. They are allowed to serve in their own God-given, God-orchestrated way. And as each one changes, the entire system and each individual changes as well because we do indeed become like those with whom we hang out.
"To come before the presence of the Living God," Steve Chapman wrote, "is to be changed. You CANNOT come into His high and holy place and stay the same."
Pushing hard, digging deep, running long, seeing more questions than answers is hard. But it IS in those times that we, like Job, Paul and Isaiah, will see the Living Lord. And we all will be changed! God is SO very good. Sometimes we get to see it. Sometimes we see, in hindsight, that He was good when we didn't know it. And the rest of the time we just live by faith.
"So change us, Lord. Remake us, Lord, Conform us to the image of Your Son. So change us, Lord. Remake us, Lord, till Father, Spirit, Jesus, we are one" (Steve & Annie Chapman).