Dreams & Thoughts

by Ashish Joy

These are some thoughts of mine as I think about my faith, the body of Christ, and what it means to incar­na­tion­ally present Christ to the world.

A man­i­festo of hope, free­dom, sal­va­tion;1 a place where the king­dom of God is made real and alive;2 a deliv­er­ance from bondage and oppres­sion;3 the invo­ca­tion of a life bet­ter than the one that is lived;4 the glo­ri­ous advent of mis­sional Christ-followers mak­ing a dif­fer­ence.5

What would the world look like if we brought Christ, the pure and unde­filed Sav­ior and Lord, to infect and trans­form our real­i­ties;6 where our thoughts, words, actions, and lifestyle pre­sented Christ?

I dream of a bet­ter day when God will deliver us from our con­sumerism, our love for self, and our drive to dis­tance our­selves from the hurt­ing and needy of soci­ety;7 where our ivory tow­ers of reli­gios­ity and false piety are replaced by open doors of empa­thy, com­pas­sion, and incar­na­tional truth.8

I dream of the day when the body of Christ would present them­selves wor­thy to the name they fol­low; where an alter­na­tive com­mu­nity, hid­den but trans­form­ing, would exist to bring free­dom to human­ity;9 where it is not known for stan­dards and con­vic­tions but to be and make dis­ci­ples of Christ;10 where our purity does not iso­late, but draws us to the lost;11 where our faith does not make us unbe­liev­able, but approach­able;12 where our love is not a tool with an agenda, but rather a gift given freely and will­ingly to the world around us.13

For I believe that God is work­ing and mov­ing, even when I don’t under­stand or even process. For our God is the ONE who can­not be grasped com­pletely, but will­ingly accepted and wholly sub­mit­ted to. For God is the ONE who is for us, work­ing on our behalf.

Fur­ther Reading:

  • The Cost Of Dis­ci­ple­ship by Diet­rich Bonhoeffer
  • The Prophetic Imag­i­na­tion by Wal­ter Brueggemann
  • Raga­muf­fin Gospel by Bren­nan Manning
  • Jesus For Pres­i­dent by Shane Clai­borne
  1. This faith we profess has the ability to bring back an understanding of history, and a hope for the future. It has the ability to redeem us from our fallenness, and transform us into Christ’s image. ↩
  2. Where the focus is not a heavenly kingdom, but rather on bringing the reality of Christ to the here and now. ↩
  3. Our monolithic structures that serve the gods of oppression and control; it’s such as these that will be broken under the freedom of God in Christ. ↩
  4. God has not just promised a glorious future, but also a redeemed and transformed present condition. ↩
  5. Looking to the needs of the world and humanity, and contextualizing and empathizing with the human condition. ↩
  6. The thought of Christians truly living Christ out, excites me; but the sheer disparity between authentic Christianity and nominal Christianity scares me. ↩
  7. Our Western Christianity keeps us isolated unto ourselves, where we look to fulfill our personal needs. True Christianity forces us to get over ourselves and look to the needs of others. ↩
  8. Religion is purely just that when it forces us to keep to ourselves in our closed environments of holiness. Jesus rightly illustrated a lifestyle of engaging with people where they were at, and coming to their level. ↩
  9. We are the ‘liberators’ that bring true freedom to people, but we do so through a kingdom mindset and understanding. Christ’s kingdom is not of this world, but is a heavenly kingdom that is breaking forth in the world. ↩
  10. We are known for what we stand for, but not for who we stand with. ↩
  11. Sometimes in our purity and ‘set-apart-ness’ we tend to extricate ourselves from the environments we came from; maybe God is asking us to be salt and light in those environments. ↩
  12. Our faith should not make us close-minded, but open-minded about conversation and discussion, where we engage with the world around us. ↩
  13. We sometimes love with an agenda. What would the world think of us, if we loved without an agenda, just because Christ called us to ‘love our neighbor’? ↩