Following is the text of an Oct. 11 letter that regional director Charles Fleming sent to members in the Caribbean.
As we return home from a wonderful Feast I hope you will make Paul's prayer in Ephesians 3:14-21 a central part of your prayers.
I think a focused meditation on what Paul says can help us achieve what Mr. Tkach has asked us to do when he says we should pray for each other to have a more meaningful relationship with Jesus. Surely the greatest need we all have is to more personally experience Jesus Christ.
As Mr. Tkach has mentioned, the gap that has developed in our fellowship is an experience gap. Those of us who have begun to experience a more personal relationship with Jesus are looking at life through glasses with a new prescription.
We see that the old format for church services is not adequate to express what we know and feel about God. The previous one-dimensional approach of using media to preach the gospel is too limited and limiting for those who know that the burden of that gospel is to rescue sinners in the here and now.
On the other hand, many of us have not had that life-transforming encounter with Christ. That does not mean that such persons do not know Christ. It just means that their knowledge of him is what ours was for so many years.
Our knowledge of where so many of our members still are should give us the insights and empathy necessary to help them across the gap. Let's think about where we have been and see what we can do to help one another.
Many of us had largely head knowledge of Christ. He was many things to us: Messenger, Savior, Passover Lamb, present High Priest, Lord and Master, soon-coming King, Judge.
Jesus is all those things, but we had a limited understanding of what those terms mean. We said he was the messenger, but failed to see that he was also the message (1 John 4:9).
Christ is the messenger of God's love. He not only verbalized that love, he lived it--and died it. That is why it is impossible to claim that you have preached the good news unless your message does what Paul's did. Paul insisted that in his preaching Jesus Christ was clearly "portrayed as crucified" (Galatians 3:1).
By failing to portray both message and messenger we did not fully "grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, and [did not adequately] know this love that surpasses knowledge," as Paul phrases it in Ephesians 3: 18-19.
How right Paul is when he says that the love of Christ "surpasses knowledge!" Truly, you cannot fully grasp it if your interaction is primarily with a message.
A message of love, without a personal interaction, is just so much knowledge. Jesus' intent has always been not only that we know the facts of salvation, but that we experience that salvation by a personal interaction with him.
Remember his prayer in John 17? "Now this is eternal life: that they may know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom you have sent.... I have made you known to them, and will continue to make you known in order that the love you have for them may be in them and that I myself may be in them" (verses 3, 26).
When I look back I see that Jesus himself was not in me, in the sense of being both the object of my worship and the one to whom I directed my petitions for help.
Sure, he was the means of my salvation. Certainly, he played the role of Savior, but I did not prayerfully commune with him. I prayed in his name, but I did not talk to him. I read the Gospels and admired his compassion for people, but I was not personally galvanized into action to help those around me.
It was enough to pray for the kingdom to come, but I did not feel the compulsion of bringing the kingdom's solution to the present needs of others--in the here and now.
In short, Christ's love, as I understood it then, compelled me to give people knowledge (as presented through a media effort) and to pray for a future solution to their problems.
I guess you can only give what you have. And what I had was a knowledge of Christ and of the salvation he brings.
It was, for the most part, head knowledge of who Jesus was and what he had to offer.
It was not what I now have. Now I have experienced Jesus in ways that are difficult to explain. And that is a major part of the dilemma facing our ministry. We have members who are familiar with the basic terminology, but have an incomplete understanding of what that terminology means.
We, for our part, are trying to explain something that cannot adequately be put into words. That is why our traditional approach of preaching informational sermons must give way to a new approach.
We have to explain to our members what our experience with Christ has meant to us. How our encounter with Christ has benefited us. We have to find a way to give testimonials that is not distasteful to our members, many of whom share our discomfort with such an approach.
Acts 1:21-22 makes clear the truth that the only effective method of preaching Christ is to witness from personal experience. I hope that you, as a lay member, see the need to help explain what a personal experience with Christ has meant to you, if you have had that experience.
Another example of our incomplete understanding was our explanation of Jesus' role as Savior. We defined that by stressing his role in justification, while failing to emphasize his central role in our sanctification.
Too often we made it sound like justification is only the forgiveness of sins that are past, and failed to celebrate the fact that "there is now [on an on-going basis] no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus."
Too often we made it sound like sanctification is primarily a matter of each of us taking matters into our hands and unleavening our lives by using the Holy Spirit as a spiritual tool to help us keep the commandments, and so remain in God's favor.
Our old prescription did not allow us to see that grace is more than undeserved pardon or forgiveness. We did not see that grace is also a state. It means being in God's favor.
Paul says that once we have been justified we are in a state of grace, wrapped in God's favor. Being in a state of grace transforms us. There is a personal experience that Paul described with these words: "Christ Jesus took hold of me" (Philippians 3:12).
For Paul, entering into a relationship with Christ was not just an intellectual acquiescence. When he felt the power of Christ's love he was compelled to live differently from the way he lived before.
He said: "For Christ's love compels us.... And he died for all, that those who live should no longer live for themselves but for him who died for them and was raised again" (2 Corinthians 5:14-15).
Unfortunately, many have not yet been taken hold of. The compulsion of Jesus' love has not yet fully impacted some of us. Many sense that the church is on to something meaningful with its new teachings, but they do not know what to look for.
Without suitable guidance they may default to our old approach, based on an excessive reliance on head knowledge. It is up to us to add the experiential knowledge that is so much a part of knowing Christ.
Of course we cannot give this essential insight unless we have had that life-impacting personal experience of Christ. If you have not, there is no need to despair.
Just a few months ago I realized that even though I knew Christ, I did not know him well enough. In fact I told my wife, Carmen, that for years I have been religious. I am only now becoming a Christian.
I think that has been the experience of many of you. We have not, until recently, experienced Christ in the way Paul had experienced him. So I began to pray for a passion for Christ. I made Ephesians 3:16-19 the burden of my prayers.
"I pray that out of his glorious riches he may strengthen you with power through his Spirit in your inner being, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith.
"And I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, may have power, together with all saints, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, and to know this love that surpasses knowledge--that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God.
"Now to him who is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine, according to his power that is at work within us, to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, for ever and ever! Amen."
My prayer is being answered. Christ has taken on a new meaning to me. The best way I can express it is to say that in the past he played roles in my life, now he is my life.
I no longer express dependence on him for the justification of my sins that are past, but then shift the focus to myself unleavening my life by using the Holy Spirit as the power to help me remain in his favor by keeping the commandments.
He is not just the Savior who deals with past sins, but he is also my Savior who sanctifies me by living in me every day of life.
As I dialogue with Jesus on a daily basis I find that not only does my view of him change, but so also does my view of myself and of others.
Paul has trod the path I now tread. He puts into words what I am experiencing: "So from now on we regard no one from a worldly point of view. Though we once regarded Christ in this way, we do so no longer. Therefore, if anyone is in Christ he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come" (2 Corinthians 5: 16-17).
This has not been a dramatic, highly emotional experience. Rather, it has been a quiet but real growth in awareness of Jesus' love for me, that is powerfully changing me from the inside.
Jesus is doing the same for many of you. And he stands ready to do the same for any who have not yet begun the process. I hope we will take the time to more fully experience that love of Christ that surpasses knowledge.
May the next few months be for you a time when you experience what the disciples on the road to Emmaus experienced (Luke 24:13-35). They had spent years with Jesus. They heard him as he preached. They saw him perform miracles. They saw him crucified.
Then they met him after his resurrection and walked with him, and talked with him. But it was not until he broke bread that "their eyes were opened and they recognized him."
They then looked at each other and asked, "Were not our hearts burning within us while he talked with us on the road and opened the Scriptures to us?"
I hope that the burning and yearning in all our hearts will be replaced by a greater measure of the fullness of God, as we "grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, and to know this love that surpasses knowledge."
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