At New Dimensions Ministries we don’t have members, we welcome those who join our local assembly to become partners. The reason for this is to remind and inspire those who wish to be connected to such a degree, that they are not just making up a number, nor merely associating themselves with a move or ‘mover’, nor are they sitting on the peripherals looking on at the vision while certain key individuals run forward with it. No, we are all to understand that this ministry belongs to us. We share in its ownership and invest ourselves and our means into its progression and development. In so doing we all take the risks together, we shoulder the burdens of the ministry, and we all share in reaping the benefits of our labour.
Anyone who is truly grafted in to New Dimensions Ministries begins to take on its characteristics and live its values. Those things preached and exemplified in the lives of its leaders begin to become social and spiritual norms for anyone sufficiently rooted and grounded in the love of God as expressed through this part of the body of Christ. It’s a model that Jesus Himself encourages.
“Remain in Me and I will remain in you,” He says to those branches who would be fruitful, to those who would avoid the fires that consume the barren. He calls us not to a name alone, not even His own, for when did Jesus ever refer to those who followed him wholeheartedly as Christ-ians? No, his passion and pursuit first was, and is, to reconcile us to the Father. He calls us sons and brothers, joint heirs with Himself, and in so doing gives us identity and a sense of belonging. He calls us to relationship and partnership – to function in the earth like one of the aristocracy of heaven. He has called us then to live like Him, walk like Him, talk and act and think and serve, perhaps to even smell like the aroma of Jesus. That same Jesus who did only what He saw His Father do and gave us the Holy Spirit to guide us in how it’s done.
“What do the elders see that makes them all fall down? And what do the angels see that make them cry holy?” It’s a song of worship we render often, because the more we gaze at this God the less we can fathom Him. It is the cold and impoverished heart that can gaze but for a moment at the Son and not immediately marvel at His worth, and yet even the most enraptured heart gets the sense that it has only just scratched the surface. I used to ask the Lord to show me Himself. I was awed by the descriptions of his ‘visible form’ as outlined by those men of God so privileged as to see him, live and record their insights as best they could.
I asked Him for this diligently until the day He gently reminded me, in a most matter-of-fact way (if this characteristic can be assigned to an all-wise God), “My beauty is not so much in what I look like, but in who I am.” It needed no explanation. It was profound. It’s truth and simplicity struck me to my core. For as He is in a most base way, are not we? The most striking amongst us loses some of her captivating aura if speech and character, behaviour and ethics are not as agreeable. And the most downtrodden, unattractive one, with a song of praise in his heart and a selfless outworking in his hands shines like the sun over a dark valley.
Tozer, Spurgeon, Jefferson – great men of God of decades past, and even lovesick worshippers of this great age, have gazed and written and expounded, and astounded found themselves no closer to fully knowing this Jesus than when they began. These men’s words and experiences of Him are deep oceans we can only hope to begin to ford. We clutch our mouths at their revelation of the character of Jesus and yearn to even begin to grasp a knowledge of the holy. We are overcome musing on this multidimensional wonder who fasts, yet feasts, a lover and a fighter, all God, all man. Jesus, man of sorrows, but anointed with the oil of gladness, all-knowing and fully submitted to the Father yet learning obedience from the things He suffered. It challenges us to ponder how he could be servant and king, lion and lamb, totally hands on but totally holy and set apart. And these in themselves unsearchable but just a grain in the endless sands of His indescribable personhood.
We wonder within ourselves how are we to ever become one with the unattainable, yet hold to the promise that He will show Himself to those who diligently seek Him. 
And what unsurpassed reward! For as we behold Him in his facets soon He will behold in us His facets. As the goldsmith sits and refines the ore knowing the good work is complete only when He sees Himself reflected in the metal, so is Jesus dedicated to completing the good work He has begun in us. He asks us only to stay connected. Remain in Him, keep close, as he turns the hearts of the sons to the heart of the Father.
For further study, I would like to recommend The Knowledge of the Holy, by A.W Tozer, and also download The Chivalry of Jesus.
