The whole nine yards, in a nutshell?

In a nutshell the good news is this. The Divine gets reduced to the finite, so the finite, can be reduced to the divine. In other words, when we look at the exodus, we can see Moses (speaks for God) not without Aaron. After convincing the divine that he did not have the talent, God agrees and mitigates with Aaron, staff, signs and wonders. The finite is reduced to divinity.

Church guys and Gals have been known to call this process, disciple making, spiritual formation, shepherding, Sunday school, cell groups, kinship groups, the list goes on. Church is generally the place we assume we can find out about God, or do something for God, because we already know all about God. Can we look at that?

This whole process of  reducing man to God, is the hardest. Of course we are told from many of the pulpits and mainstream media; that it is all about better, church life is better for business, church is better for family, better for self esteem etc. The truth is, however,  the good news is about death. There is no reason to fool ourselves at this point, the good news is that we are forgiven, the bad news is, they still don't let darkness in the new Jerusalem.

Everything around us changes at this moment of clarity. Some people believe it is at this time that a holy spirit, begins to replace or, de-emphasize, the not so holy flesh. For some this is a time that God begins to "speak" to them. Others have an experience in the mystical sense. Still others find teachers, or become teachers at this time.

The book of 1 john in the bible says this, if you can believe it, "As for you, the anointing which you received from Him abides in you, and you have no need for anyone to teach you; but as His anointing teaches you about all things, and is true and is not a lie, and just as it has taught you, you abide in Him.
 Do not be surprised, brethren, if the world hates you.  We know that we have passed out of death into life, because we love the brethren. He who does not love abides in death. Everyone who hates his brother is a murderer; and you know that no murderer has eternal life abiding in him.  We know love by this, that He laid down His life for us; and we ought to lay down our lives for the brethren.  But whoever has the world’s goods, and sees his brother in need and closes his heart against him, how does the love of God abide in him?  Little children, let us not love with word or with tongue, but in deed and truth.  We will know by this that we are of the truth, and will assure our heart before Him  in whatever our heart condemns us; for God is greater than our heart and knows all things. Beloved, if our heart does not condemn us, we have confidence before God;