People Are The Church

I have been a believer since I was 10 years old. However, I have been a part of the church culture since the age of 6. That was when my dad became a pastor. I have been involved in 16 churches in the past 51 years. Granted, they have all been in the same denomination. Seventeen years was spent in one church, so most of those churches were short stays. I served as a minster in eight of those churches.

I just got mentally exhausted writing the first paragraph! Many of you have had a similar experience, and many of you have only known a few churches in your lifetime. Over the past eight years, God has been redirecting my understanding of His desire for His church. I was guilty of seeing a building with a name on it and identifying that building as a church. I’ll bet many of you have done the same. The problem with that view is a building has never been and never will be a church. The church is the people.

Having served in eight churches, I have made some general observations about the people of God. First of all, God’s children really love God with all their hearts. That doesn’t mean we express that love fully or clearly in every situation, but at our core, we really do love God. Secondly, God’s children love people and they want people to know about God’s love. Finally, I’ve seen God’s children make heart-felt commitments to follow and serve God to the best of their ability. We want to do God’s will. Again, that doesn’t mean those commitments have been fully expressed.

Those three observations are true because of God. John said, “We love, because He (God) first loved us.” (1 John 4:19, NASB) These are signs of God’s children. However, our church cultures are not always healthy environments to experience or express this love in the manner in which God intended.

Since I have been at Christian Families Today, I have experienced something that is consistent here. We talk about spiritual matters constantly. We share with each other what God is teaching us, whether through scripture or experience. We don’t do this because it is office policy or a mandate from the leaders, we do this because we want to. We occasionally talk about ministry, but I’ve learned that lasting ministry flows out of God’s children when they know and believe truth. We cannot be immersed in truth if we are not thinking and talking about it.

From my experience (hopefully not yours), most of my time serving a local church as a minister was spent talking about and doing ministry. Any spiritual learning was reserved for personal time or designated group devotional time. As a result, I floundered in my personal time with God and that affected how I ministered. Granted, the leaders encouraged me to maintain a healthy alone time with God, but because we never talked about it, it was too easy to spend my alone time trying to measure up to the expectations of the church and the senior pastor. I perceived that I didn’t have time to spend with God!

God has shifted my perspective on the church. Instead of viewing the church as an organization to attend and serve, I see her as an organism that is the body of Christ. The church is living and breathing. She is the beautiful bride of Christ. Now that my perception has changed, I see the function of the church as something different than what I grew up experiencing.

As God’s people, we need truth to sustain us. His truth feeds us. His truth reminds us constantly of who we are to Him. If I’m operating from a sense of who I am to God, I will never burn-out. When the people of God come together, their time would be well spent encouraging one another, speaking the truth in love, feeding on God’s Word, and ultimately, connecting with God’s presence in corporate worship (not just music). When the church goes out from this kind of gathering, they are equipped to serve their communities and to give sacrificially of themselves. This activity will change the world.

Now that we are needing to practice social isolation due to the Covid-19 virus, it is more difficult to connect in one place. Does this stop us from being the church? I don't think so. God is using this time to deepen the truth that we are an organism of living people, not an address. As we listen to the Holy Spirit, He will show us how to connect with each other during this time and how to minister to the world around us.

Containers of Christ's Life

When God created humanity, he fashioned us to be a container.  That container needed something for it to function properly; it needed life! Genesis 2:7 says God breathed life into man’s container and he became a living being. 

Paul said in 1 Corinthians 10:31, “Whether, then, you eat or drink or whatever you do, do all to the glory of God.”  God’s life in Adam and Eve, expressed in their moment by moment living, was a display of His glory.  Nothing generated from self-effort expresses the glory of God.  This can be confusing because we want to believe when we do good things it is pleasing to God.  However, anything done out of self-effort, whether good or bad, is flesh.   Paul said in Galatians, “the flesh sets itself against the Spirit and the Spirit against the flesh” (Gal. 5:17). 

If you want to test whether your good deed is of the Spirit or of the flesh, here is a simple question to ask yourself: Will I feel better about myself if I do this?  If the answer is yes, most likely you are operating out of the flesh.  If the answer is, “I’m doing this because I want to,” or “The Holy Spirit prompted me,” then you are operating in the Spirit.  The first answer reveals us attempting to get our need for worth or value met through a good deed.  The second is focused on Christ’s life expressed through actions.  When you are walking in the Spirit (Gal. 5:16), you are doing what you want to do, not out of need, but out of His life.  The flesh prohibits us from doing what we want to do (Gal. 5:17b).

As I began to think about believers being a container of Christ’s life, the Holy Spirit revealed that my view of “container” was limited to my earthly way of thinking.  Every container I’m familiar with has a limit to how much it can hold. When I look in the mirror, I see a physical container that weighs just under 200 lbs., and is almost six feet tall.  In other words, with my physical eyes I see the limits of the space I fill in this world.  However, I cannot see my spirit with my physical eyes.  It is my spirit which is designed to contain Christ’s life.  It is my soul and body which express His Life.  Paul indicated in Ephesians 3:19, we can be filled up with the fullness of God.

Again, we were designed to be a container, but only a Person can fill our container.  As humans, we try to fill our container with riches, power, relationships, influence, education, etc. None of these things can begin to take up space in our container, no matter how much we put in.  If we could attain all the wealth, power, and prestige of this world, it would only be a drop in our container.  We were given an eternal container designed to be filled solely with an eternal source.  How awesome is that!  When you and I are abiding in Christ, we are expressing His fullness in us.

“But we have this treasure in earthen vessels, so that the surpassing greatness of the power will be of God and not from ourselves.” (2 Cor. 4:7, NASB)

Let's Dance!

I had the privilege of officiating a wedding for a very dear friend. As I stood there at the altar with him and the rest of the wedding party, I watched him. I wanted to see his face when his bride came around the corner. I’ve done that so many times in the past, because I knew what I was going to see – a face that will light up at the sight of his beloved. My friend’s face didn’t disappoint. When she came into view, he said “WOW!” When she saw him, a bright smile spread across her face. It was the perfect picture of delight. They weren’t focused on anyone else.

Later, during the reception, he danced with his bride. She looked safe in his arms and he looked overjoyed for her to be there. They both had waited a long time for this day. Even though they had officially committed themselves to each other a couple of years before, this was the day where there would be no turning back. After the feasting was over, the dance floor was opened to anyone who wanted to celebrate with them. I watched him go back to the dance floor with his family and friends and dance like King David. He didn’t care what anyone thought about his dancing, he just danced.

Let me tell you a secret….I love dancing! I only dance in the privacy of my home. Why? Because I am challenged in the rhythm area. There are two things I want to experience the moment I shed this old body. I want to play the drums and I want to dance. You don’t have to ask me twice to sit down and watch a movie with dancing. Seeing someone dance well makes my spirit soar.

I think God put within all of us a desire to use our bodies to express joy. Just as David danced before the Lord and my friend danced before his family and friends, when we are filled with joy unspeakable, we want to let it out through our bodies. There is nothing perverse about this desire. When it’s just me and my grandkids, I play some fun music and we dance. I get made fun of by the adults in the room, but I don’t care and neither do my grandkids.

God fills me with joy because He is delighted with me. Why? Because I am His child. King David recognized his value to God when he said in Psalm 139:17-18a, “How precious also are Your thoughts to me, O God! How vast is the sum of them! If I should count them, they would outnumber the sand.” (NASB)

The Bible says I am the bride of Christ (2 Cor. 11:2; Rev. 19:7-9; 21:2,9). My groom looks at me with delight. Think about that. If I’m the child of God and the bride of Christ, what higher honor or status can I seek? There is none. So, what is my conclusion to that? Let’s dance!

Love Throws a Party!

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“(Love) does not rejoice in unrighteousness, but rejoices with the truth…” (1 Cor. 13:6, NASB)

This is a recognizable passage from 1 Corinthians. Read at a few million weddings over the years, it has become so familiar we have missed the amazing truth Paul declared. Most have focused on the first part of the verse regarding unrighteousness.

Sinful acts are the expression of unrighteousness. When others sin against us, we can get hurt. Feeling hurt is nothing to rejoice about. Also, we can commit acts of unrighteousness against others and ourselves. This doesn’t lead to rejoicing either.

It feels right to focus on the unrighteousness and to declare it bad or wrong, but, what does this focus accomplish in us? It actually keeps us rooted in the emotions which result from getting hurt or doing wrong. For some reason, we think this is what God wants us to do. We believe our anger (from getting hurt) will protect us from getting hurt again, or our shame (from doing wrong) will somehow motivate us to do right the next time.

In this passage, Paul says love actively does something – it rejoices. His focus is not on condemnation, sorrow, regret, disappointment, or discontent. Paul said love rejoices with the truth. That is what love does.

Think of two rooms in which love can choose to be present. It can only be in one room at a time. Love is either in the room of condemnation or the room of rejoicing. If love is in the room of condemnation, its focus will be on denouncing what is wrong (unrighteousness). You would hear love saying wrong was done to you, or you did something wrong. However, Paul told us love is not in that room. It is in the room of rejoicing.

In the parable of the prodigal son (Luke 15:11-32), the father ran out to his son to rejoice with the truth. What was the truth in which he rejoiced? I don’t think it had anything to do with a change of heart within the son. I believe the truth was the fact that the father had gifted his son complete forgiveness. I believe the father also rejoiced that this lost son was still fully his son, no matter what offense the son had committed. And of course, the father’s love for the son was not hindered by a wrong suffered.

As I listen to folks, I hear many focus on the hurt, the offense, or the betrayal. Rejoicing is not some kind of mind game to take our focus off of the unrighteousness done to us or we have done to others or our self.

In every unrighteous circumstance, no matter how hurtful, there is truth in which to rejoice. It is when we are drawn into the infinite heights and depths of God’s love that truth becomes so obvious and overwhelming. When I am experiencing God’s love, I can throw a party for truth. God’s truth reminds me I am loved, worthy, safe, not alone, accepted, adequate, etc. His truth doesn’t excuse unrighteousness, but His truth changes me. Embracing His truth enables me to forgive others and myself.

I don’t need to attend a lecture on the evils of unrighteousness. That doesn’t sound like much fun or very productive. Just as the prodigal son’s father threw a party because of his love, let’s rejoice in the Father’s truth that we are unconditionally loved and accepted.