Me And My Church

God has always desired to have a people.  Anytime He had a single human being, He worked His plan to produce a community.  When he and Adam walked together on earth in a perfect relationship, God said, “It’s not good for man to be alone.”  

When God revealed Himself to Abraham and made a covenant with Him, He promised Him that his (Abraham’s) descendants would be like the stars in the heavens and sand on the seashore.  One would become many.

And what Jesus?  Although He was the only begotten Son of God, the plan of God all along was to make Him into a community of sons and daughters worldwide.  In Romans 8:29 it says, “For whom He foreknew, He also predestined to be conformed to the image of His Son, that He might be the firstborn among many brethren.”

It’s easy to see that God’s intention from the beginning was to create a community of people who would all be in relationship with Him individually and with each other corporately. 

Jesus called this corporate community the ecclesia (translated “church”).  He did not invent this term.  He borrowed it from the Roman world.  An ecclesia was a group of citizens who came together to make decisions for their city.  When He chose to use this term, He no doubt intended that people should have a strong community that gathered regularly to help make the world around them a better place for everyone.

This is exactly what happened when the church was birthed in the Book of Acts: “So continuing daily with one accord in the temple, and breaking bread from house to house, they ate their food with gladness and simplicity of heart, praising God and having favor with all the people. And the Lord added to the church[h] daily those who were being saved (Acts 2:46-47).”

It was this kind of fellowship, evidently, that Satan must have attacked since these words are found in Hebrews 10:24-25, “And let us consider one another in order to stir up love and good works, not forsaking the assembling of ourselves together, as is the manner of some, but exhorting one another, and so much the more as you see the Day approaching.”

If God has worked so hard and given so much to create a corporate people, why do we dismiss it so easily?

God intended that our faith should include a personal relationship with Him and a relationship with other people within the church.  Like Paul said in Colossians 3:18, “And He is the head of the body, the church, who is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead, that in all things He may have the preeminence.”  We should have a relationship with both the Head and the body of Christ

So stay connected to God and to His Body.  God loves our fellowship!