Many people consider the Church their safe place. Some consider the Church their hiding place. Whatever you consider the Church to be, it is not a place. It is a people. Church is a people, a people that are called out or away from the world, to go back into the world and make disciples, by sharing the "Good News" which is the Gospel of Jesus Christ.
I remember when I was a child I was taught a hand gesture, clutching my hands together and then opening them again that went like this: Here's the Church and here's the steeple, open the doors and here's all the people." That simple child's game got down on the inside of me and I never questioned it. We as the Church of Jesus Christ need to be teaching our children from a young age what we believe. However, we need to believe what the Bible says, not what we learned as a childish hand game. It would be far better had that little rhyme said, "Here's the building and here's the steeple open there doors and here is God's Church!"
Jesus founded the church on the revelation of revealed knowledge from God our Father about Jesus His Son. Jesus is the head of the Church-our head, and He wants a personal relationship with each one of us. If we teach this to our children, then Church will neither be a safe place or a hiding place, it will be a building where people gather to be the Church, where we cannot hide and for the most part is not safe. We find our safety in Christ. Our hiding place is in Christ. It is in Christ that we can do all things and nothing is impossible to us, because we believe.
Church buildings like this little one below, dot the hills of the United States from Maine to California. Some of the buildings are larger and some are smaller. It does not matter what the building looks like. Some today look like store fronts and others look like coliseums. What matters is what's inside. If when we open the doors we find a people who love God, accept Him as their personal Savior and have the fruits of the Spirit, are loving others and preaching the Gospel of Jesus Christ, then these buildings are filled with the Church of the living Christ. If not these are just buildings...some filled with the living dead.
Jesus founded the church on the revelation of revealed knowledge from God our Father about Jesus His Son. Jesus is the head of the Church-our head, and He wants a personal relationship with each one of us. If we teach this to our children, then Church will neither be a safe place or a hiding place, it will be a building where people gather to be the Church, where we cannot hide and for the most part is not safe. We find our safety in Christ. Our hiding place is in Christ. It is in Christ that we can do all things and nothing is impossible to us, because we believe.
Church buildings like this little one below, dot the hills of the United States from Maine to California. Some of the buildings are larger and some are smaller. It does not matter what the building looks like. Some today look like store fronts and others look like coliseums. What matters is what's inside. If when we open the doors we find a people who love God, accept Him as their personal Savior and have the fruits of the Spirit, are loving others and preaching the Gospel of Jesus Christ, then these buildings are filled with the Church of the living Christ. If not these are just buildings...some filled with the living dead.
Here are some scriptures to think about concerning "The Church".
Ephesians 2:19-22 So then you are no longer strangers and aliens, but you are fellow citizens with the saints and members of the household of God, built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Christ Jesus himself being the cornerstone, in whom the whole structure, being joined together, grows into a holy temple in the Lord. In him you also are being built together into a dwelling place for God by the Spirit.
Ephesians 5:23, 25 For the husband is the head of the wife even as Christ is the head of the church, his body, and is himself its Savior… Husbands, love your wives, as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her
1 Timothy 3:15 if I delay, you may know how one ought to behave in the household of God, which is the church of the living God, a pillar and buttress of the truth.
Matthew 16:17-19 17Jesus replied, "Blessed are you, Simon son of Jonah, for this was not revealed to you by flesh and blood, but by my Father in heaven. 18And I tell you that you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of Hades will not overcome it. 19I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven; whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven."
Ephesians 2:19-22 So then you are no longer strangers and aliens, but you are fellow citizens with the saints and members of the household of God, built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Christ Jesus himself being the cornerstone, in whom the whole structure, being joined together, grows into a holy temple in the Lord. In him you also are being built together into a dwelling place for God by the Spirit.
Ephesians 5:23, 25 For the husband is the head of the wife even as Christ is the head of the church, his body, and is himself its Savior… Husbands, love your wives, as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her
1 Timothy 3:15 if I delay, you may know how one ought to behave in the household of God, which is the church of the living God, a pillar and buttress of the truth.
Matthew 16:17-19 17Jesus replied, "Blessed are you, Simon son of Jonah, for this was not revealed to you by flesh and blood, but by my Father in heaven. 18And I tell you that you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of Hades will not overcome it. 19I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven; whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven."
Action Step: Today ask yourself what you believe and why? Is it just something you heard as a child? We are to study the Word of God for ourselves and then be able to give an answer for what we believe both in season and out of season.
Here is a story to get you thinking. It was the holiday and the entire family was meeting to celebrate a ham dinner. A young daughter asks her mother, "Why do we always cut off the ends of the ham?" The mother replied, "This is the way my mother taught me. Go asks your grandmother. The granddaughter went and ask her grandmother, "Grandmother why do we always cut off the ends of the ham?" To which her grandmother responded, "Dear, I do not know why your mother cuts the ends off the ham but I did it because I never had a pot big enough."
Why do you do what you do?
Here is a story to get you thinking. It was the holiday and the entire family was meeting to celebrate a ham dinner. A young daughter asks her mother, "Why do we always cut off the ends of the ham?" The mother replied, "This is the way my mother taught me. Go asks your grandmother. The granddaughter went and ask her grandmother, "Grandmother why do we always cut off the ends of the ham?" To which her grandmother responded, "Dear, I do not know why your mother cuts the ends off the ham but I did it because I never had a pot big enough."
Why do you do what you do?
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