No Couch Potato's

“from whom the whole body, joined and knit together by what every joint supplies, according to the effective working by which every part does its share, causes growth of the body for the edifying of itself in love.”

Ephesians 4:16


In the New Testament of our Bible we learn that Jesus is the head of the church and we, each of us as members of His body make up the individual parts of the body of Christ also known as the church. It’s understandable then that the more we grow to understand our individual roles and function in church, the stronger the body becomes. It’s kind of like working out at the gym. The stronger your individual muscle groups are the stronger your body is overall. Thats just one reason the church is called to gather together, to strengthen one another.

God never intended for “distant learning” to be the means of operation for the local church. The word for church in the Bible is the Greek word “Ekklesia” which means “out from and to”. It’s not just being called out or separate from the world but also gathering with and too Christ. Thats why Jesus instructed His disciples to go to the ends of the earth with the Gospel to establish churches everywhere God would lead. To call people out of the world and into relationship with God and to God. God knows we always have been and will always be, “stronger together”.

Church then is far more than just a place you go. Church is who you are! 1 Corinthians 6 reminds us that we are the temple of God and that our body is not our own, that it belongs to God. You and I are a place of worship, a church service you could say that is just waiting to bust out wherever we are in the world. Even the religious Jews in Jesus day would stop wherever they were three times a day and begin to pray. The more religious the person was, the more likely they would purposely attempt to be on a street corner at the designated times of prayer so as to be seen and heard by the greatest number of people passing by. One of the major differences between religion and Christianity is the goal of religion is information where the goal of Christianity is transformation. As Christians, we don’t just want to give people information, we want them along with us to experience transformation as we grow in and up in our relationship with God.

Christianity isn’t just reading our bible and praying, its sharing the life giving message of Jesus Christ with others and experiencing the transforming power of God as we go about His business. Using the imagery of working out at a gym, people who exercise with a training partner always grow stronger than a person working out alone. Training partners stir one another up! As we individually come to know Christ and discover the unique gifts and calling God has for each of us we can’t help but look for others to share life with and whose gifts compliment ours so that we can become more effective in knowing God and growing in our walk with Him. We learn quickly that serving God in this life means serving people and because the needs of this world are so vast, only the body of Christ coming together is capable of meeting them. One thing is for sure. There is no such thing as a couch potato Christian as we have always been and will always be, stronger together than we ever could be apart.


“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.”

Hebrews 10:24-25

I LOVE YOU!  
 


   

 

Michael Osthimer

Recent

Archive

Categories

no categories

Tags

no tags