Refreshing Rain Ministries

Same Sex Marriage and the Norm

Revraney — Fri, 11 May 2012 20:22:38 +0000

The big story this week has been the President’s announcement that he support’s same sex marriages. The responses have, not surprisingly, taken us down that familiar road of arguing whether people are homosexual by choice or by genetics.

One local radio talk show personality made the argument that it is ridiculous to believe it is choice. The logic used in this argument was that if it was a choice the person could change their choice and could be changed. Going on, they argued, therefore If I could change someone from homosexual to heterosexual then it stands to reason I could do the inverse – change them from heterosexual to homosexual.

No case was made to refute the idea that this would indeed be possible – it was just assumed that it was utterly ridiculous to imagine a person being convinced to change from heterosexual to homosexual. The logic used for this argument is awful, almost as bad as ‘If A equals B then B must equal C’. If one’s opinion is that homosexuality is a choice then by default the homosexual chose to change from heterosexual to homosexual. They were indeed convinced (by someone, by circumstances or some combination) to change . Whether you agree with the premise of choice or not, there is nothing in the talk show host’s argument that disallows the possibility to change – in either direction. If you do agree with the premise of choice you have to believe one can change in either direction.

The logic falls apart even further if we examine it deeper. The argument for genetics is that you either are attracted to people of the opposite sex or people of the same sex and it is determined by biology. The assumption that must hold true is that attraction is biological. But is that true? Is that what all of the evidence says?

The basis for this assumption and the reason it is so popular is that heterosexuals seem to be attracted to numerous people of the opposite sex – therefore it is driven, yes, determined by biology. That leads to another assumption, specifically, that this is the norm. I will certainly grant that if it can be established that it is indeed the norm for people (whether heterosexual or homosexual) to be attracted to many different people in a sexual manner the assumptions and ultimately the theory stand on much firmer ground. I am not convinced that this latter assumption has been established.

First, lets discuss the word norm. In many cases people will use the word norm to express what happens in most cases. But this is not an accurate description for this word. In America most people will refer to a soccer match as a soccer game, but it was meant to be referred to as a match. The actual norm is to call it a match. Calling it a game is a derivative or corruption from the norm – even though the vast majority call it a game.

Let us begin with the premise that there is a norm for attraction and that there are certainly corruptions or perversions of that norm. Another big story this week involves a 33 year old female teacher having a sexual relationship with an underage student. People are upset and outraged by this story. The teacher has been indicted for doing something illegal. Very few people do not see this as corrupted or perverted. It would not matter how many of these cases took place we would not see them as normal because normal in this case is not based on the number of incidents but rather on what we believe acceptable, an absolute right or wrong. Thoroughout society we do not believe that it is normal for a 33 year old teacher to be attracted to an underage boy.

While some cultures may differ as to whether a man should have one wife, or two or five for that matter, no culture believes a man should have as many and whatever woman he wants. We do not believe that is normal. If it is purely biological then why not? How does biology provide for a morality; a morality that on some level all people’s agree?

As Christians we believe that man was created a certain way. We then, through rebellion went astray. We believe there are all manner of consequences and effects of that history. As Christians we believe that God made man and he made a companion woman. What if this was the norm? What if when God created man the norm was for a man to be attracted to one woman and a woman to be attracted to one man? What if the fact that we certainly seem to be attracted to multiple people is a corruption or perversion of the norm? We can see other corruptions of our original state of creation – for example, we die.

There is evidence there is a norm and that it is built into us, for example our view that the unnatural attraction of a 33 year married woman to an underage boy is abnormal. Or the universally accepted morals that we live by providing limits. If it is true there is a norm and it is built into us and has simply become corrupted it blows up the assumptions that the genetics argument is built upon. It doesn’t just address the homosexual issue though. If it is true it means it is just as much a corruption of the norm to desire more than one person of the opposite sex as well. While it may be the norm in the sense that it is common among people it does not mean it is norm in relation to how we were made.

A Contrast

Revraney — Wed, 11 Apr 2012 14:12:42 +0000

Had an interesting statistic shared with me recently by a Missionary from the Church of the Nazarene. According to the Missionary, last year the Church of the Nazarene started 500 new churches in the Horn of Africa (four countries, Ethiopia, Somalia, Eritrea, and Djibouti, with a total population of about 100 million). In the same year, the Church of the Nazarene in the US added 500 new members. Good thing everyone in the US is already saved.

The Dilution Effect

Revraney — Tue, 07 Feb 2012 17:55:16 +0000

C.S Lewis rightly pointed out that the meaning of words are important. He wrote often of how the definitiions of words gradually change over time and this change reflects a change in worldview.

The same can obviously be applied to phrases as well as words. Somehow over time the word Christian has become synonomous with the phrase ‘church-goer’. I read an article recently that was bemoaning the fact that churches today are becoming irrelevant. The article referenced a National Church Life Survey that found that seven out of ten attenders agreed or strongly agreed that “we need to develop new ways of doing church to reach non-church-goers”.

Wow, that statement really disturbs me. What does ‘doing church’ mean? Has our goal become converting people to be ‘church-goers?’ Have we so diluted our message and our mission that we are content to make people church-goers as if that was the equivalent of being a Child of God? Have we convinced ourselves and others that if we can get them in the church doors somehow Christianity will rub off on them?

Change

Revraney — Tue, 07 Feb 2012 17:02:11 +0000

Recently overheard conversation; “How many church members does it take to change a lightbulb?” “Change?!, You can’t change it. My grandmother donated that lightbulb.”

New Progressive Version

Revraney — Thu, 26 Jan 2012 14:55:09 +0000

Please read this post in the spirit in which it was written. It is in no way meant to belittle the scriptures but rather to illustrate just how important what they really say is.

I sometimes wonder if church leadership in the west could write their own version of the bible would it go something like this. Instead of Revelation 3:7 reading the way it currently does:

“To the angel of the church in Philadelphia write:
These are the words of him who is holy and true, who holds the key of David. What he opens no one can shut, and what he shuts no one can open. 8 I know your deeds. See, I have placed before you an open door that no one can shut. I know that you have little strength, yet you have kept my word and have not denied my name. 9 I will make those who are of the synagogue of Satan, who claim to be Jews though they are not, but are liars—I will make them come and fall down at your feet and acknowledge that I have loved you. 10 Since you have kept my command to endure patiently, I will also keep you from the hour of trial that is going to come on the whole world to test the inhabitants of the earth.
11 I am coming soon. Hold on to what you have, so that no one will take your crown. 12 The one who is victorious I will make a pillar in the temple of my God. Never again will they leave it. I will write on them the name of my God and the name of the city of my God, the new Jerusalem, which is coming down out of heaven from my God; and I will also write on them my new name. 13 Whoever has ears, let them hear what the Spirit says to the churches. Revelation 3:7

Would it possibly say;
To the angel of the church in Philadelphia write:
These are the words of him who is holy and true, who holds the key of David. I know your deeds that you are very busy and you work hard, but I have somewhat against you. Your Sunday School and Sunday morning worship attendance is down.
You must have a Sunday School drive and give away a prize at the end to whoever brings the most visitors. On the fifth Sunday you should have a fill a pew Sunday and give away a prize to the one who brings the most guests. For you are to teach them to be motivated by the prize and not by love.

Or would Acts 2:
42 They devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and to fellowship, to the breaking of bread and to prayer. 43 Everyone was filled with awe at the many wonders and signs performed by the apostles. 44 All the believers were together and had everything in common. 45 They sold property and possessions to give to anyone who had need. 46 Every day they continued to meet together in the temple courts. They broke bread in their homes and ate together with glad and sincere hearts, 47 praising God and enjoying the favor of all the people. And the Lord added to their number daily those who were being saved. Acts 2:42

Read like this:
They devoted themselves to committees, choirs (or praise bands), and taking care of the building. Most everyone had some job like being an usher or greeter, sending out cards, counting attendance and keeping records, typing the bulletin, coaching the ball team, leading the music or some other program. All the members had their favorite place to sit in the building and they all really enjoyed it when the service had no preaching, just singing because that’s how they could tell the spirit was moving. They had fund raisers like car washes, dinners, and rock-a-thons so they could pay for trips and special services and events. Each week most of them gathered together in the sanctuary, except the children who they shipped off to another part of the building so they would not interfere with adults. And they added people in varying numbers to their membership, depending on how exciting their services were.

If we ever read a “version” of the scriptures that read like that we would be appalled, and rightly so. But what we do, how we spend our time and energy, says a lot about us.

In Romans 1 Paul says he has been set apart for the Gospel, the Good News. He was not set apart to be the CEO of an organization. Paul was willing, actually considered it an honor to suffer for the Gospel. I do not believe he would have thought the same about suffering for an attendance drive, a softball team or a car wash.

We have a limited amount of energy, time and resources in our lives. What are we willing to dedicated them to? what are weilling to suffer for? What are we willing to die for? Isn’t this what we are called to, set apart for – that which we are willing to dedicated ourselves to and even suffer for?

Positive or Negative

Revraney — Thu, 19 Jan 2012 21:21:20 +0000

This is not a post about being a positive person or a negative person. While that could certainly be a valuable topic to discuss. No, this post is about how we consider whether something is worth the investment of ourselves, specifically regarding our ministry in Christ.

There are two ways to judge, critique or analyze something’s worth. There is the positive approach and the negative approach.

I tend to challenge the status quo. It is who I am. I am just wired that way. I cannot tell you how many times I have heard the comment, “I don’t see what ‘s so wrong with…fill in the blank.” Another version of that statement is, “I don’t think there’s anything wrong with…fill in the blank.” That’s the negative approach to judging something’s worth. For example, (here I go getting myself in trouble), I don’t know why we have to have a nursery in church; maybe we do and maybe we don’t and that can certainly be discussed, but typically when I bring that up in discussion the response ends up, “I don’t see what’s so wrong with having a nursery in church.”

Regardless of where you come down on that issue, is that the right way to judge its worth? Just because there is nothing wrong with it, it passes our criteria? The question would beg to be asked, “What’s so RIGHT with it?” That’s the positive approach to judging something’s worth.

What say ye, are we settling for judging things based on the simple fact there is nothing wrong with it? Should we rather judge the worth of something based on what is right with it?

Bringing it Home – Where it Belongs

Revraney — Fri, 13 Jan 2012 18:16:03 +0000

I ran across this recently and had to reprint it for you. It’s a brilliant spoof by Doug Phillips of vision Forum.

        “I have the privilege of worshiping in a small, family-integrated church. When asked about our various church programs, I explain that we are blessed with more than thirty different organizations to which our members belong – they are called families. I further explain that we have more than sixty youth directors – they are called parents. In fact, we have such a full schedule of events that there is a mandatory activity every day of the week – it is called family worship . . .
        With so much responsibility on their hands, our youth directors have to really get their collective acts together . . . They have to study God’s Word more than they have ever studied before so they can wisely lead their organization. They have to be creative so they can solve the diverse problems of their special interest groups. They have to learn to be patient. They have to learn to love. They even have to reprioritize their lives.
        This last part is crucial. Only by reprioritizing life, and structuring their organizations properly, will our youth directors be successful. They know that. They also know there is a price to pay. But most of them are willing to pay the price, because they have decided that the greatest activity they can do in this life is to be a youth pastor and to run a special interest organization called the Christian family.
        Here is what we are discovering: The more we commit to faithfully shepherding our mini-congregations, the more blessing we experience. Moreover, the more we study what God’s Word says about these little congregations, the more we see the wonder and the brilliance of God’s plan of equipping the Church and transforming the entire culture through these often forgotten, twisted and even maligned organizations called Christian households.”1

1 – Douglas W. Phillips, “Our Church Youth Group” (San Antonio, TX: Vision Forum Ministries, 2002) www.visionforumministries.org

Triviality

Revraney — Fri, 28 Oct 2011 15:19:56 +0000

The triviality of most of my tasks and events is precisely the reason for most of my frustration.

Have you ever felt that way about your ministry? The things I spend so much of my time doing and participating in seem to hold the least amount of importance to the eternal message. We must find a way to break this cycle.

Mary Has Chosen What is Better

Revraney — Tue, 25 Oct 2011 18:25:09 +0000

Luke 10:38-42 As Jesus and his disciples were on their way, he came to a village where a woman named Martha opened her home to him. ³⁹ She had a sister called Mary, who sat at the Lord’s feet listening to what he said. ⁴⁰ But Martha was distracted by all the preparations that had to be made. She came to him and asked, “Lord, don’t you care that my sister has left me to do the work by myself? Tell her to help me!”

⁴¹ “Martha, Martha,” the Lord answered, “you are worried and upset about many things, ⁴² but few things are needed—or indeed only one.^[f] Mary has chosen what is better, and it will not be taken away from her.”

Board meetings, committee meetings, fellowship dinners, bulletins, building maintenance…..
They all cry out for our attention, like the preparations that distracted Martha in the scripture above.

We have ushers counting money during the worship gathering. We have Sunday School secretaries sitting in their offices making sure our Sunday School records are updated properly instead of participating in Sunday School themselves (or even the worship gathering). We have bulletins and handouts and all manner of things being printed and handed out frantically as we gather together for what we call church. Have to hurry up and perform that sound check before the performance starts. The Pastor either stops or gets stopped by multiple people wanting to talk about the latest church business item before Sunday School, between Sunday School and worship, or after worship. “What are we going to do about the roof?” “You’ve been nominated to serve on the church board, do you accept?”

We conduct more business than we do learning and worship. Which one do we resemble more, Martha or Mary? Jesus said, “Mary has chosen what is better.” Isn’t about time we simplified church?

Why House Church Isn’t the Answer (article by Wayne Jacobsen)

Revraney — Thu, 02 Jun 2011 20:35:07 +0000

Re-Posted by Keith A Raney (Revraney)

When 20 years of countless prayers didn’t fix it, I had to conclude either that God was ignoring me, or that I was asking for the wrong thing. Anxiety used to be my constant companion, and quite honestly he was no fun to hang with. He used to punch me in the pit of the stomach when I least expected it and his ravings kept me awake at night.

Every time a circumstance emerged that caused him to appear, I begged God to change it so I would not be anxious. Rarely, if ever, did he answer those prayers. Finally, I concluded that the circumstances were not the problem, but the anxiety itself was. My prayers changed. I stopped begging him to fix my circumstances and instead asked him to remove my anxiety. It only took a decade this time for me to realize these prayers weren’t working any better and I grew incredibly frustrated at God’s seeming indifference to my concerns.

I didn’t know then that in God’s heart my problem was not the circumstances that allowed my anxiety to emerge, nor even the anxiety itself. The problem God wanted to fix was the fact that I didn’t trust him to work in my circumstances to accomplish his purpose. My desire to be in control of my own life and achieve the success I thought I needed to prove my worth to him, and ultimately to myself, was the real captor.

Anxiety was only the symptom of a deeper need that God wanted to expose and heal with a clearer revelation of who he is and what he wanted to do in me. Many of you have read the chronicle of that journey in these newsletters and in He Loves Me! The more he showed me how great he was and how much he loved me, the less often I met with anxiety. Even though my circumstances had not changed, my trust in him had. I have ended up not even wanting God to satisfy my agenda anymore, but just to let me live in his every day.

In my best wisdom I had been trying to get God to fix the wrong thing. Real freedom didn’t lie in conforming my circumstances to my expectations or simply removing my anxious thoughts. He wanted to build a relationship with me that would set my heart at rest regardless of the circumstances that came my way. For thirty years I had sought a cheap substitute for the real fix.

I see people doing the same thing in discovering how to be part of God’s church. Having seen the weaknesses and failures of many religious structures, they have turned toward house church as the answer for authentic church life. Unfortunately, they are likely to be as disappointed there.

It’s Not the Form

For those who read BodyLife, you know I love seeing the body of Christ find ways to live out its faith and fellowship in household-sized groups where people can be active participants together in the journey of faith. The early church found the home to be the most natural environment for people to share God’s life together.

It is easy to convince people that house church just might be the answer to all of they’ve desired in body life, that is until they get involved in one. It quickly becomes evident that meeting in a home isn’t necessarily all it’s cracked up to be. What do we do about the people who only want to use the group for their own needs? Where can we find enough people willing to pay the price to share that kind of life together? What do we do when the meeting is boring and we’re tired of staring at each other?

Moving things out of a larger building and into a home does not of itself answer anything of substance. While it does provide the possibility of more active participation and deeper relationships, just sitting in a house together for a meeting does not guarantee that those things will happen. If people aren’t discovering the substance of what it means to live as the church, changing the mechanics will only provide a platform for people to commandeer the group in their thirst for leadership or pull it down by trying to make their needs or passions the focus of the group.

What’s wrong with the way we do church today has far less to do with the forms we use than it does the journey we are on. If we are looking for house church to meet the needs that more institutional forms couldn’t touch, we are likely to be disappointed by our experiences in house church. Any time we begin with our needs as the focus, instead of God’s purpose, we will end up disappointed by the results.

Mutual Accommodation of Self-Need

Like my attempts to get God to fix my anxiety my way, many of us are programmed to try to relate to God through our needs. If we begin to build our sense of church based on those self-needs, we will only end up frustrated with a cheap counterfeit of the real church God has created us to embrace. If we are looking to relate to the church because we need acceptance, or security, or a place to demonstrate our gifts, or people to love us in a certain way or someone to tell me how I should live in Christ, we’re already headed the wrong direction.

Most people never see that because the things they want, like being free from anxiety, are not evil things. It’s the way we go about getting them met that provides the real trap. A friend of mine who was a denominational pastor for many years, in the end defined much of organized religion as the mutual accommodation of self-need. Some people need to lead; others need to be led. Some need acceptance and others relish in acting as their savior. Some need to get up front and sing; while others want to sit through a moving service. Some people have a passion for children’s ministry and others just want to drop their children so others will disciple them.

His contention was that congregations exist only as long as they can effectively overlap these needs. When they do, the congregation gets along famously. When they don’t they get trapped in gossip, power-struggles, and people leaving to find congregations that will meet their needs or form new ones with a different group in control. There the cycle begins all over again while most never realize that the life of the church is not built on our self-needs, but on God’s purpose in his people.

Changing the venue from a building to a home doesn’t solve this problem. If we’re going to seek to find church life by having our needs accommodated by others, we will find moments of fulfillment mingled with long, dry periods of discontent and frustration.

Absolute Dependence

Experiencing the joy of authentic fellowship begins when we realize that all our dependence must be centered on Jesus himself. We don’t share fellowship because we need to. We don’t do it to get our needs met. True fellowship can only be known where our dependence upon Christ spills out in our love for others. Knowing the joy and freedom of his life, we can’t help but share it with others.

Scripture is clear. True life is only found in Jesus. There is life in no other–not even a correct arrangement of Christians in houses or buildings. That’s what Paul meant when he called Jesus the Head of the Church, declaring that it was God’s purpose for him to “have first place in everything.” Our needs are not the focus of body life. His presence living among us is.

We’ve taught for years the mistaken notion that we need to go to church to fill up on the life of God. Not true! We can only fill up on God’s life through a transforming relationship with the Father through his Son. We were never meant to come to fill ourselves with church, but to live full of him and then share his life together with God’s people.

Here is the problem with most of what passes for church life today, including many house churches: Rather than teaching people how to live dependent on Jesus Christ, it supplants that dependency by its misguided attempt to take the place of Jesus in people’s lives. Instead of teaching them how to live in him, they make them dependent on the structures and gatherings of what we call church. Our expressions of church life just become another thing to stand in the way of people living deeply and fully in him.

But people who are learning to live deeply in a relationship with Jesus will find the sheer joy of sharing life with others who are doing the same. They can cross paths for a moment, or walk together for years, without having to manipulate or control each other. Because those people will realize that Jesus is the only one in control after all.

Unfortunately most believers have no idea how to live that way. We seem content to keep them dependent on our programs and services. It explains why so many expressions of church always promise more than they deliver. We can tinker forever with different methods of church life, but if we don’t get this right, all our efforts will fall short. If you need help find some people who are living this way, who are not gathering a ‘band of disciples’, and ask for their help.

Church life grows out of a group of people who are focused on Jesus. Focus on the church, and you will always be disappointed. Focus on Jesus and you will find him building the church all around you.

Everywhere a Movement

Everywhere I go now, people ask me about the ‘house church movement,’ hoping it will provide the answer to their hunger for real body life. While I greatly prefer relational environments to institutional ones, every time I hear the word ‘movement’ my heart sinks. I’m convinced that the day we call what God’s doing a movement is the day it has already begun to die. I’ve seen many movements come and go –Charismatic, discipleship, deliverance, healing, intercession, spiritual warfare, prophetic, worship, and apostolic just to name a few. All of them came up hollow in the end, not because God wasn’t in some of it, but because people hijacked his work to serve their own needs and ambitions.

Calling something a movement inflates our own sense of importance and separates us from the multi-faceted working of God that transcends any particular way of doing things. Many years ago I was part of a denomination that called itself a movement. We used that term to make people feel that they were part of something more significant than other ‘less enlightened’ believers who didn’t do things the way we did. I think God grieves at such distinctions.

Labeling the joy of learning to share Christ’s life in our homes as the ‘House Church Movement’ takes our focus off of Christ and puts them either on the uniqueness of our methods or the voices of self-appointed experts. Either way, we trade our focus on Jesus for our own self-needs and miss the joy of authentic body life.

Sitting in a home in Buffalo, NY recently a friend handed me a new book on the house church movement. The subtitle nearly floored me, “From the Radical Men Who Are Leading this Revolution.” One of the authors I considered friend enough to write and ask him if he could explain to me how the cover of his book was anything less than blasphemous.

If the church is truly the work of Jesus, and in it he has first place in everything, how does anyone claim to lead what God is doing? It is either his work or it isn’t? Please understand I don’t think these are malicious men out to harm God’s church. These in particular honestly want to see the church come to some kind of wholeness, freedom and life. However, the way they go about it demonstrates that while they understand a bit of God’s ways, they’ve come to know little of his character.

So while their book highlights many of the ways God has asked us to share his life together, it’s laced with the poisonous notion that we can produce that life by getting the mechanics right or by following the right leader. Such teaching actually circumvents the priorities it espouses by imposing a structure that will undermine those priorities.

Of course my friend did not agree with me. In fact, he said, the book was selling briskly. I have no doubt of that. Part of the reason we create movements is because people want models they think they can simply implement in their own communities.

Super Models

Many people ask me for a model for church life, hoping some future book might lay it out for them. I hate to disappoint them, but I don’t even believe there is a model they can implement that will produce the vitality of authentic fellowship. It is not produced in mechanics but in the hearts of people God is transforming to be like himself.

You can take the most biblical guidelines in the world and if you implement them at the expense of learning how to live dependent upon Jesus, and the result is that it will still only be a substitute for Jesus presence, rather than a place where fellow-pilgrims share his life together.

Jesus did not leave us with a model to build, but a guide to follow. We experience the life of the church not because we meet a certain way or in a certain place, but because we learn to listen to God together and let him teach us how to share his life. If we substitute any method or design for that process, we will end up following it instead of him and building a counterfeit instead of the real deal. I know of no greater distraction to the depth of relationships God wants us to share, than when we give our best efforts to doing something great for God. He didn’t ask us to work for him, but with him.

Beware of any model or would-be leader who wants to tell you what to do, rather than help you hear him Jesus. Are there real leaders in the Body of Christ today? Of course! But they are not heading up movements or devising models, they are helping people know who Jesus really is and learn how to follow him. Religion results when men and women, with their best intentions, best activities and best programs try to accomplish God’s working. It always leads to well-intentioned programs that will do some good, but never rise to bear the great fruits that God intends and only he can accomplish.

Many think I’m so concerned about organized religion because I’ve been hurt by the worst of it. That isn’t quite true. I think it’s greatest danger comes not when it is obviously flawed, but when it works well–giving people an aesthetic experience or a place to park their guilt, and missing out on a real engagement with the King of Glory. When it convinces us that sitting in the same room or greeting each other briefly in the parking lot is real fellowship, we’ll miss the greater joy of supportive relationships that will help us all respond better to what God is doing in us.

Accept No Substitutes

What I love about the work of the Spirit in our day is that it is not being driven by an organization, a book or a charismatic speaker. God’s Spirit is creating a hunger in his people that defies the confines of religion or a particular way of doing things, and seeks to drink deeply of his presence and share an effective life with other fellow travelers.

Some people are finding others with that hunger inside more institutional congregations, and some are finding them outside of it. If you haven’t found people like that yet, don’t despair. God has not made all the connections he is going to make. Just don’t over trade the passion in your heart to settle for a shadow of body life and miss the real thing.

Real body life allows Jesus to have first place in everything, and encourages people to the heights of knowing him. It frees people on the journey of being transformed by God to be authentic and not have to conform or pretend. It shows them how to get involved in each other’s lives, not to manipulate others but to encourage God’s greatest work in their lives.

Why is that so difficult to find? It may be that too many believers are so focused on their own needs they don’t know how to engage others in true fellowship. It may be that we settle for cheap models that do some good in the short-term, but in doing so disarm the deeper yearnings for authentic body life. It may be that we’ve never learned the sheer joy of letting Jesus be the Head of his church.

If we don’t get this right, it won’t matter where or how we meet. It will still be centered on us, and fall far short of his glory. Why don’t you ask God to teach you how to let Jesus have first place in your heart and to help you find people who share that passion? I can’t imagine a prayer that would excite him more and when that happens he will show you how and where you can live out that life in him.

© Copyright 2001 by Lifestream Ministries, Used with Permission, Permission is herby granted to make copies for free distribution.