Devotionals

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"Ask not what your church can do for you, but what you can do for your church."

When you search for a church to call home, what do you look for? Are you mostly looking for how you can benefit from the church or where you can best be of service? Well, the best answer is neither option; rather, it's simply to find the place God wants you to be. That being said, do you go to church merely to be 'fed' or to be part of a community. If you go there just to be 'fed' you're not part of the community. How can you be, if you just sit in the pew (or whatever) on Sunday and take up space? Maybe you join in on fellowship hour, but is that enough? I don't think so.

I also do not think that being part of a church community is optional. From what I've heard, there are growing numbers of individual Christians out there, Christians who are not part of a church body. The idea of an 'individual Christian' to me is an oxymoron. Such a creature should not exist. We must find a home for ourselves in a specific church body. I reiterate that I don't think finding such a body is optional.

When we do become members of a particular church, how do we spend our membership? Do we leech off the work of others, or do we contribute to the church? Some prefer simply to be 'fed', yet for those who don't take part actively in a church, that feeding is something like giving food to someone with a tape worm in their body. The nutrients go in, but they don't go to sustain and feed the body they're intended to nourish. To put it another way, Jesus told us that if we hear the words he speaks and put them into practice, it's like building a house on a firm foundation, but when we do not put his words into practice, it's like we're building a house on sand. One way to ensure that we're building our house on a firm foundation is to put those words into practice in a church community. We need to in order to actually grow as Christians.

For me, what does this mean? Ah, I long to commit fully to a church body and become part of a community. I thirst for it, yet obstacles get in the way. God may be calling my family to one church, but barriers stand in the way of us integrating into the community. What to do? Please pray for us that God may give us assurance of the path we're to take.

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