In
our last meditation we saw that the Lord Jesus wants to manifest His life in
our churches through our passionate love for God and for each other. We
realized that God’s Spirit is well able to produce this Christlike love in our
hearts and in our congregations. However, the question is how we protect Jesus’
life in our churches against Satan’s attacks.
To
answer that question, we need to start with reflecting on God’s command:
“Be (or: grow, become)
strong in the Lord...” (Ephesians 6:10*)
Pondering this command of God, there are two questions to consider beforehand:
1.) What does it
mean for a church to be ‘in the Lord’?
2.) How can a
church be (or: grow, become) strong ‘in the Lord’?
A healthy congregation is in all
likelihood a mix of Christians from different age groups and different cultures,
with different characters, different likes and dislikes, different educational
backgrounds, different professions, different skills, different gifts,
different experiences, different ‘levels’ of faith (from new converts up to
mature believers), different degrees of commitment, etc. Normally, such a church
would welcome interested outsiders into their midst as well.
Any church is in one way or
another a heterogeneous community. Given that fact, how can an entire church
community ever grow strong ‘in the Lord’?
In the upcoming meditations we will try to answer both questions in a series of ‘Interruptions’. Only after having answered these two questions, I think that we can start to reflect biblically on the topic: how do we protect Jesus’ life in our churches against Satan’s attacks?
In the upcoming meditations we will try to answer both questions in a series of ‘Interruptions’. Only after having answered these two questions, I think that we can start to reflect biblically on the topic: how do we protect Jesus’ life in our churches against Satan’s attacks?
Let’s
first start exploring God’s Word to see what it means for a church to be ‘in
the Lord’.
Translation: * New International Version.
About "God's major project: transforming me and my church into the likeness of Christ", see Meditations 44-48.
About
“Corporate, Christlike love for God the Father and His Son Jesus Christ”, see Meditations 63-99.
About “The Church as a
‘Corporate Personality’, see Meditations 63-65.
About “The Church as a
new (Messianic) community, consisting of all the followers of Jesus”, see Meditation
29.
About “The two Tracks of Maturing in
Christlikeness”, see Meditation 100.
