It seems to me that the Church was built so there could be unity. God did not want Christians to try to follow him on their own. It is important to have people to be accountable to, confess your sins to, encourage one another, pray for one another, and just help each other go through this thing we call the Christian life. In the New Testament Church, people in Christ Jesus were all as one body. I feel like we have distorted God's truth so much in our Churches today. We have all of these different denominations who believe in all different sorts of theologies. Don't get me wrong, having several places of worship is not necessarily a bad thing, in fact the community would probably be harder in a church that contained everyone who claims to be Christian. But in all of these denominations people believe that their certain theologies are superior to the rest of the churches. I have seen it time and time again where people look down on other churches and raise their church up higher. To be completely honest, I am to blame for that too. But that is so not what God intended. There are all of the churches, but God cares for the Church. The body of all the believers. The believers who can go anywhere, find another believer, and praise God that they are brothers or sisters instead of trying to find faults with them and their beliefs to make themselves feel better. What pride is going through the church. The only thing that matches it was the pride of the pharisees in Jesus' day. And Jesus rebuked them time and time again. The pharisees were supposed to be the ones who knew God. They were the ones leading God's people, but they missed God's most important thing. They didn't recognize God's son, they did not notice God himself, in the flesh, standing right in front of them. How could the men of God look him straight into the eye and not see him for who he was? Obviously they really did not know who God was. They enforced all these rules that got to a point of meticulous rubbish, so they obviously never understood the heart of God. God realized what they were making of him, and this is why he sent Jesus. So we could taste what the heart of God is really like. No longer would he be hidden behind all of these rules. You would see him live in the flesh as an example. Humans are very visual beings. Most of the time it is easier for us to understand if we have an example, if we can see it in action. So God sent us a perfect example and said… this is what you need to be like. Here is the standard. Can't live up to it? Try your hardest, love me passionately, and I'll take care of it from there. Thank God for sending Jesus so that we could have the Church. I don't know how well I would survive in a place filled with rules and regulations to reach God. But we go again back to the question. Why is today's church so much different from the Church in the New Testament? What happened to taking all that you have and sharing it with your brothers and sisters. Communism… thats what the early church was. Christians today talk so bad about communism, but in its perfect form, that is what the church was supposed to be. Sharing whatever you had, using your wealth to help out the less fortunate. Now we just throw a few dollars in the offering basket each Sunday. What happened to the Church? That pride came back into the church. A church cannot survive and prosper when the people in it are full of pride. You can have pride in one thing, and that is Jesus. You yourself, have nothing to be proud of. All humans are sinners who deserve nothing but the scorching flames of hell. But we have grace through Christ, and in that alone may we have pride. Pride in our savior who rescued us from the fire. When we have pride in ourselves it gets risky. Oftentimes we don't see it as pride in ourselves. We study the Bible and come to certain conclusions on what God is telling us, then the next person comes along with a different conclusion. Your pride suddenly takes over your pride in Christ. You don't want to even consider another person's conclusion, because you believe that yours was inspired by God. When both think that their conclusions were inspired by God, but they contradict one another, someone has to be wrong…. right? Or maybe both are wrong? We get in to this battle that we can't win. People will defend their theologies to their grave, because they don't want people to think that they don't have a real connection to Christ. That is called pride. If I can't humble myself enough to consider all of the options and seek God in the community of believers, then who am I to say that I am a Child of God. All I am is a child of my own flesh. I can't believe the separation of Churches all because of some petty unrelenting children, unwilling to sit down and seek truth as one. If many people who earnestly followed Christ, but saw some different things in the Bible got together in complete humility, for the sole purpose of seeking God's truth. I don't think that it would be possible for God to tell them all opposing things. There is only ONE truth. Culture today will tell you that everyone has their own truth, and whatever you feel is right. That cannot be true. One person can believe earnestly that Jesus rose from the dead, and the other can believe that he is still rotting in his grave. Obviously both things cannot be true. It hurts me to see churches splitting up because they do not see the same truths. If God has, but one truth shouldn't he share it with those who seek him? Shouldn't everyone who loves the lord find that truth? I believe when a Church splits they are both doing a huge injustice to themselves and each other. We call the Church Christ's Body. When I hear of one splitting, I get a mental image of a human body pulling itself apart so there are 2 halves. When you have 2 halves of a body, they are not both going to go their separate ways and do their own thing, they are going to flop on the ground like a fish until they bleed out and stop moving. To the Church of_______. Enter where you live in the space. It is not talking to your church building, it is talking to all of the Christians in that region, who are committed to making much of Christ. We can only bring Christ Glory if we are in unity. When we have separation in big "C" Church, there is discord that is not pleasing to God. For heaven's sake, why can't we stop being so into ourselves and just love Jesus and love each other?
Ephesians 4: 2-4
"Be completely humble and gentle; be patient,
bearing one another in love.
Make every effort to keep the unity of the spirit
through the bond of peace.
There is one body and one Spirit -
just as you were called to one hope when you were called-"
