Sharing on God’s house today. I would like to read from 1 Timothy 3, verses 14 and 15.
These things I write to thee, hoping to come to thee more quickly.
But if I delay, in order that thou mayest know how one ought to conduct oneself in God’s house, which is the assembly of the living God, the pillar and base of the truth.
Let’s pray together.
Lord, thank You that we are able to gather together this morning. Thank You for this encouragement this morning to take our stand and declare Your name together. Lord, we stand in Your presence and confess Jesus as our Lord this morning.
Thank You that we can open up Your Word and fellowship. Lord, we commit the time to You. We pray that You bless Your Word and speak to us, and that Your Word will sink deep into our hearts. May we truly meet You this morning. In Jesus’ name, amen.
I want to talk about God’s house and just have a brief word this morning—brief for me. Next week, I also have something to share on God’s house. So, this is sort of some foundation-laying.
Specifically, I want to share for the sake of some among us who I feel are just like me. When the topic of the house of God comes up, we may think of certain things, and it may not register with us.
When I first became a Christian, talking about the church or the house of God was not something odd to me, but I never questioned or thought about any details in the Bible to do with the church. I never questioned why we do what we do, whether we should meet this way or that way, or why churches act the way churches act—even talking about structure, government, or specifics in God’s house.
This verse says that we would know how to conduct ourselves in the house of God. That phrase stuck out to me, because sometimes the principles are hard for us to put into practice. Sometimes the knowledge we have about the house of God is vague, and when it comes down to doing it, we get lost.
We may know about the headship of Christ over the body—that Christ is Head over the body—but when it comes to doing something specifically that seems to cut Him off from leadership, we do not even think about it.
So I thought it would be helpful to look back to the time before the church fell apart, before people were falling away, while the churches were in first love. I mean when the house of God was the house of God in experience and in time on the earth—not when all Christians were absolutely mature and perfect, because that has not happened in time.
But I mean the time before the general crowd of Christians started to do their own things more—back when you could say, “This is the house of God,” and gather together with those believers.
Considering those things, I hope to skim through some experiences the early church had, look at some of the details, and consider the principles we normally talk about with God’s house. We will see how those principles actually applied in their time.
Next week, we are going to look at some verses in 2 Timothy, which are sort of parallel verses. By the time of that second letter, the church had started to decline. All Asia had turned away from the apostle Paul, and he talks about a great house, different from God’s house, with different types of vessels. He talks about a big house that is partially man-made.
But right now, we just want to talk a little about God’s house. I have an appeal on my heart that I feel the Lord has been burdening me with, so we will get into that in a little bit.
How do we conduct ourselves in God’s house? There are two main principles. If you go back in the archives—and more archives—of messages shared here and in conference times, there are two principles that come up a whole lot.
One principle is that God’s house is God’s house. The house of God belongs to God. If it comes down to the church being the body of Christ, Christ is actually the Head of the body. He is in charge.
If you think of your own house, if you are in charge of your house, you can choose how to decorate it or whether to remodel it. It is your house. You have ownership and leadership in it. Somebody does not just come in and start writing on your walls—except at my house, but we have a chalkboard on the wall, so that works.
People do not just come in and rearrange your house. It has to be approved by you. You are deciding—or your wife, you know—where the furniture goes.
Eventually, depending on your speed, it may take us another ten years, but your home seems to match your personality a little bit. The things on the wall, the arrangement of the furniture, and what is on the coffee table tell us about you, because you are living in your house.
In God’s house, He lives in His house. The house reflects Him, and what He is doing is what belongs in His house. He is very specific about His house.
Just like in the Old Testament, they were building a shadow of His house with the tabernacle. When Moses was given the instructions, they were very specific—down to so much detail that, when you read it, you can get lost. But all those details matter because this is God’s house.
Moses was faithful in God’s house. He built it exactly as God said. He did not add in his own extra stuff. So that is one big principle.
The other principle is that God’s house is one house. We can talk about this in terms of the unity of the body of Christ, or we can simply say that it is not divided. The house of God is all one.
We are not cut up, and we all belong to the Lord. All who belong to the Lord are part of His house. There is no separation in it.
Jesus is Lord, and Jesus is King. This principle is played out in our lives: He is Lord and King, and that is the experience in His house. He is in charge.
The other thing is that He is our Savior. All who have been saved belong to the house of God. It is really important, because in time we have divided up, but according to God, in God’s house, there is no division. All who are saved belong to Him.
In Ephesians 4, there is the phrase, “till we arrive at the unity of the faith.” This has to do with His headship. There is an arrival at oneness in growth and understanding that the church is being brought into.
The church is maturing, and this has to do with Jesus being Lord and Christ being Head. The body is growing up into the Head. As we go along together as God’s people, we grow together.
You may know a little more of Christ than I know in some areas, and maybe I know something of Christ that I can share with you. If we are open to the Lord and pursuing Him together, we can share with each other. Even though we both do not know much, we can both grow together.
Eventually, we arrive more and more at this unity of the faith. We become closer and closer in maturity, revelation, and understanding. The church is growing in this way.
But there is something else that holds us together, called the unity of the Spirit. These two phrases are mentioned in Ephesians 4.
Even though the church is growing, even though we do not all see the same and do not all practice the same as Christians—and this has always been the case, even in the early church—we have something that we diligently keep: the unity of the Spirit.
This is what sticks us together. Basically, you have the Holy Spirit; you have been born again. I have the Holy Spirit. I have the life of God, and you have the life of God inside of you—the life of Christ. This life unites us together.
It is not because I understand the Lord’s return, or the timing of it, the same as you do that you and I can be built together as the church. Rather, it is because I have received eternal life and you have received eternal life.
Let’s jump into some specifics in the early church. Government in God’s house is one thing. First, we will talk about what some call extra-local workers, and then we will look at local leaders.
Why do we want to look at this? When I was first saved and pursuing the Lord, everything good, I thought, was God. I was in the midst of a bunch of leadership things in church organizations.
But it was not until somebody pointed out a passage of the Bible or an experience in the Bible and said, “This is the way they did it here,” that it clicked in my mind: God cares about this. God has His way, and He cares. We should care because He cares.
I feel that many of us may not care, but I feel this is on the Lord’s heart. When these things come up about His house, even the details, and when we are reading Scripture and looking into how people conduct themselves in the house of God, we need to care.
When that was written to Timothy, it came right after telling him about elders and deacons. Timothy was helping establish elders and deacons in the church, so Paul gave him all these details. Later, he talked about the widows’ list in the church and other things—so many specifics—because he did not know whether he would be delayed or not.
But he cared because we should know how to conduct ourselves in the house of God. Timothy cared. Timothy was a man of God, serving the Lord and praying for those saints.
I cannot just push a button and make you care. But what happened with me is that I did not care, and then somebody showed me some details. I started to think about it. I started to be concerned, just slightly, in my mind.
The more I pursued the Lord, the more the Lord touched that soft spot in my heart, saying, “There is something I care about. Do you care about what I care about?”
I really enjoyed some things about some churches. Actually, for a while, some friends and I went to different church groups, and we created an email address called “Sword Sharpener,” like “iron sharpens iron.” I think we called it “Iron Sharpeners.”
We would go to these different church groups, observe all their faults, and write them an email afterward about all the problems we saw in their church. None of them were happy about it, and we got a lot of angry emails back.
We thought we could step in and say, “They did not do well with this. Their announcements were very poor. The music was this way or that way.” But where did we get our measuring stick? Nothing from the Bible. It was just our opinions.
I started to compile all the things I really liked about church groups, because I visited a lot of different types—even some weird ones that I would not really call church groups. We found neat things, piled them together, and then tried to build our own church group, kind of. We did this Friday Night Live meeting.
Some of it was fun and helpful, but all our ideals were compiled outside the Scriptures. We were not concerned with what God thinks about the details of His house. How does God want us to meet and gather? Instead, we were interested in what the church had for us.
In the beginning of the church, when the church in Jerusalem was birthed, there was travail among 120 believers. The Lord asked them to stay. After the Lord Jesus rose, He appeared for forty days, showing Himself to many people—even over five hundred people—but He asked them to go to Jerusalem and wait.
They waited there for ten days, until Pentecost. Pentecost is fifty days after Passover, and Passover was the time when the Lord was crucified and risen.
At Pentecost, after they had been praying for ten days, the Lord birthed the church through their prayers and unity. The church was brought forth as one body. The anointing oil came down upon the Head and also over the whole body, and the church was born.
Right away, people saw this. Pentecost was one of the main festivals, so people had come from out of town. Jews from other places, people who cared about God’s Word, were visiting.
When Peter stood up and shared with them about the fulfillment of prophecy and that Christ is Lord, they were convicted and asked, “What should we do?” He told them to repent and be baptized. Three thousand souls were saved that day and brought into the church.
Immediately, the group of 120 became 3,120, and more than that, because they were gathering daily and the Lord was adding to their number daily. There were already thousands gathering together.
In this early, newborn, first-love church, they had the apostles. The word apostle means “sent one”—someone sent from the Lord on His mission. Nowadays, we sometimes use the term missionary with a similar meaning.
The apostles were laboring, caring for, and shepherding the saints. They were preaching regularly, and the saints were gathering together. Acts 2:42 says they continued in the apostles’ teaching and fellowship, in prayers, and in the breaking of bread.
They had things in common. They were meeting in their homes, thankful and joyful. But there were twelve apostles serving so many people, including people from out of town who had moved there because this was what God was doing.
Soon afterward, Peter and John were present when a miracle happened. Peter preached the Word, and five thousand men were saved. We do not know how many women or others were saved, but surely many more came to the Lord.
Now there were probably more than ten thousand people, maybe approaching fifteen or twenty thousand. Problems happened, even in the early church, even in first love.
One problem was that there were a lot of people who needed care, including widows who needed food. The apostles were trying to care for them, but some of the Greek widows were neglected—probably because the apostles simply did not know about them.
When this problem became known, because Christ is Head over the church, they sought the Head. They prayed about it, and the Head of the church showed them a way forward.
They selected seven people. Nowadays we would call them deacons, although the passage does not use that word. But they were doing the practice of deacons, so the twelve apostles could devote themselves to prayer and the ministry of God’s Word.
Those seven had a testimony. They were full of the Holy Spirit and recognized by the saints as genuine men of God. They were asked to distribute food and take care of that detail.
The Lord blessed, the Word was blessed, and more people were added. Two of those seven are names we may recognize: Stephen, who was gifted in teaching and became the first martyr, and Philip the Evangelist.
After Stephen was martyred, the church was persecuted locally. Saul, who later became Paul, was one of those agreeing with Stephen’s death when he was stoned. The saints scattered into Judea, Samaria, and beyond.
In Acts 1, the Lord said that after the Holy Spirit came upon them, they would be witnesses in Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria, and to the end of the earth. Through persecution, they scattered into Judea and Samaria.
Philip the Evangelist went into Samaria, burdened with the Lord’s burden, preached the gospel, and souls began getting saved. The Samaritans were a mixed people, not regarded as fully Jewish, and there was much hostility between Jews and Samaritans.
Yet souls were saved there. Peter and John came and prayed for them. There was a representation of the oneness of the church, showing that Samaritans and Jews are one in the body of Christ.
But here is what I want to bring out: Philip the Evangelist was told by the Head of the church, “I want to take you away right now to a desert place,” and he went.
These extra-local workers do not create their own kingdom in one locality. I think this is really important to notice throughout Scripture.
If Philip had been selfish, not obeying the Head, he could have stayed in Samaria. All those people had just been saved. They were looking to Philip, and they needed so much help. He could have stayed there, become their man, and become their leader.
But instead, he was pulled away immediately. He went to a desert, helped an Ethiopian eunuch get saved, and then was taken to the coast. He traveled north along the coast, eventually stayed in a city, and raised a family. Later, we see Philip the Evangelist with daughters who were prophetesses.
Another person to mention is the prophet Agabus in the book of Acts. He appears a couple of times and seems to give prophecies like an Old Testament prophet. With Paul, he took Paul’s belt, tied himself up, and used that picture to give his prophecy.
He also came at another time and foretold a famine. The saints heard about the famine and wanted to give money to believers in Jerusalem, where the famine would be. Agabus was one of the prophets, but he shows up in several different places.
Apostles, prophets, evangelists, and shepherd-teachers helped multiple churches. Paul and Barnabas, for example, were gathering in Antioch with prophets and teachers. They were ministering to the Lord, praying, and fasting.
The Lord said, “Set apart Paul and Barnabas for the work I have for them.” They went forth, and afterward they were called apostles because they were sent out.
Paul went on his first missionary journey, and churches were raised up. New believers were saved in brand-new territory. On their way back, Paul and Barnabas established elders in those localities.
These local leaders, elders and deacons, were men of God. Specifically, let us talk about elders. In Scripture, as they went through cities, they established elders—plural.
The plurality of elders is a big deal in Scripture, even though it is not always a focus of teaching. If Christ is the Head of the church, why are there elders and not one elder?
How much easier it would be if there were one elder. He could just make a decision quickly, right? He would not have to long-suffer with other elders. But here is the reason: Christ is in charge of the church.
The elders, or elderhood, have to seek the Leader of the church for His direction. This is not an easy task, but it is God’s design to show that He is the Head of the church.
In that way, the saints are not looking to just one man. We are all expecting and knowing that Christ is leading His church. The biblical example is that there are elders in the church.
The letter to the Philippians begins, “To all the saints in Christ Jesus who are in Philippi, with the overseers and deacons.” An overseer is another name for an elder.
You can see this in Acts 20, where Paul speaks to the elders and calls them overseers in the same context. In 1 Timothy and Titus, overseer is used alongside elder.
The term overseer speaks of what they are doing: exercising oversight, protecting the flock, shepherding the flock, and being responsible for what is going on. The term elder speaks of spiritual maturity. It does not necessarily mean older in age, but maturity in the Lord.
One reason for the arrangement with elders is safety. Imagine one person leading the church, and if that person goes off, the church goes off.
In a business, there may be a president, a CEO, or a leader who makes decisions, and the buck stops there. But in the church, the CEO, President, and Leader is Christ. It all stops with Him.
How do you put that into practice? They have to seek the Lord and discover together. That means denying yourself. When you have an opinion, it has to get cleared up. It means things take time. This is God’s setup in the early church.
There are two types of gatherings I want to bring up: ministry of the Word and body ministry.
Remember those apostles, prophets, teachers, evangelists, and shepherd-teachers. There may be others ministering the Word as well. But when there is a meeting like the one we are in now, speaking is happening, and not everybody is doing something.
Hopefully, you are doing something like listening. Sometimes it is helpful if you pray. One time I was sharing and really messing up. A lady said, “Lord, help him,” and it really helped me.
I was forgetting where I was. She prayed, and I was like, “The Lord helped me.” You do not always have to say that out loud, because then I will always feel like I am messing up. But under your breath, you may be praying.
We should be actively listening. In the examples in Scripture, there are times when someone is sharing, such as when the apostles were ministering the Word at Solomon’s porch. Thousands were gathered together.
It would not be appropriate for everybody to start raising hands and speaking up with thousands of people gathered together. There would be a constant interruption. The meeting would last for months.
When one is sharing the Word and can completely finish the message, that is a certain type of gathering. The Word of God is being shared to help all of us function as the church.
Another type of meeting is when the church is functioning, doing our own ministry to each other. In these church gatherings, each of us is called to participate.
For example, we just had a breaking-bread time together. In that time, it is an open meeting. What is that experience like?
Christ is Head over the church, and every part of the church matters. Each one has a portion of Christ. You have your prayer, your Scripture, a song on your heart, or something to share.
As the Lord leads, He touches this one, touches that one, and touches another one. You see the beauty of the body of Christ. You see that Someone is in charge of the meeting, leading different people.
There is a prompting deep inside. As Christ the Head leads the body, He brings the church into this experience of oneness and unity. He uses this one, then this one, then another one. It is not one part, but all of us functioning together.
This is why the Lord said:
For where two or three are gathered together in My name, there am I in the midst of them.
This can cause a conflict in your mind because you think, “He is always with me. He will never leave me nor forsake me.” But this is something special. When the church gathers as the church and gathers unto His name, it means that He is in charge.
We are not coming with our own opinions, our own leading, or our own preferences. It is not, “I have my favorite song, and I just want to sing it.” Instead, we are looking to the Lord, who is leading the meeting.
He is directing the choir. He is leading our time. I have my portion, and I am ready. When He points to me or prompts me, I am able to share.
That is why the details of the house of God matter in our daily time, as we seek to know how to conduct ourselves in the house of God.
Another meeting would be the prayer meeting. If one person prays the whole time, we do not get the experience of the church gathering together.
But if we all gather together—if there are ten, fifteen, or twenty, and each one is open to the Lord’s leading to pray—what we get is the Head using His body. We get Christ praying through the church, and it is beautiful.
You get “There I am in the midst of you” in a big way: Christ as Head over the body. Not merely, “I am personally with you; I will never leave you nor forsake you,” but the experience that Christ is around and in you because you see Christ in your brother and sister. You see Christ functioning in the body.
This also applies when there is a fellowship time, such as Bible fellowship or open fellowship. In 1 Corinthians, there is a principle—and really a practice and a detail—that whenever you come together, each of you has something.
That is a big deal. When we come together for these church gatherings, each of us has something. Later in that chapter, Paul says that all things should be done decently and in order.
Why? Because Christ is Head over the body. Because this is God’s house. I come with something God gave me, perhaps for a fellowship time, and you have come with something.
That does not mean, “I have my thing, so I will blurt it out right now.” Rather, we are conscious that the Lord is in our midst. We have committed the time to Him. He is in charge of the time.
He leads one person to share something, another to bring something else up, and another to testify or share from Scripture. Perhaps the Lord showed you something yesterday, and as you are sharing it, another person receives a revelation.
Then it says in 1 Corinthians 14 to let the other one speak. You may see someone jumping in their seat as if they have received something. You can say, “Okay, go ahead,” because something clicked in their mind as you were speaking.
Why let them share? They may forget if they do not share right away. When the revelation is fresh, it is easy for them to bring it out. That does not mean you cannot finish what you were sharing or that what you had to share was not good.
But in the midst of the gathering, if the Lord ignites a spark in somebody, then 1 Corinthians 14 says to let that one share who has received revelation.
At the same time, there are rules for gathering together. It is not just that we are all one body and all have been saved, so every person can do whatever he feels he ought to do. The gatherings are in order, and they are beautiful, because this is God’s house.
It even gives instructions concerning functioning: let it be two or three; and concerning speaking in tongues, do not do it unless there is an interpretation. Why? Because in God’s house there is order, and the purpose is to edify each other.
I do not come to show off something. This does not only apply to tongues; it can apply to teaching. You may come to a Bible study with something the Lord has given you, but what you share should be for the edification of others.
Do not share because you read five commentaries and have more information than others. Share something the Lord is leading you to share in order to build up and bless the whole church.
It is the same with breaking-bread times or prayer meetings. Many of us are able to pray correct words on certain topics, but pray because you are looking to the Lord, because you have a nudge to pray, and pray from the heart.
When we are here breaking bread, pray or share something because the Lord has moved on your heart.
One detail we notice in the early church is that they met together often. Perhaps they were breaking bread daily in homes. Later in Acts 20, we see more of a habit of gathering to break bread on the first day of the week.
Of course, that was the time when Paul preached too long, Eutychus fell out the window and died, and then he rose back up. They broke bread right after that. Maybe that is why we have preaching after breaking bread now—no, I am joking.
Paul preached first and then they broke bread. But there are other details. In 1 Corinthians, Paul speaks about the first day of the week in connection with collecting money and setting something aside when they gathered together.
This gives us some example of when they met regularly. It does not mean it was a rule, as though they did not meet at other times.
We have to admit there are not a lot of details in the New Testament about how to do everything. There are not even specific labels for some meetings that we may have today.
For example, there is not specifically a regular sisters’ meeting described in the New Testament. Does that mean there cannot be a sisters’ meeting? There is not really a Bible fellowship time described by that name. Does that mean there cannot be a Bible fellowship time?
There is teaching about gathering together for edification. We may specify a gathering for a certain purpose, such as just women or just men, so they can share more freely. But what we are looking for is edification: our times of fellowship are to build each other up.
Even when looking into all the details in Scripture, there are not too many details. Why? Because we have to seek the Head of the body and learn how to go on together.
There is something to be gleaned from the foundational pattern of the churches. If you look through the Scriptures, the churches are in cities.
It will say, “the church of God which is in Corinth,” or the assembly in Jerusalem, and so on. The church was there in a city, and the believers were meeting together.
Why is the church divided up if there is one church? The reason the church is divided geographically is not because of a divisive heart; it is because believers live in different places.
According to Scripture, this is the legitimate reason to meet in a different place from another believer. It was simply assumed that all God’s people in Corinth were gathering together with the church in Corinth.
Back then, if you were in a certain city, the church was gathering together, and you belonged to one another because the church of God is one church and the house of God is one house.
When they met, they all met together. They were in that one place together. You may not be able to travel one day, five days, or ten days to a meeting, so you gather with those in your city.
That is why there were different local groups, but not different churches in the divisive sense. In one sense, it is all just one church. They all belong to the Lord. It is all His church.
You would not say, “This is so-and-so’s church.” They did not have labels. It was just the church, the assembly of God in Corinth. It was not a label like “Church in Corinth.” It was simply the church located in Corinth.
Even the believers in Corinth were not fully mature. The early church was not composed of people who were all mature and without carnality. They had their issues too.
In 1 Corinthians 1 and 3, Paul addresses divisions that were beginning among them. Some were helped by Apollos, some by Peter, and some were proud because they knew they should not be divided. All these different types were dividing in their hearts against each other.
Paul said this was immature. They were acting like babies. There is no division in the church. Did Paul die for you? Were you baptized into the name of Paul? You never follow a man. You all belong to Christ.
This is a big deal in Scripture. It is not always a law or command directly in our face, like “love one another.” But if we care about how we should conduct ourselves in the house of God, we should consider this detail: the churches were not divided on any grounds except locality.
To have an idea of the ideal helps us deal with what we have been dealt with now. That is what we will talk about next week. We need to know, “What would it be like if?” Then we can ask, “What do we do?”
There is a verse in 1 Timothy 6:11. It is the same book we have been in, considering how to conduct ourselves in God’s house.
But thou, O man of God, flee these things; and pursue righteousness, piety, faith, love, endurance, meekness of spirit.
Before this, Paul was talking about the love of money being a root of all kinds of evils and other things creeping in. He also mentioned in this letter that in the last days all kinds of corruption would come into the church.
This pursuit after righteousness, godliness, love, and faith is also mentioned in 2 Timothy after the decline. After Paul says there is this great house with different types of vessels, he says to be a vessel for honor and pursue this way together.
In order to pursue together with those who are pursuing this way, we have to be pursuing this way ourselves.
What I feel is the call of God to all of us who are numb about His house and about caring for what He cares about. There is a call in our lives to flee all the other things that pull at our hearts.
For some, it may be the love of money. It may be something that takes up more of our time than it ought. Maybe it is another ambition or another distraction. But there is something in our lives that we need to flee, run away from, and escape.
There is also a stance to take: pursuing after the things of God. It is those who want to pursue after the things of God who will care about the details of God’s house. They will ask, “Does God care how this is done or not?”
If the Lord shows us even a principle, we should care enough to pray and seek Him about applying it in our practice. It is this pursuit.
This morning, even when we were breaking bread, I felt something similar on my heart: a declaration. To say together, “I am leaving behind all this other pursuit, and I want to pursue the things God cares about—His house.”
He is doing this thing with His house. He is building His house, and it is on His heart. But there is other stuff we are pursuing that we need to flee and run away from.
Sometimes, hearing a detail we have never heard or hearing that God is in the details may ignite something in our hearts. He cares. He does not want a little leaven to creep in. He does not want a little impurity of man to slip into what He is doing.
Or perhaps the Lord has been speaking and nudging our hearts about something we need to flee—some worldliness, care, selfishness, or something else. It has been pulling us away from caring about what He cares about.
When it comes down to practice, we cannot practice what we know unless there is an inward pursuit. Even if we have heard about the house of God, know that Jesus is Lord, know that He is in charge of the house of God, and know that we are called to gather together, that inward pursuit has to be ignited.
Even if you have a conviction to be faithful in outward things—showing up and trying to participate—there is a pursuit inside that has to be ignited. It will not happen until we flee the other things distracting our hearts.
There is a first-love draw that pulls at us when we repel the other things and respond to the call of God in this love that is on His heart. As we respond to His love, He shares more and more with us.
The more we discover of Christ, the more He shows us His people. You cannot run away from it. You cannot grow and mature without Him pointing you back to His house.
He says, “Pray for this soul. Call this one and care about them. Show up to that Bible study and have something to share, then bless the church. Bring your portion. Do not come empty-handed.”
When you pursue Him and have this heart after Him, you find Christ as Head. You find His mind, His face, and His presence. Then He says, “See My people. Care for them and have a heart for them as I have a heart for them.”
That is more of His love, because you get to share it with Him. Then you start to see details. You start to see, “This does not match with the headship of Christ. This does not match with the oneness of the body of Christ. This does not match with the priesthood of all believers, with all of us sharing in this.”
I just hope we can flee this mess that is pulling us away from pursuing the Lord’s things. The most important thing the Lord is doing right now is His house.
Even though we are in a time of overlap of ages, and things are happening in the world, we are called to watch, pray, keep up, and be the house of prayer. But the thing God is finishing in this age is building His church.
The church, the bride, has not made herself ready yet, and we have our part to play. I feel this is God’s call to us.
Personally, I want to take my stand and say, “I am fleeing all the other things. I want to pursue what is on God’s heart.” I am begging you: let us all pursue together.
Let us all turn our hearts to Christ. Let us find what He is after. Whatever He has shown us, let us pursue Him together and care about what He cares about.
Let’s pray.
Lord Jesus, we pray that You would wash us clean with the precious blood of Christ. You know our many sins and shame. We come to You with our hands open, letting go of all the things we have been pursuing wrongly.
Lord, there are many things distracting us—many things that make what is on Your heart obscure or not tangible to us.
Lord, we pray that You would once again share Your love with us and show us what You are after. Open up heaven and give us the vision of what You are doing right now.
Lord, we pray that we can see each other as You see us, and that we can pursue together, diligently keep the unity of the Spirit, and pursue after You.
We commit ourselves to You, Lord, in Jesus’ name. Amen.