I love to express what I feel called to say. Writing helps me to open up my heart and do that. I hope that what I write helps you in some way. I hope it makes you think, encourages you, or inspires you. If it challenges you or if you disagree, I hope you know that I respect your right to have a different point of view.
Watching someone control your computer remotely, is an example of how Jesus want’s to direct you from the inside. Accept?
Jesus said, “Follow Me.” Following takes motion. You can’t follow if you’re locked in place mentally, emotionally, and spiritually.
Religious people want to get you plugged into a routine, an organization, or a place. Jesus wants you plugged into Him.Human plans and programs tend to fence Jesus in and impede Him from taking direct control church services.
An orchestra gathers to be led by a conductor. An ekklesia gathers to be led by the living Jesus.
Spirit-led meetings can happen anywhere and anytime two or more people focus on Jesus and then say and/or do what He says. Jesus’ Town Hall Meeting (His assembly) isn’t bound to any place or any schedule.
When Christians aren’t submitted to and in tune with the Spirit, they aren’t on the same page with each other.Every Christ-follower needs to be trained to continually and actively hear the living Jesus and do what He tells them to.
I want to let my heart freely frolic with the living Jesus. Don’t fence me in.
In Ephesians, the Bible lists five roles to help Christians keep each other connected to and rolling along with the living Jesus. They aren’t offices or titles, but servant gifts designed to empower all Christ-followers to be led by the Spirit and to frolic with God’s joy.
The five roles are supposed to connect people with Christ, the living Head, so they can be joined and held together by Him as one body.To function in the five roles in Ephesians requires that we “be completely humble and gentle…patient, bearing with one another in love.
The goal of the five roles is to train Jesus’ followers to live and love like He does and be united in their relationship with Him.The 5 roles are to steer people clear of getting stuck in the rut of continually being taught but not doing what they ought.
Here are the five roles of Ephesians 4:
Apostles are envoys sent to humbly demonstrate the presence and reality of the living, resurrected Jesus.
Prophets are seers who courageously proclaim and do what God shows them, no matter what it costs them.
Evangelists are persuaders who live and speak in a way that touches people’s heart and convinces to surrender to and obey Jesus.
Pastors are shepherds who support and coach people as they help them follow Jesus, not themselves or an organization.
Teachers are trainers giving people hands-on experience in the skills and knowledge that they need to be disciples of Jesus.
Detached observers are happy with church. People who want to actively participate in seeking God, long for more.
The Bible says Christians are led by the Spirit, but that’s impossible if we’re unwilling to surrender our control and be flexible.God’s assembly gathers to demonstrate the hearing of faith by walking in the freedom of the Spirit.
Jesus is looking for loving people, overflowing with compassion, not for enforcers trying to coerce people to act right.Religion without humility and a heart full of God’s love can quickly turn mean.
Biblical Christianity doesn’t need any human government to support it or defend it. It stands on the living, resurrected Jesus.
Jesus chose Love, not force, Humility, not pride, Truth, not deception.
Jesus first: Before self, Before money, Before a nation, Before pleasure. Matthew 6:33.
To approach Jesus as just a religious idea or concept is to miss out the glorious reality of “Christ in you.”Christianity was never intended to be about rules, but about the risen Jesus living in and thru His followers.
Ancient Pharisees misused the prophets. They honored them but ignored their message. Modern ones honor Jesus but ignore His message.
Grace is like when your favorite football team scores a game-winning touchdown. You didn’t earn it or make it happen, but it releases an inner flood of joy and enthusiasm that spontaneously overflows from within you and causes you to make celebratory actions with your body. Real grace produces works that overflow from within you.
The Bible says to live by the Spirit (God’s presence directing you from within), not by the flesh (your desires and feelings).Conscience is the mysterious something within us that tries to convince us to avoid wrongful desires and emotions.
Church too often divides, waters down, and tames the body of Christ.If Peter had been a typical pastor, he would have preached a sermon to the people in the boat instead of walking on the water with Jesus.
The theology of Jesus’ resurrection without continually experiencing His presence is incomplete.Trying to be a Christian without daily following the living Jesus is like trying to see with your eyes closed.
If you say Jesus is alive but ignore Him most of the time, why should anyone believe you?The disciples let Jesus sleep until a storm rocked their boat. Hear God’s wake up call.
If we say that Jesus is alive, but don’t surrender control to Him, we don’t really believe what we say. When the body of Christ started meeting as church, it became programmed, systematized, and passive. We need to let the body of Christ be actively and directly led by its living Head–the risen Jesus.
Christians are lectured but seldom trained, preached at but rarely coached, given weekly talks but not much hands-on experience.You don’t run your body with a program, a curriculum, or by letting a committee make decisions for it. Why would Jesus run His that way?
The body of Christ belongs to the risen Jesus, not to a denomination, a preacher, a location, or a congregation.Unfortunately it is segregated in too many ways to mention–broken into unconnected churches that disagree with each other.
You go to the gym to work out your body, not to have it preached at. Maybe Jesus wants to work out His body and not have it preached at.I believe that the living Jesus wants to work out & train His body, the way a coach works out and trains his team.
The two greatest hindrances to letting Jesus actively lead a church meeting are human control and unbelief.Some people are churched yet spiritually homeless. Others are unchurched yet abiding in Christ.Christianity is about where you are in a relationship with the living Jesus, not about if you go to church.
The Bible is like my refrigerator. When I open it up and look inside, I see light. It shows me Christians who lived out of the religious box and inspires me to follow suit.
What matters least about
Meetings of the body of Christ
Is "location, location, location."
What matter's most
Is that Jesus is allowed
To control the gathering.
Photo by Paulo Mu00e1rcio Dos Santos on Pexels.com
Attempting to take a broad and honest look at history and its impact on the present, is research, not Critical Race Theory. American history is a peculiar mixture of idyllic freedom for some and unjust, lifelong bondage for others. Both storylines should be taught.
If a public health mask mandate is a threat to freedom, then slavery was an unimaginable holocaust.Here is America’s historical irony: Freedom loving men forcibly held innocent men, women, and children in a lifetime of cruel, unpaid labor.
We need truth and reconciliation: A factual telling of the cruelty committed in American history is therapeutic, not unpatriotic.All history matters, yet we honor some history while ignoring, hiding, or denying the parts of history that we don’t like.
Here’s an example of selective history: Americans want to remember Pearl Harbor and 911, but forget about slavery and lynching.
American history: Taxation without representation was declared “tyranny,” while the lifetime enslavement of innocent people was declared the “peculiar institution.” One Founding Father broke the mold (but today he is mostly forgotten). Founding Father, Robert Carter III, freed and paid his 442+ slaves so he could be true to his belief in freedom.
Slavery: There’s no excuse For millions of lifetimes Of wage theft And cruel abuse.
When Jesus is un-institutionalized (freed from the confines of religious organizations), He begins to demonstrate His power and presence.To function as the body of Christ we need Jesus realized, not Jesus institutionalized.
The body of Christ isn’t an organization. It’s a movement that follows the living Jesus. It doesn’t institutionalize Jesus.
“Church” has far too often drifted away from being the body of Christ with Jesus as its Head and become a man-led institution.A religious institution is a poor substitute for Christ-revealed intuition as recorded in the Bible and spoken in your heart.
Institutionalized Christianity often lacks the vibrancy of spontaneously following and obeying the living, resurrected Jesus.For years I only saw the institutionalized Jesus. Then my eyes beheld the living Jesus and I’ve been enthralled by Him ever since.
In the body of Christ, each member is directly connected to the living Jesus, the Head. Spiritual paralysis results when members ignore Him.The body of Christ is a Jesus-led movement, not a weekly meeting for religious amusement.
How to un-stitutionalize Jesus: 1) Talk to Him like He’s real; 2) Ask Him to speak to you; 3) Listen to what He tells you; and 4) Do what He says. Immerse yourself in the Bible because the risen Jesus won’t contradict it, but will make it come alive to you.
By doing what Jesus says, we learn what He means. Hearing sermons can never substitute for daily obedience.If we’re not actively teaching people about what we’re learning by following Jesus, we will stunt our spiritual growth.
When we gather as Jesus’ body, what happens in the meeting should be His choice, not our choice or a pastor’s choice.Jesus said, “Don’t look back,” but people tend to look back to study Him in the past, more than trying to find Him in the present.
Until Jesus becomes a daily, present reality to you, we’re not yet experiencing biblical Christianity.The living Jesus wants to give us power to resist and overcome our false feelings, tormenting thoughts, and defective desires.
When we see people’s heart, we love them more deeply. Ekklesia allows Christ-followers to see each other’s heart.Ekklesia values every member of the body of Christ and believes in their ability to hear and share what the Spirit is saying.It allows us to test out and develop our spiritual wings in the safe environment of the gathered body of Christ.Ekklesia trains Christ-followers to actively pursue the living Jesus, not to sit passively and let someone else do it.
Ekklesia is a way the early Christians connected with the living Jesus and with one another.When an English Bible says “church” it causes people to think of modern churches, not about the way Christians met in the Bible as ekklesia.
Jesus isn’t a story, Bible study subject Or sermon topic. He’s alive and present!
Free Gas for Your Think Tank -- Short Reflections, Lasting Encouragement 