Basic Preparation for Transformation
Week 1, Email 3, Friday
Week 1, Email 3, Friday
Christians Together Absolutely Necessary: Part One
Life together obeying Scripture is the key to growing more and more into the image of Jesus and preparing for heaven. Interdependent Christianity is biblical. The individualistic Christianity predominant today is short-sighted and disobedient. Since each of us requires help from others, true, significant spiritual growth requires deep, biblical Christian relationships.
For example, how can we become more like our Savior who forgave Peter, one of his closest friends, for denying him three times? We must risk close, intimate relationships that sometimes really hurt. To become like Jesus, it is necessary that we learn to forgive those who hurt us the very most After death no one will hurt us and this change into Christ-likeness will be eternally impossible. Adam needed a helper even before he sinned. As sinners, we desperately need one another’s help to grow to be so deeply forgiving.
For the deep spiritual growth we want before we enter heaven, much more than the casual relationships in church activities is required. What is absolutely necessary is the smaller, committed, more intense. essential relationships with those in our inner circle of Christian friends and relatives. It is here that Jesus promises to be most present.
“For where two or three come together in my name,
there am I with them.”
Matthew 18:20
there am I with them.”
Matthew 18:20
We must ask ourselves what needs to happen when we are with our Christian friends, with our husband or wife, and with our family. Within these relationships Christianity burns the hottest.
The Enemy of Spiritual Growth
God’s enemy Satan obstructs our obedience to the scriptural commands for Christian life together. The devil knows the necessity of deeper Christian relationships for believers to become more like Jesus. Therefore, his strategy is to divide Christians and offer them things God does not want for them. Satan did this in the Garden of Eden when he offered individual choices and behavior by speaking only to Eve, effectively separating her from Adam.
Almost always when God’s people have disappointed Him they have acted alone, sometimes severely damaging their own faithfulness, and even putting the lives of others at great risk. King David was alone and private and he committed adultery and murder. Achan (Joshua 7) was alone and stole things that belonged to God – and God said all of Israel sinned. Soldiers died needlessly. And, today we listen to sermons and read Christian books that tell us to make spiritual progress by just knowing the truth, not even hinting that we must have help from our friends, spouse, or family.
Individualistic faith does not recognize the priority of corporate faith and is a most harmful evil. An almost exclusive emphasis on the faith of the individual cripples Christians and our Lord’s church. It keeps a person’s faith small, undressed and naked without the beautiful clothing woven by the intricate relationships of obedient Christian community.
Those wonderful relationships are the ways of God’s Kingdom that make us more like Jesus, bring forth personally-expensive worship, create in us the power to defeat evil, as well as prepare us for heaven’s relationships with believers and angels, heaven’s rewards, and bonding with God Almighty in eternity. Deeply biblical relationships are the power of the church. What a shame that they are so absent or watered down in today’s culture of American Christianity.
The Togethers of Scripture, loaded with hundreds of specific scriptures, comprise the wardrobe and lifeblood of spiritual life and growth. Implementation of the 65 Togethers gives God what He has asked for and designed for us from the beginning. Implementing the Togethers beyond present levels of personal and corporate comfort will revitalize Christians and the church. Staying with the present form of faith, characterized as it is with focus on the faith of the individual apart from the transforming crucible of costly biblical relationships, will continue to trap us in a minimized form of Christianity. This drastically retards our spiritual growth and readiness for heaven. Individual faith with minimal biblical relationships has negative effects on each of us and all of us.
But, obeying the Bible in its instructions for Christian relationships positively affects everything now — and everything later in heaven – forever!
Individualized Christianity Is an Oxymoron
Biblical Christianity is not an individual experience. Even though others are around, most Christian gatherings are individualistic and far short of the mark.
Corporate faith is essential to individual faith and individual faith is essential to corporate faith. Yet contemporary Christianity is oriented toward the individual with minor attention given to faith together. Superficial, friendly, and polite gatherings are not really “church’ by the example and instruction of Scripture.
We bless God by living His Way, by bringing the ways of the Kingdom into everyday life.
The Enemy of Spiritual Growth
God’s enemy Satan obstructs our obedience to the scriptural commands for Christian life together. The devil knows the necessity of deeper Christian relationships for believers to become more like Jesus. Therefore, his strategy is to divide Christians and offer them things God does not want for them. Satan did this in the Garden of Eden when he offered individual choices and behavior by speaking only to Eve, effectively separating her from Adam.
Almost always when God’s people have disappointed Him they have acted alone, sometimes severely damaging their own faithfulness, and even putting the lives of others at great risk. King David was alone and private and he committed adultery and murder. Achan (Joshua 7) was alone and stole things that belonged to God – and God said all of Israel sinned. Soldiers died needlessly. And, today we listen to sermons and read Christian books that tell us to make spiritual progress by just knowing the truth, not even hinting that we must have help from our friends, spouse, or family.
Individualistic faith does not recognize the priority of corporate faith and is a most harmful evil. An almost exclusive emphasis on the faith of the individual cripples Christians and our Lord’s church. It keeps a person’s faith small, undressed and naked without the beautiful clothing woven by the intricate relationships of obedient Christian community.
Those wonderful relationships are the ways of God’s Kingdom that make us more like Jesus, bring forth personally-expensive worship, create in us the power to defeat evil, as well as prepare us for heaven’s relationships with believers and angels, heaven’s rewards, and bonding with God Almighty in eternity. Deeply biblical relationships are the power of the church. What a shame that they are so absent or watered down in today’s culture of American Christianity.
The Togethers of Scripture, loaded with hundreds of specific scriptures, comprise the wardrobe and lifeblood of spiritual life and growth. Implementation of the 65 Togethers gives God what He has asked for and designed for us from the beginning. Implementing the Togethers beyond present levels of personal and corporate comfort will revitalize Christians and the church. Staying with the present form of faith, characterized as it is with focus on the faith of the individual apart from the transforming crucible of costly biblical relationships, will continue to trap us in a minimized form of Christianity. This drastically retards our spiritual growth and readiness for heaven. Individual faith with minimal biblical relationships has negative effects on each of us and all of us.
But, obeying the Bible in its instructions for Christian relationships positively affects everything now — and everything later in heaven – forever!
Individualized Christianity Is an Oxymoron
Biblical Christianity is not an individual experience. Even though others are around, most Christian gatherings are individualistic and far short of the mark.
Corporate faith is essential to individual faith and individual faith is essential to corporate faith. Yet contemporary Christianity is oriented toward the individual with minor attention given to faith together. Superficial, friendly, and polite gatherings are not really “church’ by the example and instruction of Scripture.
We bless God by living His Way, by bringing the ways of the Kingdom into everyday life.
. . . your kingdom come, your will be done,
on earth as it is in heaven.
Matt 6:10
from The Lord’s Prayer
But seek first his kingdom,and his righteousness,
and all these things will be given to you as well.
Matthew 6:33
on earth as it is in heaven.
Matt 6:10
from The Lord’s Prayer
But seek first his kingdom,and his righteousness,
and all these things will be given to you as well.
Matthew 6:33
Since a king and one subject is a pretty shabby kingdom, much of what we do in the faith by ourselves should be for when we are together. There is a reason why King Jesus said, “For where two or three come together in my name, there am I with them.” (Matthew 18:20) Jesus did not elevate the Christian individual nor recommend an individual focus for our faith. (The whole of the Lord’s Prayer is in the plural.) Nor was He making a promise for larger groups of Christians. Relationships between a few is where the presence of Jesus is most powerful.
Relationships are most important in God’s kingdom, here and beyond the grave. Our relationship together with God is certainly the most important thing. Then, our relationships with one another is next most important. Love (agape: self denial for another’s good) is the essence of both relationships.
Relationships are most important in God’s kingdom, here and beyond the grave. Our relationship together with God is certainly the most important thing. Then, our relationships with one another is next most important. Love (agape: self denial for another’s good) is the essence of both relationships.