It’s a Family Affair

What is Christianity anyway? Rm 10:9,10 gets you started on a road that is simpler than many want to make it, harder than the self sufficient man wants to believe and more service orientated than legalistic in nature. But the bottom line is it is a family affair. God wants to be your father. There are those out there that will teach we are all children of God. That opinion is, alas, another one that just is not supported by the truth. The two verses in Romans cited above concisely state what it takes to be born again and I submit to you that until you get born again you are not a child of God. See my earlier article about getting born again for more details. We are a family. When you walk in to your meeting of fellowship, does it feel as if you are just arriving home for the holiday dinner with your close-knit family. (Estranged families may have a hard time relating to what I am trying to convey here.) I have been to a lot of church groups that are more like a local Country club than a family. When you come in you are appraised by your clothes, accessories and other ways to how you might measure up in the world. There are churches that want to see your tax returns so that they can check on the percentage of your income you are sharing, not to find out if they can help you increase your earnings. They will harp on tithing and say it is God’s will. Do a Word study on that subject, you will be amazed to find out that to tithe Biblically, you must be a hunter or farmer so that you can give a tenth of either your catch, crops or livestock, and you must have a priesthood that needs a part of the harvest portions to live on and to be really right on you have to bring your tithe to Jerusalem, to the Temple. And of course the last thing is: this is to be done in payment for your sinful ways. Well last time I checked there is no temple in Jerusalem, It was torn down by the Romans in 70 AD. Jesus Christ paid the price for your sicknesses and your sins. We no longer have a priesthood that is forbidden by God to do business so that they could not be self supported. Now before you get all fired up and say no ministry should be supported, giving to support your teacher in the Word is not wrong or against scripture, just don’t legislate it and try to exact a tithe or call it tithing. Free will offerings are still in line with the Word but not tithes. This would be again picking and choosing what part of the Law you would like to observe and ignoring the rest, bringing the curse of the Law on your head. If we, the church, still met in our own houses rather than in big monstrous buildings named the house of God that need repairs, utilities, furnishings and who knows what else, I think we would find that the work of a ministry to be much less expensive than it is made out to be. And this from someone that lives in a city that has a “house of God” on a lot of corners. I might even win a wager (if I was silly enough to do such a thing) that you can’t drive a mile down any section of street in this town without passing at least one. God doesn’t need a house to be built for Him in this day and time. He wants to live in us, in our hearts, not in a holy of holies area near the spot designated for the preaching to be held at be it called a pulpit , podium or some other term. We are no longer to have an elite club who have the only access to the scriptures and who everyone else must hold in the highest esteem because they are the chosen few. The holy spirit is given to every man to profit withal. I Co 12:7 We are to all be like Timothy and Study to show ourselves approved unto God rightly dividing the Word of truth II Ti 2:15. If we would all rightly divide the truth it would be amazing how many of these different denominations could suddenly find that they don’t need their own building in which to hold services. If it was really God’s house I think a lot more of them would not be locked up or even patrolled to keep people out when not in use by the local congregation. The homeless problem could be solved over night if all the Sunday school class rooms were turned into shelters for those that needed a place to lay down their heads at night as long as they agreed to tidy up in time to hold the once or twice a week classes. Or for those that are still of the opinion they have to earn their way to the throne of grace, a new area of Christian service could be opened up: cleaning up after the homeless after they stay in some place that is being maintained any way but without consistent use.
It is nice to get a larger group of believer’s together every once in a while to hear someone with a gift ministry teach or preach or sing praises, Paul used the public squares or forums on more than one occasion. I am sure if we were to get a paradigm shift in peoples thinking we could get a meeting house erected in every area large enough to have and need one that did not already have conference centers built for public use, that different groups could take turns sharing the expenses and upkeep of and have their designated time to utilize the facility. But again that would not be what God has asked for. God nowhere asks for such a system to be erected in His name. In groups of 10 to 20 that could fit into a middle class earners living room comfortably, a mature believer could preach and teach and the group could make sure the needs were met of all those that chose to come to that local house for fellowship meetings. That mature believer could always be training other believers so that when a group got too large for that house there would be another person mature enough to open his or her house for similar meetings for the purpose of fellowship. Without the expense of maintaining a building, the free will offerings that individuals felt free to give of their abundance into a common fund, it would be more than adequate to meet the needs of those that were struggling with the concept of God blessing their endeavors to meet and exceed their expectations of living life abundantly.
But the answer of the World is to let the government that must be separate from God (?) meet the needs of the needy and make all those capable of being productive, (by becoming taxpayers) be responsible for helping out. The complete discussion of separation of Church and state are outside of the scope of this post. But since knowing God’s Word is the source of Wisdom, It must needs be the height of stupidity to think that only people who are ignorant of the Word should serve in Government or that government should never be in position of supplying anything wise to the people that it is supposed to serve. The principle if it has any validity at all is that no religion is to be legislatively mandated by law. God never makes you do anything, Government should not make you do anything that does not prevent you from being a danger to the community. Government should not be required to promote all religion equally or try to figure out how to never offend anyone that does not share any particular set of beliefs (and this includes atheism and humanism). Gun control laws ought to be about where you shoot your firearms not how you buy or equip them. I have no problem with laws that say you are not to use weapons in a robbery or in any other crime against your fellow citizen who is not trying to cause you harm. It is not murder if someone dies in a case of self defense. You are just as dead if you are murdered with a knife as with a gun. It is not the weapon that laws should be about but actions that threaten society. That is my opinion, I do not have chapter and verse to back up every thing of what I just stated but if you see the Wisdom in my posts that comes from my knowledge of the Word perhaps you might agree with what I said. Laws do serve a purpose and when we live as close together as we do to house the earths population, we best live in an area where there is law that is easily entreated and does not hinder your or my ability to live by the Word as we choose.
Choice is key in life. God gave us the freedom to choose. Some choices are better than others. God’s Word is where we find the best choices detailed and illustrated. And as members of the family of God (to get back to the point of this post) we have the right and responsibility to admonish one another in love to follow the way of righteous living. God has a plan for you, how to live your life. It may not be the same plan as He has for me and in fact it would be surprising if it was. God created us to be individuals not as robots that are limited to and must operate within very strict programming. Variety is the spice of life and anyone that takes an interest in cooking knows that how you combine your spices makes the difference between a superb meal that delights the one blessed to be sharing it and the meal that barely suffices to give the nutrients needed for survival. The one thing common to every God filled life is communion with God. Your prayer life with and without your understanding is going to determine how easily you find the Word to be entreated by you. God promised that His spirit would be available to you to help you understand and live by His Word. The more we think the Word the more we lay up for ourselves treasures in heaven that we will enjoy for eternity. A Christian life is not an obligation we meet by a weekly presence in a house of God. It is not a performance we must do in public and then ignore because it takes too much effort when we face the challenges in our private lives. It is a discipline, thus the use of the word disciples in the Word. It is knowledge based not a result of ignorance. If ignorance was bliss, there would be a lot more happy people out there, because by the standards of the level of knowledge that many think passes as good enough, our calling to be workman of the Word that need not be ashamed would be greatly over rated. All scripture is profitable as are all manifestations II Ti 3:16 and I Co 12:7, but too many people choose to live in poverty. They choose to be ignorant rather than to spend time learning the details that are to be found in the Word that make you free of the doubts worries and fears that the devil wants you to be held away from the blessings that come with the knowledge of how much God loves you and will do for you so that you see deliverance in your life. The family of God is to be vibrantly alive and prosperous and have lives full of love and fellowship. The devil thinks lives of quiet and lonely desperation should be the norm. Who are you listening to more as evidenced by your actions and perceptions? How do you rate your life on the satisfaction scale? As a song asks are you living where God answers Prayer? Are you even good friends with other family members? We all make choices every day that we wake up. Do we proclaim the new day as one that God has made available for us to live and go about rejoicing as we live it or do we awake and wish we were dead because life just is not worth it? Or do you try to live some where in between those two? It is your choice and our mortal lives are limited in duration so it is not like we have to choose one way or another forever. But whether we choose to be happy with our lives or miserable with our lives the choices we make do have eternal consequences or rewards. You cannot change the choices you made in the past, you can resolve to make better choices in the future, but only you will determine whether or not you keep your resolutions. Choosing today how you live today is the one sure thing you can do. God will actively help you if you allow Him room in your fellowship with Him. He gave His only begotten son a hard task to do, and His son accepted the job and did it. Now in comparison we have an easier task to do to avail ourselves of the lives that are available for us to live in demonstration of our belief of the Word of Truth. Proving that good and acceptable and perfect will of God. Ro 12:2. We live by God’s grace, love, and mercy in hope that our joy that we share in anticipation of Christ’s return is not vain but as real as the baptism of holy spirit or the great deliverances that we witness in our lives. The devil right now can and does kill, steal and destroy things on this earth Jn 10:10. Some pastors place the cause for this destruction at the feet of our heavenly Father. Shame on them for misplacing the blame. A child who dies before he or she has a chance to grow up is not taken by God because He needs another rose in heaven or because your family needs another guardian Angel. Chapter and verse that when we die we immediately enter into another existence as a flower or as an Angel. I Corinthians 15 says we all get changed be we the dead in Christ or alive when the gathering together happens and that we all have new bodies. I Jn 3 that we are like Jesus, a glorified human being. A dead person has no thoughts, emotions or ability to communicate with things done in this mortal world. Ec 9. Seances or other methods of contacting the dead are lies! At best you are contacting a lying devil spirit who is familiar with the departed ones life thus the providing of details that supposedly only you and the departed could know. Do not be deceived. Our every move is observed and recorded for just such deceptions. The lie is Satan’s oldest that we do not die. There is no life in death. There are four eternal releases from death, until the one happens that you are involved in, if you die and you are not involved in a miraculous if short lived resurrection before the eternal ones spoken of here as in the case of Tabitha or Lazarus in the Word, you stay dead. The gathering together is for those who at a heart level do Romans 10:9,10. It is never referred to as a resurrection because although some involved are from the kingdom of the dead not every one is and in a resurrection all are dead. Then the two resurrections in Revelation that of the just and that of the unjust. The first is the better one that some still seek to be a part of denying the power of salvation that comes with an accurate knowledge of and acceptance of Jesus as Lord and Savior. The forth eternal release was the only one that has already occurred, the singular release of Jesus who is and always will be the first fruits of the dead. There are three for the rest of us humans. Well I have covered a lot of Ground today in this post. Hopefully it did not come as if a new revelation to you Bible fans out there. We are to be one family that shares a loving heavenly Father and the term brothers in Christ is all inclusive to include all you beautiful women of God because in the culture the Word was written by only the men inherited and you are joint heirs as well. God is not a respecter of persons outward claims to fame and fortune. God looks at the heart and there are many of you that have beautiful hearts for God and His Word. Let us be as united and like minded about the truth as we can be, there is no other way to God and His family than what has been revealed. Selah.