day 303: Working Together

Ephesians 4:11-13

Now these are the gifts Christ gave to the church: the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, and the pastors and teachers. Their responsibility is to equip God's people to do his work and to build up the church, the body of Christ. This will continue until we all come to such unity in our faith and knowledge of God's Son that we will be mature in the Lord, measuring up to full and complete standard of Christ.

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If a church works together, it can express the fullness of Jesus. It can help people, guide people, tell others about Jesus. If a church is cohesive, it has time to think of others and less time to worry about church gossip.

No one person in the church can be all the parts. Everyone has to chip in and help. Everyone has a special gift that should/can be used the help the whole church to spread God's word.

If one person doesn't do their part, the entire church suffers.

If one person isn't unified, the whole church suffers.

If there is dissension, gossip, anger, hurt, cliques, jealousy, 'class divisions', etc, in the church the world WILL find out and then every person's testimony that goes to that church is tainted ("Did you see how they were fighting at that church? Man, what good does it do to be a Christian? I'm better than that.")

All of those things are things we DON'T want! We want a strong, united church so we can fight the devil and not ourselves: so we can win souls to God-- not win arguments.

What can you do if your church isn't unified? Pray-- and pray hard. The best thing to do is not talk about it. Don't bring it up. Don't gossip about the problems going on. Don't stand up at church and yell at people. Don't send anonymous letters. Don't slander others. If you are a teacher or a preacher or a person who leads people, don't use your words to lead others down a gossiping/hurt filled road. Your job is to help, not hurt, not to spread gossip. Not to cause dissension.

Pray about it. I know every church has problems. You can't have more than two people together without conflict of some sort. If this is going on at your church, stay back, pray, and let God take care of it. God isn't the one causing the fights-- and you don't need to add fuel to the Devils fire (that only lets him win the battle).

Let's pray for our churches. Every church needs it.

God Bless You,

~Kelly

Linked with: Winsome Wednesday and Women Living Well Wednesday