Body Building and Needing Each Other

 The next few post on this blog will be about reality. Things we have recently seen aren't that easy to learn or even admit. This post was inspired by Amy Carmichael's book written in 1903 ....'Things As They Are' .                     

Body Building and Needing Each Other

Its not always easy to know just what to do ... or not do here in Kenya. Yet, if truth be known it’s never been easy anywhere we preach the gospel and work to build up the Body of Christ. Thank goodness Paul was honest to record in the scriptures the truth that it wasn’t easy for him either. We can only hope that Christ knows our heart (as He always seems to do) and uses our efforts to advance His Kingdom.

Although it is necessary for us to make our proposed plans, we have learned to sense the pressure on our feet allowing God to direct our current paths (Pr. 16:9). That entails much moving in... 'I hope this is God' and equal amounts of backing up and reassessing our plans.

Our confidence lies in two heavenly truths. One... God through His church sent us here. Two... If He sent us here...then He will teach us all we need to know and provide what we need to carry out His will. He already took into consideration our weaknesses and faults before he ever sent us.

We have learned that every local revelation of His Body is an extremely 'personalized' entity. Each is fashioned by the potter's hands. Each made up of chosen indigenous people who Christ has handpicked to reveal a certain facet of His nature in that locality. Each one being formed to grow into full autonomy of government. Each one with its own set of dealings and corrections from God. (See Rev. 1-3)  These revelations about the church have come to us at a very high and painful cost.                                

We can no more weave and fashion the Body of Christ in a local people anymore than a mother can fashion the child she carries inside her. That is God's business. Yet mothers do provide the materials for her child just as we collectively do provide the materials for the building and revelation of the local Body of Christ in any given locality. Like any good mother we should strive to give Him the best we have.

Just as no one individual can reveal all of Christ, neither can one group of people in a single locality reveal all there is concerning His spiritual Body. We all need each other for that. Fact is as soon as we, a local gathering of saints, start loving each other and working together, we should try and learn how to love and work with other groups as well.

 Each particular expression of the 'Body of Christ' has a particular and distinct revelation of His love. Interestingly enough that revelation is made up of both what we would call 'good and bad' components. It’s not just how we have succeeded in the Village that has produced such a wonderful fragrance of Life (2 Corinthians 2:15) but what we failed in as well. Not just what has been a source of praise but also what we have had to be forgiven.

Our Master has stated that .... "He who is forgiven much ... loves much." Surely if we have learned anything about love in the Village it’s because we have failed so many times at doing it. We still have so much to learn about the power of sacrificial love. I know I do. I am learning that most all of my unloving acts come from places deep inside me that I have not let His ‘undeserving love’ into.

It is a bit of painful amusement that many of the pastor's here say we have come to teach them about the power of God’s love. Loving as Christ loved sometimes seems so alien to me. I can teach about love but it seems that every day I have need some blatant failure at being patient and kind to remind me how unlike Him I still am. How often we need His sustaining grace throughout our lives to initiate love and how much more we need that same grace in sustaining that love!

Just as each of us individually have strengths and weaknesses, so it is with our collective selves (churches) as well. We would do well to know and remember both our strengths and our weaknesses as a church. Failure to do this accounts for much of our collective shortcomings. May our work here in Nakuru, California, Memphis and wherever else we find ourselves, profit from our past mistakes.

Anyway, it seems that our biggest job here will be to continue showing how dependent we are upon His grace to do anything spiritual at all. For me and the team here.... that seems to be relatively easy.

 David Noah Taylor