Truly, I love and look forward to worship on Sundays. However, this past week found me mounting my soapbox and preaching that on Sundays we go to worship and NOT to CHURCH. Church is not a place or a building. WE, YOU and ME, ARE THE CHURCH. Recently, the world has pummeled me with this fact; but God, more significantly, has used it to pump me up.
Quite automatically, Christians have come to nonchalantly believe Church is a building to which they go. On the contrary, God (as spoken by Paul in the New Testament) tells us “…For we are the temple of the living God.” 2 Corinthians 6:16 (NLT)
A building can open its doors to a place where we can sit down; but only God’s people can take a stand, represent God’s word and change the world from denouncing God’s presence and power to proclaiming and praising His rule and glory. A building can congregate a crowd, but only a congregation can shepherd God’s flock. Tragedy is the unheralded truth is that a building cannot hear the sheep crying out and parishioners are deaf to the reality that these cries are meant for their ears to hear and heed.
It is more than time that we, the CHURCH, stop thinking a building is the laborer designated to do God’s work. Our hearts, souls, hands, mouths, ears and feet are the instruments through which God’s work is to be accomplished.
It bears repeating. Church is not a place or a building. WE, YOU and ME, ARE THE CHURCH. My prayer is that we realize not a physical structure but rather you and me are to do what Jesus commands HIS CHURCH to do. “…’You must love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your soul, and all your mind.’ This is the first and greatest commandment. A second is equally important: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ The entire law and all the demands of the prophets are based on these two commandments.” Matthew 22: 37-40 (NLT)
Uplifted in a Broken Down World 