We are one body in Christ - Romans 12:3-8

I was really touched by our meeting last night.  When we gathered it became apparent that Jesus was among us when we reached out to each other with the Father’s love.
  

I have learned that when we focus on the details of studying the bible while not demonstrating the love of the Father we can easily lose perspective of how much we are connected by a common thread, that thread is Jesus and why He died and what He has provided to us by means of access to the Father.  

Putting the Fathers’ love into action by activating our faith and utilizing the gifts we have been given for each other, only fortifies that the fact that the Father loves us immensely, and desires to be connected with us individually as well as corporately as a family at a much deeper level.  

It is with that awareness that we pray for each other and go to battle for each other through our love of the Father, which is where our greatest strength and our greatest confidence lies. It is at those times when we are at our strongest when we know and experience the love of the Father is flowing out of us for each other. 

We did share about Psalms 34:8  “Taste and see that the Lord is Good, blessed is the one that takes refuge in Him.”  Taste, in this example, means to perceive by receiving (to experience by taking Him into our body) This is intimacy with the Lord at it’s finest by tasting (or testing) the Lord with our physical senses.   Then “…see that the Lord is good.”  Jesus defined what is good in Luke 18:19  “Why do you call me good?” Jesus answered. “No one is good—except God alone.”  This word ‘good’ in Psalms embodies both the masculine and the feminine noun which in Hebrew is important to define the gender or characteristic of the meaning.  God is both a strength, a fortress, a defender (masculine - Yahweh), and He is also a nurturer, a provider, a sustainer (feminine - El Shaddai).  Whatever we need our Father God to be at the point of our need, He is there to meet us. 

This meeting on Sunday night was about listening and hearing each other and then affirming each other in the Father’s love.  I believe angels were standing around us with awe-inspired gazes knowing that we were standing on holy ground as we opened our hearts to one another.  The Father’s love was flowing like a river through the meeting, it was awesome to experience.

We as believers each have a purpose to be joined together with the larger body of Christ to form a deeper expression of the Father’s love for each other.  Each of us is a necessary part of the body, no part is less important or of less value, each plays an essential role to make the ecclesia (the church) function properly.   

It is when we participate at that level unity becomes fully formed among us and we begin to operate as one.  

We are a family of believers and the body of Christ.

Be Blessed;

Stephen Barnett