June 29, 2009
Seeking
For the last year our church shared space with a funeral home which is located in a semi-industrial area of the city. The facility we recently purchased is in a business area on a highway and everyone is excited about the high visibility. We’ve all agreed it will now be easier to give directions to the church. Interestingly the local Church of Christ is doing the opposite of our congregation. They sold their high visibility property and will soon be moving into a new building, which is located in a residential area. Concerned about her church moving to a secluded suburb, one of their older members remarked, “How are people ever going to find us if we’re not on the main thoroughfare?” Not to worry. God determined the times and exact places where every nation should live, “God did this so that men would seek him and perhaps reach out for him and find him, though he is not far from each one of us.” (Acts 17:27 NIV).
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Gail;
-----We serve God with our lives, in as much as we can understand. We give our lives to Christ by conforming our principles to His and by doing the things we must do to maintain our lives according to those conformed principles. To some of us that is not enough, they make spreading the gospel and exhorting the brethren their actual livelihood. Others consume all or a portion of the spare time they have by serving the Lord’s body in one way or another. But whether our service to Him is simply operating our lives by conformed principles, or earning our livings by preaching the gospel, the fiber of the service is to benefit others for the Lord. It is when the principle of the benefit is bent back around to accrue to ourselves that our service fails to be for Him.
-----When the conversation with a person seeking the Lord rolls around to attending a church, if we must direct them to the same church we attend, we come dangerously close to serving ourselves rather than the Lord. For His body does not meet alone at my church, or your church, or someone else’s church. It meets in churches across the valley throughout the country around the world. Within the variety of locations where His body meets there are not only considerations of convenient location, but also considerations of personality, character, and attitudes. Some folks approach life very emotionally. They may better attune to the ways of the Pentecostal church or a contemporary church than to those of the church I attend. Others may be highly structured in the way they think and perceive. Their life in the Lord may be fuller amongst the brethren of the Church of Christ or the Southern Baptists. The final analysis must consider who the person is and the whole body of the Lord to genuinely serve Him.
Love you all,
Steve Corey
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