Hebrews 10:25 My Responsibility to the Church
“And let us not neglect our meeting together as some people do, but encourage one another, especially now that the day of his return is drawing near? (NLT).
We have many responsibilities to our fellow believers, the members of the Church, the body of Christ. We are His representation here on earth, but before we can minister to the world, we need to minister to each other and make certain that we are healthy spiritually, physically, and mentally. Gathering together is the only way in which we will know if someone needs help, or even who can provide help. Soon after Peter’s message that resulted in 3000 people accepting Jesus, we are told that “they devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and to fellowship, to the breaking of bread, and to prayer” (Acts 2:42 NIV). I don’t believe this passage means that the entire 3000 did this together, but that they gathered in groups in order to learn, to pray for each other, to fellowship, and to share meals together. Sometimes I think that we do the last, share meals, most eagerly. In any case, it is of great importance that we frequently share time, concerns, ideas, question, and food with our brothers and sisters in Christ. These informal times supply a lot of glue that holds the church together. I’ve learned a lot during these informal times of discussion--different interpretations or emphases from a sermon or passage of Scripture. It is my responsibility to add whatever I can to these discussions.
It is easy to be intimidated by some who speak often or forcibly, but I may have an interpretation or understanding that some others have missed, and by not speaking, I deprive them of it. If our hearts and minds are open to the Holy Spirit, He will give us insight. I believe that to encourage discussion, the Holy Spirit does not give the same insight to everyone. That is part of His ministry—to build relationships within the body.
Galatians 6:2, 10 tells us, “Carry each other’s burdens, and in this way you will fulfill the law of Christ….Therefore, as we have opportunity, let us do good to all people, especially to the family of believers” (NIV). By frequent fellowship we will learn of the needs of others, and we will have the opportunity to help. As fellowship draws us closer, we may recognize a need that someone is reluctant to share with all, but perhaps will respond to a personal offer of help. Someone’s special skill may be just what is needed to solve the problem.
Receiving instruction from those God has placed over us, those who have chosen to serve Him in a ministerial position, is vital to our growth in the Lord. It also gives us the opportunity to knit together as God’s creation, the Church, His representative in the world today. Meeting together gives us opportunity to learn about and participate in the particular mission of our church. Impetus to go beyond the church into the community is given as we gather. It is our responsibility to respond to the call of God on our church any way that we can.
God created the Church. Let us honor Him by fulfilling our responsibility to the Church.
Exodus 20:1-3 My Responsibilities to God
“And God spake all these words, saying, I am the Lord the God, which have brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage. Thou shalt have no other gods before me”(KJV).
That’s pretty straight forward. He, alone is God, and we are bound to Him. Of all the gods that man has invented, none can make that claim. He was actually our God long before He spoke these words through Moses. He was our God even before He created us. We were in His mind and in His heart from before the moment He began creation. He desired to have fellowship, so He decided to create someone suitable for fellowship, and that was us. But before He created us, He created a world for us—a “livable place.” And He went way beyond livable. He went even beyond magnificent. Just go outside and look around. He made a world that we could see. He created a world that we could hear. He created a world that we could smell. He created a world that we could taste. He created a world that we could feel. And after He did all that, He created us. He created us and a universe in which we can live, so I’m pretty sure that we are responsible to thank Him for all this. Wait a minute. I forgot something. God didn’t just create us, He formed us with His hands, in His likeness He formed us. And then after he formed us, He blew His breath, the breath of life, into us. Yep, we are responsible to thank Him.
He planted a garden and walked with the first man and woman in this garden in the cool of the day, and He intended that we would live with Him there forever. But there was a catch. God did not want automatons who had to love Him, so He gave us freedom of choice, and then He gave us something to make a choice about. There was one tree in the garden whose fruit was forbidden. We were not to eat of it. To eat of it was to disobey Him and disrespect Him. (Don’t blame Adam and Eve. You know that you and I would have done the same thing they did.) When they ate the fruit, sin came into the world, and sin cannot exist in the presence of God, so man was separated from God, His creator.
Before I began to write this, I prayed and asked God what our responsibility was to Him. His answer was short and it was definite. He said, “Love me.” It did not come to me as a command, but rather, as a yearning. God yearns that we love Him. We can show that first by accepting the sacrifice made by God’s “only begotten Son,” Jesus, who took the sins of everyone on Himself and paid for them in full on the cross of Calvary. That made it possible for each of us to spend eternity with God.
There are other responsibilities listed in the Bible, “Love your neighbor as yourself.” “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.” “Whatever you do, do it as unto the Lord.” “Go into all the world and preach the Gospel to every creature.” There are more, but they can all be summed up in the two word desire of God’s heart, “Love me.” Let us fulfill our responsibility to God as well as we can every day in every way.
Genesis 3:8,9 Adam, Eve, God, and Me
“And they heard the voice of the Lord God walking in the garden in the cool of the day: and Adam and His wife hid themselves from the presence of the Lord God amongst the trees of the garden. And the Lord God called unto Adam, and said unto him, ‘Where art thou?’(KJV)
From the Scripture above, we get the idea that it was a normal thing for God to walk through the garden with Adam and Eve in the cool of day. What a joy that must have been for Adam and Eve. This magnificent God who had created the universe, had created both Adam and Eve, and who had prepared this perfect place for them to live, wanted to spend time with them in the cool of the day. I can’t help wonder what the conversations were about. I picture this God who walked with them as Father God, even though all three parts of our triune God were present within the Godhead. I don’t picture Father God as old and bearded, but I do picture Him as a mature fatherly figure who had a smile on His face as He met with Adam and Eve each day—except for one day. Earlier that day Adam and Eve had allowed satan to tempt them to break the one rule that God had given them.
They ate from the forbidden tree, and Father God knew about it before He came to walk with them. They hid from Him, as I would have. God gently led them to admit what they had done, and then after forming clothing for them, He told them the bad news. Because sin is not permitted in God's presence, they had to be expelled from this magnificent garden God had created for them. Even though He expelled them, He gave them skills necessary to make their way in the outside world. That’s the story of man, and that is the story of me. I sin, so I can’t live in the presence of Father God. Now, the result of sin is not just being expelled from the Garden of Eden, it is assignment to hell for eternity. So my relationship with Father God must be a sorrowful one for both of us. His desire to spend time with me is greater than my desire to be with Him. Father God was so sorrowful over this circumstance that He created once again. He created a way for me (and you and everybody else) to spend eternity with Him. He asked His beloved Son, Jesus, to leave His home with Father God, come to earth, take on the life and body of a human, and accept the punishment for the sin of everybody who would ever live. To do that, Father God had to actually turn His back on His beloved Son. I believe that necessary action hurt Him as much as it did Jesus, but He did it for me. You see, I am His favorite. Wait a minute—you are His favorite, also, and so is Gordon McGyver of Belfast, and so is Manuel Gonzales of Buenos Aires.
Adam and Eve may have disobeyed God and got the human race expelled from the Garden of Eden, but I have broken many of the rules God gave us since the Graden of Eden. What makes me think that I wouldn’t have broken that first rule? Adam and Eve and all of us have been given freedom of choice. Sometimes I wonder how long Adam and Eve lived in the Garden of Eden before they ate from the forbidden tree. They exercised their freedom of choice as I do every day. And I certainly do not have a spotless record in exercising my freedom of choice. But God is as good to me as He was to Adam and Eve, as He has provided the ONE and ONLY WAY for me to spend eternity with Him. Thank you God, for being a merciful and loving Father to Adam, Eve, Gordon McGyver, Manuel Gonzales, me, and everybody else.
John 14:25-27 MyRelationship with the Holy Spirit
”These things I have spoken to you, while I am still with you. But the Counselor, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, he will teach you all things, and bring to your remembrance all that I have said to you. Peace I leave with you, my peace I give to you; not as the world gives do I give it to you. Let not your hearts be troubled, neither let them be afraid” (RSV).
Before I started writing this, I did some research on “relationship with the Holy Spirit.” God soon stopped me and told me that no one knows more about my relationship with the Holy Spirit than I do, “You don’t need their input. There are two people who intimately know your relationship with the Holy Spirit, you and the Holy Spirit. So, speak from your heart and ask the Holy Spirit to help you.” That’s what I am doing, so if it doesn’t match your relationship with Him, that’s okay. After all, the title of this blog is “My Relationship with the Holy Spirit.”
Just as Jesus said He would do, He sent me the Holy Spirit the moment I accepted Jesus as my Savior. He has been my companion, my guide, and my helper ever since—ever present—always available. I seem to be most open to the ministering of the Holy Spirit at two different times—after I go to bed and when I am alone in the outdoors, particularly when I am in a quiet wooded area with a stream flowing by. Those seem to be the times of least distractions from the world. I think I need to put a pen and paper near my bed at night because the concepts and words He gives me at night seem more focused, to the point, and spoken in beautiful words and phrases that I sometimes forget by the time I wake up in the morning. In the times I am alone with Him in nature, He directs my thoughts and my heart to the magnificence of creation and the glory of the Creator. My heart grows in the presence of God. These times are some of the best and most peaceful moments of my life.
Jesus told us that the Holy Spirit would “bring to your remembrance all that I have said to you.” That applies to me in the way that the Holy Spirit brings to my mind appropriate Scripture verses that apply to the concept He is teaching me. Often He then opens my mind to things I had not previously noticed in the Scripture, even though I may have read it many times before. He gives me a fresh perspective, applicable to what I may be thinking or writing about. Those times feel like the newness and promise of spring.
There are times when I just can’t find the correct words in my prayers, and those are the times that the Holy Spirit supplies them in a language that I cannot write or even normally speak. It’s a time when my spirit speaks to the Holy Spirit from deep in my heart in words and concepts beyond my current understanding. This is commonly known as “speaking in tongues.” For me it is a time when I know that the inner thoughts that I don’t know how to express through my mind are expressed by my spirit under the guidance of the Holy Spirit.
Matthew 1:20-22 My Relationship with God the Son
“But when he thought on these things, behold, the angel of the Lord appeared unto him in a dream, saying, ‘Joseph, thou son of David, fear not to take unto thee Mary thy wife, for that which is conceived in her is of the Holy Ghost. And she shall bring forth a son, and thou shalt call his name JESUS, for he shall save his people from their sins.’ Now all this was done, that it might be fulfilled which was spoken of the Lord by the prophet, saying, ‘Behold a virgin shall be with child, and shall bring forth a son, and they shall call his name, Emmanuel, which being interpreted is God with us’”(KJV).
Because He took the punishment for my sins, because He speaks to the Father on my behalf, because He brought me victory over sin and satan, because He heals me, because He hears me when I call, because He is always by my side, because He blesses me daily, because He is my Savior, because He is the agent of creation, because He sacrificed His life for me by dying on a cross on my behalf, because He put aside His godly persona and became a human, because He has promised to come back for me, I love Him. For all those reasons and many others I didn’t list, I love Jesus. What did I do to convince Jesus to love me? Absolutely nothing! Why does Jesus love me? He loves me because that’s who He is and that is what He does. He is the earthly embodiment of love, and love is what He does.
The Scripture above describes the moment that Jesus’ earthly father, Joseph, was told about this miracle baby. What a responsibility Joseph had. He must have often looked in amazement at Jesus and wondered if he was capable of being Jesus’ earthly father. When Mary was told that she would be the mother of the “Messiah,” she answered, “…be it unto me according to thy word.” Praise God that these two people were obedient to God, and my Savior was born to earth.
The picture above illustrates clearly the grand basis for my love for Jesus—HE IS RISEN!” Because He rose from the grave, leaving my sins behind in hell, bringing victory to me, I can and will spend eternity, that’s right, eternity with Him in heaven! All of the “because He” statements in the paragraph above describe my relationship with Jesus. My relationship began with Him when I accepted Him as my Savior, and it has grown since then. It has not grown in regular upward steps because I have not always been faithful, even though He has been. Every time I wandered away, I could feel a calling “Come back, I miss you.” And then I returned, and any break in our relationship was healed instantly. Jesus leads me, guides me, and directs me, and I do a lot better when I listen to His leading. Jesus became my brother at the same time He became my Savior. No man has ever had a better or more loving big brother than my big brother, Jesus! Leaning on Him has become a way of life. Thank you, Jesus!