A Community of Faith in Need of Revival

How Can I See That My Local Church is a Place of Growth in Grace

Good Morning,

Today in our Tuesday prayer and worship help we are going to speak some more about the nature of the community of faith and especially about how we submit to one another in love. There may be no more difficult measure asked of us in the Christian life than the call to be found in all willingness to rest in the arms and souls of our fellow believers in the local church. If we are being honest (and we should be implicitly) we struggle with this because we know too much (or we think we do) about one another. The problem is we don’t know the right things, nor rightly understand them, and again speaking honestly, the issue usually is not the other people around us, it is our own conception of our personal life. If we don’t share it with God, how would we then share it with those in our community?

Mature saints understand something deeper these matters.

Part of the blessing of the Holy Spirit is that as prayer is offered to heaven and as we seek His help in daily life He has the habit of exposing our weakness, and we are not keen on that. The old man within us bristles at such. It is easier to rejoice in the way of the Pharisee. Before we get too hard on ourselves and start off too negative this morning it would probably be more helpful for us to spend the rest of our time building ourselves up in the love of the knowledge of the truth. It is quite vital in this day to rejoice and be found rejoicing together as one body, one faith, and one baptism. We must figure out a way to gather together for encouragement, and yes sharpening, that we would serve together in the kingdom, and for the growth of the members of it.

What does it look like then to do this work? We’ve noted before in this space that if we would see the reformation and revival of our nation we must begin with the individual, and the family, and then the church, and after those are sorted out the blessings will flow to the town, state, and country as a whole. The same can be said of building a community of faith where people feel welcome and free to share their struggles, their difficulties, and be willing to receive a word of warning and discipline in the midst of it. The most famous example in the Bible where that takes place is of course with David and Nathan in the midst of his sin with Bathsheba. The reason why David is able to fall on his face and repent is the same reason why he was able earlier to stand in the face of Goliath and kill him with a stone. The same God who had enabled him to kill a lion with his bare hands had shown grace to a sinner and David took that grace and rather than use it as a license to sin, took it and applied it to his personal walk with the Lord. His faith made him well in the light of the grossest sin he could commit as a husband and a king. We who would see the repentance of others must begin in our own heart and soul, take the log out of our own eye.

The means by which David accomplished this growth in spirit is in the same manner available to all of us. You have probably gotten tired of me repeating this, but the truth does not change. For the son of Jesse it began at his father’s knee. Jesse led his family in family worship. He taught them the things of God, made sure they attended the feasts and festivals and days of atonement in the old covenant, and that their visitation in these matters were not skin deep. While we do not believe that righteousness is inheritable per se, we do believe that practices can be. The same can be said for spiritual fathers as well. If reformation begins in the house of the Lord then it is to be seen first in the leaders of the same. The minister, elders, and deacons must be the first in the building when it is open for times of worship and prayer. If the church has a prayer meeting even if no one else shows up the elders, deacons, and ministers (and their families if applicable) should be present. Those in office must outdo others in love, not to be seen as if to parade holiness before men, but in order to lead by example. A church family will only go as far as the fathers do take them. To go back to David for a second that is precisely how Nathan frames his sin. It was as much a failure of his breaking of the Fifth Commandment as it was the Seventh.

Let’s say that you are in a Northern Kingdom situation. Should the lack of the present involvement and care of those in authority, whether in church or state, then give you reason or permission to fail to do your duty? I would hope that we would all say no to such a thing. Jesus lamented over the city and people of Jerusalem primarily because they were like sheep without a shepherd, and Ezekiel warned about such a situation in his prophecy of the coming of the Great Shepherd in chapters 34-36 of his book. That didn’t change however the words of the other men called by God to lead Israel to repentance. All men and women regardless of whatever the local situation might be are at the end of the day responsible to the Lord, and what He has revealed in the Scripture. Some of the time we must be the change we would like to ourselves to see. We can never use the excuse, “well so and so isn’t so I’m not” in the Christian life.

We must hold ourselves to a higher standard.

In closing, the goal of any building up in faith is to help each one of us see Jesus more clearly. As I noted that first must begin in our heart, and sometimes that means stepping outside our comfort zone and challenging one another in love to rise to the occasion. We cannot operate in fear. There is too much to do in the hope and purpose of Christ for the Church for us to always be passing the buck when it comes to getting things done. Take advantage of your private times of devotion that they might in the Lord’s providential day spill itself out to the corporate life of the body of our common savior, for all of our benefits in the ordinary means of grace in prayer and love.

Another thought:

https://www.reformation21.org/mos/1517/help-for-the-weak

Blessings in Christ,

Rev. Benjamin Glaser

Pastor, Bethany ARP Church