I STARTED A CHURCH


 


I STARTED A CHURCH

 

 

 

I HAVE STARTED several “churches” over the years.

 

 

Each one I built after the pattern in which I had grown up and had seen modeled by other ministries.  The first thing I did was run out and rent a building… and then worked hard to “believe God” for the rent. I spent a lot of time praying over finances and the ability to reach more people… all of this with the idea I was building something for Jesus Christ… His Church.

 

 

After several years of this process, a particular church I had “planted” was meeting in a section of a strip mall right across a small street from the ocean. As was my habit of using the beach as my second office, I was out one day sitting on some boulders overlooking the bay… just telling the Lord how excited I was about how everything was growing… how people were healed… the lame walked, the blind saw, the deaf heard… the dead were raised…

there were people coming in just to be delivered…

I was having the time of my life… and so happy to be serving Him.

 

 

He then spoke something to me that disrupted my whole life:

 

“You have misrepresented me.

You have built your own and not mine.

Now I’m going to teach you how to build for me.”

 

 

… and here I thought I had been building His Church…

 

 

So… I left that church in the hands of some elders and moved to another city…

 

… where I rented a building, called in a worship team from another ministry, put a big splash ad in the newspaper…

             … and had 2 people show up from the community who sat on opposite sides of the auditorium several rows back.

 

 

I shut everything down

 

 

The Lord began to show me “the way wherein I must walk and the work which I must do” (Ex18:20)

 

 

He told me very clearly:

“If you would just stop trying to do MY job…

And simply do what I’ve commanded you to do..

I will build MY CHURCH!”

“I never told anyone to build a church.

I told you to:

•          equip the saints..

•          Make disciples

•          Heal the sick and cast out devils

•          Teach them whatsoever things I have commanded you

 

My desire is that you help me build on the temple… the person… the people…

 

 

And I WILL BUILD MY CHURCH!”

 

 

“I am sending you…

 

•          For the perfecting of the saints, for the work of the ministry,

•          for the edifying of the body of Christ:

•          Till we all come in the unity of the faith,

•          Till we all come to the knowledge of the Son of God,

•          Till we all come unto a perfect man, unto the measure of the stature of the fulness of Christ: 

•          That we henceforth be no more children, tossed to and fro, and carried about with every wind of doctrine, by the sleight of men, and cunning craftiness, whereby they lie in wait to deceive;

•          But speaking the truth in love,

•          Till we all may grow up into HIM in all things, which is the head, even Christ:

          From whom the whole body fitly joined together

          and compacted by that which every joint supplieth,

          according to the effectual working in the measure of every part,

          maketh increase of the body unto the edifying of itself in love.” (Eph4:12-16)


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