Is the Body of Christ Within Reach For You?
Friday Night Gatherings
WHAT DOES GOD WANT?
15 but speaking the truth in love, we are to grow up in all aspects into Him who is the head, even Christ, 16 from whom the whole body, being fitted and held together by what every joint supplies, according to the proper working of each individual part, causes the growth of the body for the building up of itself in love.
(Ephesians 4:15-16 NASB95)
It is so important that we seek what God wants regarding being fitted into the body of Christ, the church. It is, in fact, the precious body of the Father’s only begotten Son, and the Father is greatly concerned with the practical, everyday work of that body. Are you connected, or “fitted” in with Christ and His body, the church? How does God want us to be “fitted” in?
1 Therefore I urge you, brethren, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies a living and holy sacrifice, acceptable to God, which is your spiritual service of worship. 2 And do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, so that you may prove what the will of God is, that which is good and acceptable and perfect. 3 For through the grace given to me I say to everyone among you not to think more highly of himself than he ought to think; but to think so as to have sound judgment, as God has allotted to each a measure of faith. 4 For just as we have many members in one body and all the members do not have the same function, 5 so we, who are many, are one body in Christ, and individually members one of another. 6 Since we have gifts that differ according to the grace given to us, each of us is to exercise them accordingly: if prophecy, according to the proportion of his faith; 7 if service, in his serving; or he who teaches, in his teaching; 8 or he who exhorts, in his exhortation; he who gives, with liberality; he who leads, with diligence; he who shows mercy, with cheerfulness.
(Romans 12:1-8)
As always, God brings us to points of decision. The first is to decide if God’s heart for the body of Christ is something within reach for you or if it is something far off and unattainable. Does being truly fitted into the body seem like something that you, individually, can walk in? Is it something that your local fellowship can walk in?
I pray that, as you read all we’ve described here and in previous messages about the body of Christ and what God wants, that you are already living it out and enjoying its fruit. We talked a great deal about knowing God’s mercy and consecration, being set apart for Jesus as He deals with our hearts. As those things are established, the gifts God has given us for the body will naturally start to come out. These are natural outworkings of the body of Christ.
Is there anything missing in your life regarding the functioning body of Christ? Is it something in your heart? If there is, I pray you would recognize the Father’s desire to lavish this great gift on you and that you can take hold of it.
Here is another point of decision. If you do see something missing, what will you do? What should change? Should God change? Should circumstances change? Or is there something in you that must change and surrender to Him?
Has God provided enough?
The secret to walking in what God wants for the body of Christ is not a new model, or plan, or even a new vision, or mission for the church. The secret is to realize that God has already given you every possible spiritual blessing in Jesus. We must only believe and walk in faith.
Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in Christ,
(Ephesians 1:3)
God does not change. If we will surrender to all that He has provided, we will find all that we need in Christ. In John 13-17, Jesus, speaking to the disciples in the upper room the night before He goes to the cross, pours out the Father’s heart for us, revealing all that He has given us of Himself and how the Father has made us, by His Spirit, one body. We are meant to spend a lifetime receiving that truth in deeper and deeper ways, but it should only take a moment to begin to walk in the reality of it by faith in the finished work of Jesus.
20 “I do not ask on behalf of these alone, but for those also who believe in Me through their word; 21 that they may all be one; even as You, Father, are in Me and I in You, that they also may be in Us, so that the world may believe that You sent Me. 22 The glory which You have given Me I have given to them, that they may be one, just as We are one; 23 I in them and You in Me, that they may be perfected in unity, so that the world may know that You sent Me, and loved them, even as You have loved Me.
(John 17:20-23)
But how do we practically receive such a message of oneness with the church, and with Christ and with the Father? How do we take a step of faith in the truth of it?
If we will make a decision to believe what Jesus tells us we have in Him, that we have every spiritual blessing and oneness with the Father, if we believe it, God’s grace will allow us to walk in it. And we will learn as we walk. God has a specific call on every believer for how He wants them connected to the body. If we will walk in faith, He will show us more and more about how we’re called all the time.
Some of you agree with me. Many of you, at this moment, are telling me that you’ve heard all of this before and tried it all, and it hasn’t worked. You’ve grown weary of hearing the truth.
Hear this: walking in truth does not solve all your problems, questions, or struggles, but it does put you on the right foundation and the right path for the healing of all those things. But cling to what you have in Christ. Trust and believe. Faith is really very simple. Unending and deep, yet simple enough even for children.
Hudson Taylor was a pioneering missionary in inland China in the 1800s. He went through many physical and spiritual trials as he followed God’s call and discovered who he is in his Savior. In the biography Hudson Taylor’s Spiritual Secret, he reaches a point in chapter 14 where the trials have pressed him over a cliff, leaving him with no option but to depend fully on God. This was a transformation that allowed Him to walk in faith, knowing what Jesus had provided. I would encourage you to read the whole book, but these quotes from chapter 14 describe his transformation well.
1“…it is a wonderful thing to be really one with a risen and exalted Saviour, to be a member of Christ! Think what it involves. Can Christ be rich and I poor? Can your right hand be rich and your left poor? Or your head be well fed while your body starves?”
1“It makes no matter where He places me, or how. That is rather for Him to consider than for me; for in the easiest position He must give me His grace, and in the most difficult His grace is sufficient. It little matters to my servant whether I send him to buy a few cash worth of things, or the most expensive articles. In either case he looks to me for the money and brings me his purchases…No fear that His resources will prove unequal to the emergency! And His resources are mine, for He is mine, and is with me and dwells in me.”
What grace in understanding of all that we have with Christ in us. With all of these resources, we must believe that what Paul describes in Romans 12 about mercy, consecration, and the functioning body of Christ is, in fact, ours to walk in. Not that we walk perfectly, or even understand it fully, but that we can take steps of faith in the promises of our loving Father.
1Taylor, Howard and Taylor, Geraldine. Hudson Taylor's Spiritual Secret. Moody Publishers, 2009