Community: How We Come To Know God

Community: How We Come To Know God

Studying the Word is one thing, living and spreading the Word is an altogether different experience. We can read all we want and have the words on a page create images, scenes and situations in our minds eye all day long, however, when a person begins verbally expressing what the Word has done, or what the Word is attempting to do, with our lives this is when we begin to experience the fullness of God’s joy.

If you have been following along for any length of time you already know this is a quest to improve our lives through the Gospel of Jesus Christ. We are not interested in living any other way, we are simply interested in how to align our lives with the teachings of Jesus Christ, the Apostles and the Disciples.

As Jesus teaches us in Matthew 22 NKJV

37 Jesus said to him, “‘You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind.’
38 This is the first and great commandment.
39 And the second is like it: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’
40 On these two commandments hang all the Law and the Prophets.”

With our world in a state of flux it is easy to forget this commandment. We see how others are living and begin casting stones, if only in our hearts and minds, completely blocking out this simple commandment. This is where the enemy makes an entrance and begins working on us to tell us some may not be a child of God, but rather something very different.

We also learn that Jesus is coming back to set the world straight and all the people who have rejected God will be cast to one side and all the people who accept Jesus Christ as the Lord and Savior will be cast to another side. We do not know what this will look like. We do not know who will be cast to which side of the story. We pray for those that appear to reject God’s teachings. We pray for those that seemingly have looked God in the face and told Him there was a mistake along the way. We are all born of sin, but we are all commanded to be born again of the Spirit. We are to wash away the sins of the past, accept the teachings of Christ Jesus and follow His word. I pray for His will to be done, and not mine. I pray for His Light to shine through my heart and illuminate those around me with His love. I pray for God’s Word to be the only words I speak.

What do we find in Romans 7 NKJV

19 For the good that I will to do, I do not do; but the evil I will not to do, that I practice.
20 Now if I do what I will not to do, it is no longer I who do it, but sin that dwells in me.
21 I find then a law, that evil is present with me, the one who wills to do good.
22 For I delight in the law of God according to the inward man.
23 But I see another law in my members, warring against the law of my mind, and bringing me into captivity to the law of sin which is in my members.
24 O wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death?
25 I thank God—through Jesus Christ our Lord!
So then, with the mind I myself serve the law of God, but with the flesh the law of sin.

These few passages written by Paul describe me to the letter. It seems these words were written for the many instead of the few. We must see all our neighbors as children of God and not children of the enemy. No one is a child of the enemy. However, this does not mean that all the children will come home, some unfortunately, will not make it to the promised land.