Experiencing God X: God’s Will And The Church
Sermon Review
20 June 2001
1Cor.12:12-20Introduction
The 7 principles that are important for experiencing God are equally as valid for the individual Christian as they are for a church. As you read them and reflect on them I am sure that you will agree. However, when it comes to experiencing God as a church, there are three things that need highlighting in order for these principles to work well. They include the way God has organised the church to do His will, the importance of being His kind of people, and participation in discerning His will and direction.
Doing His Will as a Church
The human body is an incredible creation. Did you know that an average adult human body contains approximately 650 muscles, over 100 joints, 100,000 klms of blood vessels, and nearly 13,000 million nerve cells. It has 206 bones, and nearly half of them are in the hands and the feet. Did you know that the lungs contain a total of 300,000 million capillaries – tiny blood vessels that would stretch 2,400kms if laid end to end; or that the stomach’s digestive acids are strong enough to dissolve zinc, but the cells in the stomach lining are renewed so quickly – 500,000 cells every minute and the entire lining every three days, that the acids do not have time to dissolve the lining.
One could go on and on, but it is a marvellous creation. It is remarkable then that in 1Cor.12 Paul reveals that the way God organises his church to fulfill his plans and purposes is similar to the organisation of a human body. In fact, if the body is marvellous, then the Church as the body of Christ is revealed as even more marvellous! Some of the more important similarities that Paul highlights includes that as a body the church has different parts with different roles to play, yet even so all are still part of the one body.
Further, like a body, the church has different parts, with each part needing what the other provides, so that it can function effectively. Paul also makes clear that behind this marvellous organisation is none other than the Holy Spirit who deliberately binds believers together into a body, deciding how he wants each part to contribute, all the while ensuring that they need each other, as parts of any healthy physical body. One important application of all this that we need to consider this morning is that…
God has called together each of us in this church to think, act, and behave like we are a body. That takes some digesting in our individualistic and rather self-focussing independence-encouraging culture! When we refuse as individuals to cooperate with the Holy Spirit’s intentions for us to play our part in the body, what God wants to accomplish amongst us and through us will become more difficult, or perhaps in come cases, impossible. When we quench the Spirit and deny His right to work through us in the larger life of the body, we handicap the body.
That is sobering, isn’t it? That is why we must always be asking ourselves, ‘why has God brought me to this church? In what way does the Holy Spirit want to contribute through me to fulfil God’s plans and purposes for this church? What part of the body am I Lord?’ We should always be asking God to help us to be willing to play his ‘roles’ or ‘parts’ for us, and not sit on the outside looking in. Being open to God in our personal and private lives is only one side of the Christian life.
The other is being open to God with regard to our church life also. Imagine watching a Christmas play that many of the characters don’t come in on cue, or stop halfway through and decide to take up a part they are not dressed or prepared for! Such is the chaos that can occur when we individually grieve and quench the Spirit when it comes to be a part of body life being arranged and orchestrated by God.
To apply the 7 Experiencing God principles as a church, we need to grasp the fact that as Christians we are intended to be participating parts of a body, not just individual Christians. So, when the Holy Spirit makes clear he wants you to participate in specific ways within the church, through the Scriptures, Church leaders and members, Prayer, and circumstances, say yes. He gives you the right to say no, but please don’t. We need what God can contribute through you; you need to obey, and God needs all of us to play our part. Eph.4:16.
I have no doubt that the Holy Spirit works quite intentionally to build healthy and functional bodies, not 3 legged, one eyed, no-eared aberrations providing deaf, half-blind, and out of step churches!
Being His Kind of People
Learning to walk as a body requires listening to God playing our God arranged part, but it also means that we need to relate to each other as important parts of our own body. We need to be on good terms with each part, and working together and treating each other as we would treat our own hands, feet, eyes, and ears – with cooperation and TLC! Parts that don’t work well with each other create a lot of pain for themselves and others eg. fluctuating heart, or failing kidneys etc.
Is there any wonder that Paul moves on to the importance of love in living out the body principle 1Cor.13. You see the body is really not the life of a person. The body helps us experience consciousness, emotion, will, reason, morality, spirit, and God himself etc. It is inside the body that real life and experience occurs. Similarly, the real life of a church occurs in the interactions and loving relationships we have together. It is in our relationships together that we experience God, and where we behave as part of a body. Hence, 1Cor.13.
However, to put a practical edge to 1Cor.13, we need to turn to Rom.12:9-21 – a hard hitting practical implementation of 1Cor.13. We need to keep in mind that it would be a very strange thing indeed to see parts of a human body trying to avoid each other, punish one another, look down on one or more of its parts, or set about trying to remove several sections of itself! To be in a condition to be guided and blessed by God means not only seeing oneself as part of a body and being willing to play God’s part in it.
It also means treating each other as important parts of oneself. For God to use us as a body, we always have to keep in mind that we need to be the right kind of people for Him to use - as the saying goes, ‘charity begins at home’.
Participating in Discerning His Will
As we allow the Holy Spirit to contribute to the life of the larger church community through us, and we endeavour to live in right relationships with each other, we will be in the right condition for each of us to sense what God is saying to us, wanting of us, and leading us towards. God does provide leaders, Elders, Pastors etc. to help lead a church, but God doesn’t only speak to them. We are all His sheep and called to follow him John.10:27. God speaks to all. In some instances in the New Testament God revealed his will through leaders to other leaders Acts.15:6-21; through leaders to the Body Acts.13:1,2, or through rank and file to the leaders Acts.11:19-23. It is clear to me that leaders need to be listening not only to God, but the body as well, and that the body needs to be listening to the leaders as well as God, in order for God’s will to discerned.
The New Testament reality is that the Holy Spirit comes upon and lives within each believer. God and God’s will then is accessible to all, and therefore Leaders and members of churches alike should participate in discerning God’s will. This is one of the privileges of believers having the ‘mind of christ’1Cor.2:16.
The methods can be many & varied. Currently we are employing prayer and participation that all can be involved in. This allows for all to seek God, then to share what they believe God is saying, wanting etc. As time goes by I am sure that this will allow for opinions to take a second place and what God wants to take precedence. As we learn to listen to God as a body, It will become increasingly important to not just come together to see who is for or against something, but after all the prayer and discussion, with time and practice, to sense God directing us in this or that direction?
With practice we should be able to move beyond simply asking for, or sharing opinions on the merits of proposals, to whether or not God wants it or not. If this is unclear, then we simply schedule more time for prayer and allow God to make his mind known. God’s will should be able to be discerned by almost all of us, assuming that at any one time the majority of the church are walking blamelessly before God. So when we all accept responsibility to participate in discerning God’s will, and not just the Leaders, we will have a far better chance of doing God’s will together.
This process is not intentional democracy, but the best way currently that the Elders can devise to help Theocracy based on a body principle to operate. Nor is it to be construed as a way for Elders to abdicate responsibility for Spiritual oversight, discerning God’s will, or making leadership decisions. It is simply a process for helping to discern and confirm God’s plans and purposes so that the right decisions can be made.
Conclusion
To experience God working in us and through us as a church, we need to be willing to do God’s work God’s way – as a body, not merely as a group of individuals. As individuals we need to meditate on 1Cor.12 until God gives us a strong sense of being called into a body. Once we accept that we are part of a body, we then need to ‘become’ part of a body in experience by allowing the Holy Spirit to contribute to that body through us, as He sees fit, and not as ‘I’ as an individual see ‘fit’.
Becoming part of a body in practice means that we are to endeavour to behave towards other parts of that body as any healthy person would – with TLC! Lastly, as Christ is the head of the body, we and all other parts of that body should accept the responsibility to discern God’s will for us as a body. In other words, to experience God as a church, the 7 principles used in this series need to be applied with a body in mind, not just a set of individuals. The primary question that we all must face is, ‘am I willing to accept that God has made me part of a body, and if so, am I willing to adjust my life accordingly?’
If you believe that God has called you to be a part of this church, then let him contribute to the body through you as part of a body, and not as a lightly attached individual. Just think, you could be the very person who can make this the healthiest body we can be, doing the full complement of things God wants us to do, and together experiencing the full measure of God in us and through us. To experience God as a church all of us need to think, act, and behave like the body God has made us to be.
Blessings