Thought of the Day !!

This letter is from Paul and Timothy, slaves of Christ Jesus.  I am writing to all of God’s holy people in Philippi who belong to Christ Jesus, including the elders and deacons.

                                                       Philippians 1:1 (NLT)

I’ve been preaching through the book of Philippians lately.  In the first sermon we went back to the book of Acts and discovered what a diverse community this church was.  The first converts consisted of a rich lady, a slave girl and a jailer.  What a vastly diverse group to begin a church with.

Let’s look at the Church today…by this I mean the Global Church.  You can break the Church down into to three categories.  There is the Roman Catholic, the Orthodox and the Protestant parts of the Church. 

                       

Today there are those Eastern Orthodox Christians who worship together and have a great sense of God’s Holiness in the icons and the chanting and incense.  There are Roman Catholic Christians who find a great sense of God’s Holiness in the pope.  Then we have the Protestants who have a great sense of God’s Holiness found in His Word…the Bible.             

We’ve got Charismatics shouting and Catholics kneeling.  We’ve got traditionalists singing Amazing Grace and snake handlers...doing whatever they do.  There are prayers being read, and others coming directly from the Spirit, sermons being taught, others being preached from emotionally charged preachers. 

We are different…but we are all brothers and sisters in Christ.  What if we were all leaders?  There would be no one to lead.  What if we were all followers?  There would be mass confusion about what we need to do.  We need leaders.  We need followers.  We need planners.  We need prayer warriors.  What do you see yourself as?  Even more importantly, what do you see your church needing you to be?

In the love of Christ,

greg