THE CHURCH THAT JESUS IS BUILDING

“But who do you say that I am?

Blessed are you, for flesh and blood has not revealed this to you,

But, my Father who is in heaven.”

Matthew 16:15

It is easy to be ‘evangelized into a church; invited to a place and group of people who make you feel loved and care for you.  It is easy to become committed to the church that offers that sense of belonging that all people need.  But that same sense can come from joining a club, a sports team, or many other social constructs we have built into society.  Those groups of people built that group into being, with charters, admission requirements, regulations, rules, and methods of accountability of the members, one to another.

As I look at the churches today I somehow sense that Jesus had something else as his building plan.  Human institutions are not sustainable because humans are flesh and blood and are not permanent.  Human institutions cannot withstand the gates of hell coming against them.  The institutional, human built churches are falling apart, due to dissention between members, economic depletion, compromises to God’s standard of life, and failure to achieve the original intention Jesus proclaimed for His Church. If anything fails it is not of God, but of human devising.

“My word that goes out from my mouth, it will not return to me

 empty, but will accomplish what I desire and achieve the purpose

 for which I sent it” (Isaiah 55:11).

What is to be, what is to come, already is.  That is what Jesus came to tell us, to show us.  What we need to know about the things of God flesh and blood can’t tell us.  We must hear those things from God Himself. God will add those people to the Church He is building.  That is the Church that will withstand the gates of hell.  Christ is the Rock His Church will stand on; not on flesh and blood, not on human thoughts or ways, but on God’s Word revealed by God Himself.