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9 For we are God’s coworkers. You are God’s field, God’s building. 10 According to God’s grace that was given to me, I have laid a foundation as a skilled master builder, and another builds on it. But each one must be careful how he builds on it. 11 For no one can lay any other foundation than what has been laid down. That foundation is Jesus Christ.
1 Corinthians 3 (Holman Christian Standard Bible)
So, in last Sunday’s StraighTalking we concluded (for now) our consideration of what it means to be careful to build the gathering of Messiah’s people (church) to God’s building code1 i.e., For no one can lay any other foundation than what has been laid down. That foundation is Jesus Christ.
We’ve understood this code specifies that Jesus the Christ (the God-promised and anointed one who is re-establishing God’s rule on earth as in heaven) is himself the exclusive basis for gatherings of his people, their community life and service.
We’ve agreed the Apostle Paul leads us by example in his passionate pursuit of knowing Christ Jesus, the power of his resurrection, and the fellowship of his sufferings, being conformed to his death. We noted well that he valued every other goal in life as offensive waste compared knowing his Lord Jesus. (Phil 3:8-10) We learned that taking care to build on this foundation requires that we also reorder our life’s values, so our absolutely consuming passion is to know the Lord!
Over the last three Sunday’s we’ve settled deeply into comprehending this pursuit, understanding what it means to identity exclusively in Jesus (see previous blog post). We came to see that the Apostle’s (and our) passionate pursuit of knowing Jesus, is to receive our identity from him & from no other source. We challenged ourselves to thoroughly embrace Jesus’ invitation to deny our identity to pursue his.
How will Liberty folk’s act upon these challenges? We’ve concluded that we will (at least) give priority to know the Lord Jesus:
- From the Bible - reading, studying, conversing, meditating (Luke 24:27)
- By His Spirit (John 14:25,26)
- In the community of his people (Colossians 1:27)
- All the above being mutually inclusive
Our actions under consideration include:
- Private reading/study
- maximizing use of Emmaus Correspondence School’s (ECS) Equip Program
- Group study/teaching including
- Know Your Bible (KYB)
- Sunday’s School for children
- Sunday StraighTalking
- New Groups – a proposed new senior ladies group utilizing ECS Equip Program
Your comment and contribution welcome…
1 Bob Deffinbaugh, A Different Look at Leadership (1 Cor. 3:5-17), Available from: https://bible.org/seriespage/5-different-look-leadership-1-cor-35-17, Accessed 26 January 2019
