When I was at my deepest, most darkest moment in life, I felt all alone drenched in sadness and despair. One of our children was fighting for their life. Thankfully I wasn’t alone. Members of the church came around me and filled me with hope. Do you have a church like that? If you don’t I pity you. Find one. You can’t do life alone. Life is hard and filled with ups and down, joys and tragedies. It just can’t be done alone. That’s why Jesus gathered his disciples into a body called the church, a family. Too many are estranged from their church family and will face the hardships without the family of faith. Sure you can find friends to go through life with, but the church is irreplaceable. The entire New Testament was written not to individuals or friend groups, but the church. For a reason we are told to encourage one another as the day draws near. We are to gather and worship, support, and pray for one another. I just don’t know how else to say it. It breaks my heart to see so many separated from the very thing Jesus came to establish on this earth. The rock, His church, His people. For many reasons, people have chosen not to join in. And they are missing out. We are missing out. The church is the local believers gathered. It’s a multi faceted, dynamic, heterogeneous group of followers of Jesus. We’ve been focusing on the value and importance of the church these last several weeks in our series, Ecclesia. It’s the greek word for church, which means assembly of believers gathered to worship God and learn how to serve him. We’ve been looking at several New Testament letters to the church asking what this letter has to say to us the church. This week, Ephesians tells us, together we chose a new life in Christ when we lay aside the old self and put on the new self. We all want to change. It’s in our nature to desire newness and improvement. We do this together. We together strive for a new life in Christ. Circling back to my deepest, darkest moment… the church family encouraged me daily to put on the new self, in the likeness of God. In the wake of hardship it made all the difference in the world. I couldn’t have done that without many of you.
