All in Church

Is there Holy ground in your Home? How about a church?

Richard Forbes
Christian, Daily Devotion, Church

Have you ever attended church in a house? Is there a church that meets in your house? Over the millennia we have grown so accustomed to holding our services in buildings dedicated solely to our faith, that we seem to have forgotten that the early church typically met in someone's home. Even in times of persecution the modern church still retreats to the privacy of homes. Perhaps if we did this every so often it would take the feeling of formality, and place, out of our worship, and put the intensely personal sense of maintaining a close and loving relationship with God back into it. Inviting someone into your home is a very intimate gesture, and hosting Jesus, and God makes it Holy.

Are our Lives of Faith Contained within the Walls of our Humanity?

Richard Forbes
Christian, Contained, Holy Spirit, Life, Daily Devotion, Church

Is the church we attend living in the full power of Christ, and the Holy Spirit, or have we let our own humanity take it captive? That is a very big question, and one which Paul asked the church in Galatia, but let’s make it a bit more manageable by asking ourselves... “am I living in the full power of Jesus, and the Holy Spirit, or is my flesh determining the direction of my faith?”

Reclaiming the Raging Flame of The Lord’s Church

Richard Forbes
Church, Communal Worship, Daily Devotion, Christian

Do you regularly go to church, and if you do, how do you worship God? More to the point is this... do you worship God together as a church body? Do you lift up your praise, worship, and prayers as one, and then wait on Him? Congregations that don’t worship together might contain specks of brilliant faith scattered within the pews, but never really meet God as He desires.

Wresting the Church from the hands of man

Richard Forbes
Belief, Forgiveness, Doctrine, Hope, Church, Daily Devotion, Christian

So we have recognized that we were wrong in a practice or belief; perhaps we find that we have practiced something in faith that was of man, and not of God. What should we do? How should we face this, our failure, our material heresy? Are we doomed to a life of suffering, or to exist in a fallen state? No, we must pray for forgiveness, and then listen to Paul as he writes to the Philippians about himself.

Come Out of the Cave Elijah!

Richard Forbes
Faith, Daily Devotion, Church, Not Alone, Christian, One

Are you a loner in your faith? Do you feel like you can take the Bible and journey to a mountaintop on your own without regard for the Church or the body of Christendom? Do you look at bible characters such as Elijah the prophet who was sent to the mountain to wait in a cave for the Lord God to appear and say “this is me! I am meant to be alone!”; do you think that is what Jesus did? Well if so, you had better rethink your position of faith, and your approach to religion. We are all meant to be one, just as God calls us to believe as one, He then joins us to the body of faith to become one with it... one Church.

Body, Church, Calling, but are we really of One Spirit?

Richard Forbes
Church, Christian, Conflict, Prayer, Daily Devotion, Jesus, Oneness, Humility

How many churches are there within your congregation? How many groups of different mind, and various agenda, are milling about one another, and often find themselves at loggerheads? This is what happens when we lose focus on maintaining ourselves in the image of Jesus Christ. This is what occurs when a marriage ceases to be of one flesh.

One Head, One Body, but Two Hands, and Many Fingers

Richard Forbes
Church, Daily Devotion, Christian, Disciples, Unity, Love

As Christians, do we love one another, or do we divide ourselves so completely in our perceived love of Jesus, that we distance ourselves from each other? I look around Christendom and see one head and many bodies, one bread, and one table, being bitterly contested and claimed by each to the point of refusing to serve another family member at the table they prepare. Is this the way Jesus meant us to behave?