February 14, 2017

Greetings My Friend, I have been thinking about the strength I receive in corporate worship with other believers again. I find for me it teaches me to live with people who are different than I am. The person who is a little overbearing at church is the person I need to understand and then learn from so that as I deal with people in my day to day walk I will be able to reach out with the love of Jesus more fully. This principal applies to all of the personality types within a church body, if I am to reach out for Jesus then the church body will have all kinds of personalities to grow and learn from. My goal is to take my time in corporate worship out the door into my week to reach whomever God places in my path during the week. As I think about taking Jesus into my week and not leaving Him at church I find that one of the complaints I receive about not going to church is because of the hypocrites. I am usually stunned with this attitude and lately I have been working on how to explain that there are hypocrites at church, at the grocery store, at work and the list goes on. We do not avoid all of these other places because of the hypocrites so why church? After I get over my first thoughts I begin to formulate in my mind that church is not a place for all of the people who have their faith walk figured out it is for the sick, the lost, the lonely and the hurting, basically a hospital for all sinners no matter where their life journey has taken them such as the biker gangs, drug addicts, people on the streets or the business person. When I think of the church I think of all the people Jesus reached. He taught that the sinners and tax collectors were responding to His message more than the religious leaders were and were entering heaven before them. Then He taught that the religious leaders were not teaching God's ways but mans rules. Jesus' disciples were not from the highest ranks in society but from the lower ranks for the most part. All is this teaches me that a church is a hospital for sinners, for those who are broken and in need of a Savior. My goal is to reach out to whomever God directs my path to, sometimes it is to the clerk at a store, to an office worker or to those whom society has forgotten and I have seen Jesus touch souls of all kinds of people. One of the hardest things for me to admit to is at one time in my life I was just a church goer and I befriended my daughters Girl Scout leader. This woman was very obese and a bit on the slow side, she mentioned one time that she would like to attend church where I went and I did not encourage her to come because she wasn't the type we would have liked. I am so embarrassed I felt that way although through the years I have grown in my faith and I see the error of my ways. That woman needed a church family a whole lot. Today I attempt to reach out to people just like her and I would have no problem being associated with people like her. I have grown from my days of being a hypocrite, I am thankful for the true God fearing Christians who have directed me to read my Bible, to study God's Word, who have had the faith to reach out to others like this woman and I have grown from their examples. When we enter a relationship with Jesus we begin a journey that will last the rest of our lives which means as a broken person Jesus will take me toward healing and wholeness in God. May God bless you and keep you make His face shine on you. Love Janet