Tuesday July 31, 2012

Spend time today praying regularly for your church, its outreach, its ministry and its reputation in society.

 

Read Acts 20:28-30. Matthew 13

 

The church, like Israel, will consist of those who are genuine and those that are not. Until Jesus returns to take the church home, the church will always consist of both believers and unbelievers. It will also consist, from time to time of ‘wolves’, those who seek to destroy the church from the inside.

 

The church “visible” consists of all those throughout the world that profess the true religion, together with their children. It is called “visible” because its members are known and its assemblies are public. Here there is a mixture of wheat and chaff, of saints and sinners. God has commanded His people to organize themselves into distinct visible ecclesiastical communities, with constitutions, laws, and officers, badges, ordinances, and discipline, for the great purpose of giving visibility to His kingdom, of making known the Gospel of that Kingdom, and of gathering in all its elect subjects. Each one of these distinct organized communities which is faithful to the great King is an integral part of the visible church, and all together makes the catholic or universal visible church. A credible profession of the true religion constitutes a person, a member of this church. This is “the Kingdom of Heaven,” whose character and progress are set forth in the parables recorded in Matt. 13.

Thus children of all who profess the true religion are members of the visible church along with their parents. Children are included in every covenant God ever made with man. They go along with their parents (Gen. 9:9–17; 12:1–3; 17:7; Ex. 20:5; Deut. 29:10–13). Peter, on the day of Pentecost declared  the same great principle: “The promise [just as to Abraham and his seed the promises were made] is made to you, and to your children” (Acts 2:38, 39). The children of believing parents are “holy”, (i.e. “saints”) (1 Cor. 7:14) and are thus members of the church visible.

But even though God had planned for the church to have organisational structure, it was, at its very heart, to be more like a living organism rather than like a dead organisation. Far too many churches or congregations are run according to worldly organisational principles rather than by biblical guidelines.

Prayer:

¨ Ask God to revive your church so that each member, each believer knows God more intimately, more deeply and is heightened in his/her love and commitment to Christ and to each other.

¨ Pray that God would convict the non Christians in your church and the nominal believers of sin, of righteousness and of judgement. Pray that God would grant them repentance unto eternal life. If you know who these unbelievers are, pray for them by name.