Greg Laurie Daily Devotion - April 26, 2012
Rediscover the Church
And the church is his body; it is made full and complete by Christ, who fills all things everywhere with himself. - (Ephesians 1:23)
Some people say that we need to reenvision the church for today. But I disagree. I don’t think we need to reenvision the church; I think we need to rediscover it. We don’t need to redefine what God has already defined. Rather, we need to get back to the church the way it was in the beginning, because this is the church that turned the world upside down.
Jesus told a parable about a man who planted a crop of wheat. But at night, his enemy sowed tares among the wheat. Tares are small plants that initially look just like wheat. But as time passes, tares actually will uproot the wheat.
One of Jesus’ handpicked disciples turned out to be a full-blown hypocrite and a traitor: Judas Iscariot. And as we look at the early church, we discover they had hypocrites too. They had rivalries. They had heresies. They had immorality. So hypocrites are nothing new.
There always will be imitations whenever there is the genuine. Whenever you have something that is done right, someone will do their version of it. Because there are fake versions, it means there is certainly a genuine version out there as well. Imitations remind us that a genuine exists.
Having said that, we should also recognize that Jesus Christ was committed to the church. It is the only organization that He ever started. There is really nothing in the world like the church. The church has many critics, but no rivals. And I am amazed at the special bond that can take place between followers of Jesus Christ that can break through every other barrier.
I am proud to be a part of the church and a member of the body of Christ. And if you are a Christian, then you should be too.
Summary sentence: There will always be imitations of the genuine.
Tags: church, hypocrite
Copyright © 2012 by Harvest Ministries. All rights reserved.
Scripture quotations are taken from the Holy Bible, New Living Translation, copyright 1996, 2004. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers, Inc., Wheaton, Illinois 60189. All rights reserved.
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