Striving to become a great Church – for Christ’s sake.

 

When God shows up, and starts working, we become a revived, or regenerated, Church. A great church.

 

This first mark of a great church is really the source of all the other ones you could list. The first Church was a regenerated church. This simply means that the people of the first Church were redeemed and saved people. They had been regenerated, or revived, by the Holy Spirit.

 

Jesus came to our world to revive us. Suffocating in our sins and impurity, he breathes new life into us, so that as we “inhale” the Spirit, we become new people who are in relationship with the Father through Jesus, his resurrected Son. And so, as we are revived to live again, our new life is so radically different from the old life, that it is as if a new person has been born - one who hungers for a relationship with God and one that welcomes the work of the Spirit with excitement in his or her life!

 

New life by the Spirit makes us Christians. It makes us children of the Most High! It makes us brothers and sisters through our relationship with Jesus Christ. It makes us people who are gifted by the Holy Spirit to do the Lord’s work well, making an impact and healing people.

 

Too many people’s names have been added to church rolls without ever adding these people to the Church of Christ through being revived by the Spirit. To be in the Church of Jesus Christ is no mere formality of adding your name to a roll. To truly be part of the Lord’s Church, you must first be regenerated and revived.

 

The Bible clearly teaches that salvation is by grace through faith. This faith implies that the person is trusting in Christ for his or her salvation. No one can believe on behalf another person. Each one must come to Christ personally.

 

Before we can be added to the Lord’s Church, we must agree with God concerning what his Word says about our sinful condition, our inability to save ourselves, the amazing grace through which we are redeemed and the necessity to trust Christ alone for our salvation.

 

Becoming a great Church, is becoming a Church that leads people to Jesus, and to help them to through faith, be revived into a new life and service through the work of the Holy Spirit.

 

Are you suffocating spiritually? Have you been revived? Did God breathe his eternal life into you? Have you been born into the true Church of Christ and into a relationship with Jesus?