THE JOY OF BELONGING

THE JOY OF BELONGING

                “Husbands, love your wives just as Christ also loved the church and gave Himself up for her; that He might sanctify her, having cleansed her by the washing of water with the word, that He might present to Himself the church in all her glory, having no spot or wrinkle or any such thing; but that she should be holy and blameless.” Eph. 5:25-27

                As I have mentioned previously, our church is in a 40 day time of fasting and prayer and given the epic situations in the world today, we sense the need for fasting and prayer more than at any other time. Jesus is in the process of preparing a bride for a wedding and those who are betrothed to Him are crying out for the purifying work of the Holy Spirit and the washing of the Word. We sense the need for an uncommon outpouring of the Holy Spirit to match the times in which we live.

                As such, our Sunday night services have been turned into prayer fests where various members of the church are called upon to pray over issues that we face in our church and in our community… binding Satan out and praying spiritual warfare prayers of deliverance and kingdom purposes. We are praying for a revival of Holy Spirit power, not only for ourselves, but for our community. Drugs and Satanic influences are literally eating our country alive as people in desperate need of Christ turn instead to a kind of false comfort that destroys them.

                I was invited to be one of the prayer warriors last night and being given a list of important issues to pray about, I chose to pray about marriage. So I read the above text and then talked for a few minutes about marriage as God sees it. Marriage is foundational to the Christian walk. It is a covenant just like the covenant we have entered into with Jesus Christ. So there are direct parallels between strong marriages at home, to strong marriage between Christ and His church and therefore our marriage to each other as the Body of Christ.

                I mentioned that you can go into any church of say 500 people. They are all together in one place, holding the same Bibles and listening to the same preacher. One person may be overwhelmed with the presence and power of God, even being moved to tears by the closeness of the Holy Spirit and the power of the Word… and yet right next to them may be someone who is bored and looking at their watch and wondering when the service will be over.

                What is the difference between these two people? The difference is that one of them is married to Christ and the other is not. One has an intimate relationship with Jesus while the other does not.

                The same is true of marriages at home. In some marriages, the longer they are together, the more they cherish each other… the more they are bonded in friendship, the deeper their love grows. They never lose that feeling of the joy of belonging. At any given moment of the day, they would rather be together than apart. This has become true for Bonnie and me and I still get a little tingle of excitement when we are walking somewhere… anywhere.. and she takes my hand. We are best of friends and we cherish the joy of belonging.

                Yet in other marriages two people continue to grow apart until they are like two lonely strangers sharing the same house. Some marriages end in divorce, while others become a tedious marathon of endurance as their hearts cry out for something that is missing… lost to them because they did not maintain their relationship so that it would grow.

                Jesus talked about a marriage in which five were ready to enter in while five were not ready. I like to think that Jesus maybe had tears in His eyes as He told this parable. The foolish virgins had not renewed the oil of the Holy Spirit in their lives. All of them had been given the same amount of oil at some point, but some of them did not maintain and continuously cherish and replenish the oil with the Word and with prayer. Their lamps had gone out. Their betrothal to Christ had ended up in separation rather than marriage.

                So I prayed not only for the marriages in our church, but also for that greater sense of marriage in which we are being bonded to Christ and to each other in a kind of unity that the first church experienced when the fire of Pentecost fell upon them. I prayed that every member of our church would say those two little words that change everything…”I Do.”

                In any given congregation there are those who are growing in their marriage relationship with Jesus and then there are those that are silently growing apart from Him. They go through the motions of marriage but their heart is not in it and their oil is running low. In the same service there are those who are being refreshed and renewed while others are bored and looking at their watches… wise and foolish virgins… together in the same place… some are silently growing cold… feeling like outsiders looking in… while at the same time others are experiencing the joy of belonging.

                Some can blame the preacher for their lack of inspiration, but in truth, each one of us is either being renewed day by day in the Lord and in His Word… we are either praying in the Spirit and growing in intimacy with Christ, or we are living like the world and then hoping that the preacher will say something that will revive us once a week.

                It’s all about marriage my friends… and the preacher can lead you to the altar and help you to say “I Do.” but from that point on, your marriage is going to be what you make it to be and you will either grow hot, or grow cold, or in many cases, grow lukewarm… and Jesus doesn’t like lukewarm. He likes the hot passion if intimacy, for John baptized them with water for repentance, but Jesus came to baptize us with the Holy Spirit and fire.

                It is time to rekindle our marriages at every level…our marriages to each other… our marriage to Christ and our marriage to the Body of Christ, so that in every sense we may experience the joy of belonging.