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It is the Father who has made us members of His family, and it is His will that we find each other and learn to talk to Him together.
–Rosalind Rinker

Christians, do we truly consider each other family?
Do you think about those sitting in the pews around you as family?
Jesus called us his mother and brothers and sisters.
He tells us that God has adopted us into his family.
And as Todd Agnew wrote for a song… there is one important reason that you must love your fellow church member:
“If we’re all under one Father that makes us all brothers… We are all family.”

For the most part, in America, it seems that when we join the church we gain new friends and get to keep our biological family as well. But in places with strong hostility toward Christianity, the choosing of Christ often means the expulsion from your biological family. The family which raised you may reject you if you choose Christ. The church family then becomes so very important to these believers who need the intimate love of a family, but are now, in some ways, orphans without a home. God invites them into his home and his family – where we become the new brothers and sisters.

And it is his will that we find each other, love one another like family, and learn to pray with one another in unity.

Today, begin changing your mind toward your fellow believers.
And then on Sunday, when you go to worship with your church family, don’t just consider them good friends… Look at them as your family – your new grandmothers and uncles and nephews and nieces and Brothers and Sisters. (Even if some of us might be difficult to love. Keep bearing with us and love us anyway. Your love toward me as your new family member will change me in time.)

Remember,
We all have One Father… that makes us One Family.

It was not man, to whom God was hostile, who took the initiative to make God friendly, nor was it Jesus Christ, the eternal Son, who took the initiative to turn his Father’s wrath against us into love. The idea that the kind Son changed the mind of his unkind Father by offering himself in place of sinful man is no part of the gospel message — it is sub-Christian, indeed an anti-Christian, idea, for it denies the unity of will in the Father and the Son and so in reality falls back into polytheism, asking us to believe in two different gods. But the Bible rules this out absolutely by insisting that it was God himself who took the initiative in quenching his own wrath against those whom, despite their disloyalty, he loved and had chosen to save.
–J. I. Packer

God the Father loved this world of people so much that he sent his only begotten Son to save us.
And God the Son loved this world of people so much he was willing to come and to die on the cross.
These are not two different gods who stand at crossroads from each other.
This is our Triune God – a God who reveals himself to us in three Persons – a God of love who rescues sinners.

May I better understand his love. May I embrace it, receive it, allow it to fill me up, and then take the overflow and share it with others.

I hope you will pray that type of prayer as well!

Perhaps prostitutes, tax collectors, and other known sinners responded to Jesus so readily because at some level they knew they were wrong and to them God’s forgiveness looked very appealing. As C. S. Lewis has said, “Prostitutes are in no danger of finding their present life so satisfactory that they cannot turn to God: the proud, the avaricious, the self-righteous, are in that danger.”
–Philip Yancey

Just as with physical healing, we can’t get better if we don’t admit to the doctor that we have pain and need treatment. If we refuse to admit our sickness and refuse medication and treatment, we might die if the illness is serious enough.

And sin is serious… eternally serious. Deadly serious.

Where are you on the spectrum?
Have you admitted that you are a person who realizes you are a sinner in need of salvation with no power to save yourself? And therefore God’s forgiveness looks very appealing?
Or do you think, “I’m good enough,” and therefore refuse to admit your need and turn to God?

Jesus said that the only ones who were able to receive His healing were those who admitted their need for Him.

The other problem with the proud and self-righteous is that when they work their way into the church, we find that legalism creeps in as well, and it is no longer OK to not be OK in the church. And the church is the one place where allowing someone to be broken and ask for healing is desperately needed.

The Church must be a place where it is okay not to be okay. The culture of the Church needs to be a safe place for the weary, weak, and wobbly. Of all places, we should welcome those who are honest about their burdens, frustrations, and pitfalls. Our people cannot be honest about their shortcomings in the marketplace. The Church provides the release valve of grace that we all desperately need, leadership included.
–Matt Chandler

Oh that all of our churches would be a place where it is okay to not be okay.
Our churches should be places where “Fine” is not the only appropriate answer to “How are you?”

The church needs to hold out a powerful message of grace to allow people to be honest about their burdens.

This in no way requires the church to be soft on sin. Rather, it is the message that where sin abounds, God’s grace is even bigger and can swallow it up.

What will it take for our churches to become places of grace where it is okay to not be okay?
It will take you (and me) making the decision to hold out grace to others.

Until individual church members are willing to hold out God’s grace to others (the grace that we received by Jesus when we did not deserve it), we will not have churches full of grace.
It starts with you!

“Lord, Send a Revival of Grace, and Let It Begin in Me!”