I listened to a sermon recently on how easy it is to live from instinct rather than identity. As believers, all too often I think we live from our past brokenness rather than from who God says we are, and who we should become in him.

Somehow the body of Christ seems to think that if we are humble we should never desire or even confess the desire to be great. Why is this? Is it because we think or have been taught that to desire such a bold thing is sinful or carnal? 

The body of Christ so often seems to have the ability to take a revelation that God gives us about some important spiritual truth and turn it into some doctrine or theology instead of learning how to apply that truth. Shouldn’t we be asking the Holy Spirit to explain how that revelation should be understood and applied? After all, Jesus specifically said the Holy Spirit would be our counselor.

Do we have any responsibility for making a miracle happen? Granted we all should realize that God is the only one who can truly make a miracle happen, but we need to consider a few things about what provokes God to move on our behalf.

It’s interesting how people’s real beliefs about who Jesus said he was has a direct correlation on the kind of ministry Jesus can do with us. It’s amazing that our faith, or lack there of, affects how Jesus ministers in our lives and when we minister to others who confess that they believe in Jesus as well.

There is a movie called “Leap Year” where a girl has been told by her father that on leap year Irish girls can ask their man if they will marry them, rather than waiting for the man to ask first. When this girl goes to Ireland to ask her man on leap year she encounters all kinds of crazy mishaps trying to reach her man who is in Dublin teaching a medical seminar. 

As I started these series of articles on 1 Corinthians, both on my blog pages and on Facebook, my intention was to show what happens to the body of Christ, mainly the church, when it drifts from the biblical structure and purpose God intended for it to have. I also wanted to show, and will continue to do so in future writing on my daily Facebook post, just how easy that drift can happen whether it be a small local congregation or a mega church.

I started this series on the book of 1 Corinthians because the book shows so many of the pit falls the body of Christ can gets into when building local churches and how to resolve these problems. Each church building, in each town, is different even though they may claim to be Christ centered or have a cross on the building or have the name of Christ in it’s sign, but the true mark of whether the building houses Christ followers is whether or not Jesus is at the core of everything it does and whether it is what Jesus said he would build.

The church has learned all the tricks of the trade as far as marketing and fund raising, but few take the time or energy to help believers sort out their faith from a scriptural perspective. Doing that takes more time, patience and grit than just paying some people to make a slick Sunday presentation. Don’t get me wrong, I am all for theater lights, nice buildings and facilities, but those things don’t make mature believers.

In article one, I shared how many believers never seem to get past the infancy stage in their Christian walk because they have not been taught to live a surrendered life to Christ and the kingdom of God. They agree with the principles Jesus taught about seeking the kingdom of God but, for them, that mainly means not engaging in a sinful lifestyle. Most of their personal study in the scriptures revolves around discovering God’s promises on how to get their personal needs and desire fulfilled rather than embracing God’s promises to fulfill God’s purpose for them.  The idea of living for a higher calling, one of divine purpose, seems to always be challenged by their focus on themselves and thus they can’t hear God’s voice on much else.