Dave's Diary

Daily Reading: Ephesians 4:11-16

We know that Jesus came to make the only Way for us to be brought home and adopted into the Family of God. He died and rose again to restore us to right relationship with God. While He certainly would have done that for you even if you were the only individual on the planet, the truth is that you aren’t. And over the millennia, billions of people have received His saving grace. Through faith in Jesus, we have been adopted into a vast family of people from every tribe, language and nation on the planet. And together, with all of our diversity and difference, we are His Family.

In fact, Ephesians 4 emphasizes that we are more than a Family – we are also His Body. We could say that the Spirit of Jesus lives through His Family on earth as if we were His Physical Body. And in a way that’s what we are – the physical, human representation of the Lord who has ascended to the Father’s right hand in glory.

Only within a local expression of this Family, where we can have actual human relationships with one another as fellow Family-members, can we be equipped to do the works of service that Jesus calls us to do. Only here can we grow into unity and maturity as we come to know Jesus more fully as He truly is – through our mutual expressions of His life and presence – through being taught of Him by those who are gifted to do so – and through living in love towards each other in all our difference and diversity.

Be encouraged today not to allow all the difficulties and struggles of human relationships to discourage you from pressing in to a deeper belonging to the Family of God, the Body of Christ. Give yourself fully to the work of service to which Christ has called you in the Body; give yourself fully to growing in Your knowledge of Him and your depth of relationship through real, human relationships within your local Church Family; because only there can you become all that Jesus has saved you to be. Amen!