Welcome to our quest for an audience of One. If you are just now joining us we are meeting on the page each Thursday and focusing on God as our audience of One in all we think, say, and do. Let’s talk about real Life and learn about how we can function in community with an audience of One.
The church today is engaged in spiritual warfare that has been raging since before the beginning of time. If you are a Christian you are constantly fighting the battle of the mind. While doing so we are called to community, and not to forsake the gathering of ourselves together. But what if community has hurt us in the past. That sounds ironic because the meaning of the word community is coming together in unity, but it happens.We are human and we fail each other. Community can be brutal when there are those divided in the midst of it. Whether that community is small or large, divisions can happen when we don’t agree. We are told to be of one mind in Christ. That we are all a part of one body. Our coming together is supposed to be for mutual edification, a building up of one another. So what do we do when our minds don’t agree?
As parts of that body we want to continue to do what the Lord requests of us. We long to please Him in all we think, say, and do. So the best way to do that, when community is divided, is to remember He is the head of the church. His thoughts are higher than ours. He is our mutual Savior. If we submit to Him as our audience of One we are able to please Him. In seeking God as our audience in all we say and do in community we are bound to become of one mind. His mind.
God approves of us, and He has done so since before we were formed in the womb. There is no verse in the bible that says make sure your brothers and sisters approve of you. No it says to esteem others better than ourselves. It says to love one another as I have loved you. So when divided in real life community we can look at the thoughts, words, and actions that we don’t agree with and examine both ours and theirs with the word of God. Keep in mind we all have different functions in the body. Then take it all before God and say this is your mind on the subject and so I agree with you Lord. If we are wrong, then we submit to Him. If they are wrong, then pray for them, and continue to act in community with God as your audience of One. When you interact with each other recall that Christ is in them and He is our audience. In this way we can be sure we are acting in their best interest, as well as our own.
This is Real Life, and Jesus came for us to have life abundantly. Satan wants to steal, kill, and destroy our communities. A body needs all of its parts. Especially the Head. So let’s vow to remember our audience of One in community. Let’s tear down the walls that separate us. The only clear reason to leave each other is if God is moving us somewhere else in the body. This does happen, and if you are considering leaving the community you are a part of then make sure He is the One who is directing you to do so. You will know, if you make Him your audience of One.
12 Just as a body, though one, has many parts, but all its many parts form one body, so it is with Christ. 13 For we were all baptized by[c] one Spirit so as to form one body—whether Jews or Gentiles, slave or free—and we were all given the one Spirit to drink. 14 Even so the body is not made up of one part but of many. 1 Corinthians 12:12 (NIV)
23 For the husband is the head of the wife as Christ is the head of the church, his body, of which he is the Savior. Ephesians 5:23 (NIV)
18 And he is the head of the body, the church; he is the beginning and the firstborn from among the dead, so that in everything he might have the supremacy. Colossians 1:18
Remember we are in ministry with God, and not each other. Yes we may function in a ministry together, but our ministry marriage is to our audience of One.
❤ Melinda
For more in Christian Community pre-order Mary Demuth’s “The Walls Around Your Heart.”
Another Samaritan Woman 