Tuesday, April 1st, 2025
These last few weeks it really feels like there has been a shift in our church. I want to share my perspective of how we are becoming more and more like the Biblical picture of the body of Christ. Acts 2:42-47 gives a beautiful picture of how the early church functioned. They broke bread together, prayed together, witnessed signs and wonders, daily met in the courts and each other’s homes, and gave of their excess to those in need. 1 Corinthians 12 provides more details on what the body of Christ looks like. Let’s look at verses 25-26:
25 that there should be no schism in the body, but that the members should have the same care for one another. 26 And if one member suffers, all the members suffer with it; or if one member is honored, all the members rejoice with it.
The part about us suffering together is powerful. God is often putting various members of our church on my heart. He has me pray for them or send things to encourage them. We all recognize our need for each other. We share our brokenness instead of hiding it. We ask others to pray for us believing that when the light shines on an area of our life, the darkness loses its power.
The part about rejoicing when a member is honored is such a counter-cultural thing. The world has us all competing for popularity and riches, ready to take out whomever might try to take our piece of the pie. But not the body of Christ. The words “healthy competition” keep coming to me. Webster’s 1828 defines competition as the act of seeking, or endeavoring to gain, what another is endeavoring to gain at the same time. Pride and jealousy come in when we think there is only one crown at stake. But in Christ’s kingdom we all have our own crown and a fingerprint-unique path to get to that crown.
Healthy competition then is when we encourage each other to keep seeking and not give up on building up treasures in heaven to adorn our crown. When we see each other succeed it should motivate us to say, “Wow God, that was amazing. I cannot wait to see what we are all going to do next.”
Final Thoughts…
One person’s success doesn’t take away from anyone else’s. We are all called to fulfill different roles so that when we come together, we function as one body. It’s not about us “doing better” than everyone else. It’s about all of us completing our specific function so that we can be the body of Christ that this world needs. At the end of the day success looks like what it says in Acts 2:47 “And the Lord added to the church daily those who were being saved.”