Christ in Every Day Life

Body life is only as good as your individual life with Christ. Don’t make the mistake of substituting relationships with people for a relationship with Christ.  (T. Stanley)

Fellowship is important. To say otherwise would be a lie, but too often, we put all our focus on fellowship, and we forget about Christ. While we certainly can (and should) worship, pray, praise, learn and grow as a group, it's important to understand that our relationship with Christ is very personal. Our relationship with the Lord must be nourished outside of a fellowship group setting.

A friend of ours used to say (and probably still does), "Revival starts in the home."  People often want to see revival in their churches, but they seem to forget that revival starts within the individual. People want to see revival in their church, but they neglect their families. It starts with you, it spreads to your family, fills the church and floods out into the community.

I've been in groups who believe that it is their fellowship which saves. They don't have a solid relationship with the Lord Jesus, but they have a great relationship with their church community. They don't seek His truth and hold what they hear in their gatherings against the light of Scripture.  They base their whole belief system off a group or gathering or way of gathering rather than Christ alone. It is great to have a "brotherhood", but we must remember:

Just because a group has the "spirit of brotherhood" does not mean they have the Spirit of Christ.

Many groups have a spirit of brotherhood. My cousin onced explained that, as a marine, there is a spirit of brotherhood and unity among other marines.  I have been to gatherings of women where there is a spirit of "sisterhood" in that we are all mothers and have all experienced the trials of labor, birth, and babies.  We are united and have much to share with one another.

So many people believe because they have felt the spirit of brotherhood and have built relationships within a religious atmosphere that they somehow have built a relationship with Christ.  Unfortunately, most of the people who have done this are blind to it, and it will take a revelation of God to open their eyes.

Many have built their fellowship and their idea of salvation around another man's misinterpretation of the bible, and because they do not seek out the truth of the bible and are accustomed to reading the bible through a false filter, they continue to believe falsehoods.

Our relationship with the Lord is our own. If we don't seek Him, praise Him, and spend time with him (which means listening, speaking, and just "being" with Him), we aren't nourishing our relationship.

There may be times in our life when we are not able to fellowship with others for some reason or another.  Will we be starved because we have not built a real relationship with the Lord and do not know how to feed ourselves in Christ from the Scriptures without someone preaching it to us?

Do we only sing songs of praise and worship and really focus on the Lord when we are in a group setting, or do we have these moments when we are alone with God? Do we do this as a family, or do we reserve it only for "church"?  Or, do you not even do such a thing in "church"? I have been to "churches" where they do not understand or know what it is to praise and worship as a group, nevermind as individuals!

What does our personal relationship with Christ look like?  Do we seek Him out, meditate on His Word, sing of His glory and majesty, long for His direction and correction, and allow ourselves to just bask in Him when we go about every day life?

As much as I love to fellowship with others, I should really cherish my one-on-one time with the Lord. This is something I definitely have had to work at through the years since my conversion from "religious" to Christ-follower.

Some years ago, I found myself looking upon some of my Christian friends with envy. I desired to have a relationship with the Lord that they seemed to have.  I would later realize that my relationship with the Lord usually depended on how often I sought Him and poured my time into Him. It's amazing how we often get to thinking that we can have a great, flourishing relationship with the Lord but neglect Him in our personal, every day lives.