Renewing the temple of the lord

 

Many of us do agree that love and cooperative culture in assemblies of the lord is not at its best. The good question is: how do we correct and rebuild it back? We can get angry about it, we can teach about it, we can rebuke the assembly, and we can simply say it is a sign of the end of the world. The fact, however, is that we can only rebuild it by noticing how it was built in the first place.

 

People who joined assembles of the lord were not saints; they were sinful people like most of us were/are. Yet a faithful planted the small seed of faith from the kingdom of God in the heart of those lost souls and the heavenly father grew it to the green shade that we call our assemblies. Those faithful did not change people around them by pointing their finger at their failure. People from around the world do stumble into sin, hate, and revenge because they are in darkness. The simple fact, however, is that you don’t change them by pointing your finger at them.

 

If you want to change the faithful, therefore, the first thing that you have to do is change yourself through the spiritual growth process to have an abundance of unconditional love, an abundance of forgiveness, an abundance of kindness, an abundance fairness, an abundance of justice, and an abundance of holiness. Have the salt and light of the lord shine bright in your life and make sure your love is both unconditional and without hypocrisy. You are from light, be the light. Change yourself first.

 

The next step is to plant this kingdom of God, in its smallest dose which is you, in the assembly of the lord. Shine bright the light of the lord. Don’t demand love, love them unconditionally. Don’t demand justice, be just and merciful. They are lost in the assembly of the lord with a mind of the world, so shine bright the way of the light on their life. Plant the good seed with faith and the lord will grow it up. Don’t doubt this method because before people were in the assembly of the lord, they were in the world. If the lord can take them out of this world and the lord can take sin out of their heart before, it would not be a hard business to do it all over again in his assemblies.

 

So, don’t demand change, be the change. In this process, you need to carry not only your cross but also their cross. If you preach Jesus to the unfaithful, you expect them to be harsh, judgmental, crude, and may even savagely attack you. They are in darkness, what do you expect? By the same logic, some of those in the assembly of the lord are faithful in name but not in life, so what do you do toward them is a good question. The answer is that you must do the same with more love. Let them be evil toward you because they are keeping some darkness inside them, yet shine light into their darkness to defeat their evil with your good. 

 

If they insult you, smile and tell them God loves them as you do. If they disrespect you, respect them with love. If they mistreat you, don’t resist evil and let them be what they want to be. Most importantly do it with unconditional honesty and unconditional love. Just let the devil die in your face and allow the peace of the lord to take over. Plant this seed of the lord in their life, and if they are worthy of the kingdom of God, God will grow it in their heart.

 

Your small act of faith will spread the peace and love of the lord to the whole assembly of the lord. Do you complain about the world? The world is the world, sin is its nature. Knowing the world is in darkness, you expect nothing from it when you plant the seed of God with your gospel. You expect them to stone you, imprison you, insult you, mock you, and lash you because you preach the gospel to those in darkness. Yet you love them unconditionally because you are a child of the light and in the light, there is no darkness.

 

If the faithful accepted Jesus into a spiritually well-developed assembly that reflects the light and salt of the lord, they would imitate the light. If the faithful accepted Jesus into the spiritually decaying assembly, however, they may accept the sinful ways as a way of faith. In this process, the assemblies will follow a slow process of decay. This seems to be our contemporary reality and the main issue is: how to reverse this process of decay? The solution is we have to lead them by example. If they are lost and accustomed to the evil ways, with your light at his hand, God himself will lead them to the right path. In this process of decay, some are out of Egypt, by being in the assembly of the lord, but Egypt is in their heart. Now you have to take Egypt out of their heart if they are worthy of the kingdom of God. If they are not worthy, however, they are just not worthy.

 

Without love, everything is worthless. You can give all you have, but it counts for nothing if you don’t have love. You can give your life for Jesus, but without love it is worthless. Your faith is worthless without love. Without love, you have no place in the kingdom of God. You can baptize millions into the faith but without love, you have nothing of value. This is why we need to build the love back in the assemblies of the lord, and the way to build it is not by demanding change but by being the change. Open your heart to be the change and the spirit of the lord will guide you there. Let him take you where you belong, you belong in the kingdom of God. After all, God is love, and without love all is worthless.

 

Don’t expect others to be right, no expect them to be very wrong. When you feed them, expect them to spit on you. When you love them, expect them to hate you. When you support them, expect them to put a knife in your back. Expect also that they may complain about why your back is damaging their knife. Expect nothing good but be good. If God is with you and smiling about you, what can a human being do to you? If God is with you, who can be against you? Be wise like a snake, but kind like a dove. Know who they are, but be kind anyhow. Defeat their darkness with your light. Overcome evil with good, but don’t be overcome by their evil.

 

If you find the above recommendation hard to follow and impossible to do, I am not talking to you but to the good faithful who must deal with you. Someone needs to show you the way and you need someone with better spiritual growth to lead you from darkness to light. When you are playing with children's milk, you need someone who can handle spiritual bone to lead you to maturity.

 

Before his crucifixion, Jesus gave his last order that his disciples should love each other. The Lord said that if you love each other, this is the sign that you are my disciples. To build love, Jesus, the God, washed the feet of his disciples, who are nothing but his slaves. He humbled himself so we can be humble in his example, not in a drama which is acted one day every year for a holiday show, but in life. If you want to be children of the Most High God, the heavenly father, build love in humility by following in the footsteps of the lord. Go in the narrow path to the kingdom of God, and don’t stumble in the wider path of this world. If you sow in your flesh, you will harvest corruption for sure; if you sow in your spirit, however, you will harvest eternal life in the kingdom of God. So choose the narrow path to eternal life over the wider path to eternal hell. Unconditional LOVE is the way forward.