God moves at levels we have very little understanding of.  We used to have two lovely and intelligent dogs but they had no idea what I did when I went to work.  In fact they had no concept of what my work was nor even that there is such a thing as work.  All they were aware of was that I was around sometimes and sometimes I was not.

God likens us to sheep and Him as a Shepherd.  We really have no concept of His work.

It is good to keep this in mind when we pray about or consider the Church.  Sometimes the local church we are part of can loom too large in our minds as if it was all that God is doing in our area or land.  Thank God for faithful men and women who follow God and are led to work with Him to build His Church.  And thank God if you are benefitting from the service of such men and women.

But God is doing something bigger.  Don’t become tribal or sectarian or worried if people don’t stay.  Often they are God’s servants doing what God wants them to do.  And if not, God is still building His Church and nothing the devil or men do will stop that.

Just make sure you are where God wants you to be, doing what He wants you to do.

The passage below is taken from Eugene Peterson’s introduction to Paul’s letter to the Galatians:

When men and women get their hands on religion, one of the first things they often do is turn it into an instrument for controlling others, either putting or keeping them “in their place.” The history of such religious manipulation and coercion is long and tedious. It is little wonder that people who have only known religion on such terms experience release or escape from it as freedom. The problem is that the freedom turns out to be short-lived.

Paul of Tarsus was doing his diligent best to add yet another chapter to this dreary history when he was converted by Jesus to something radically and entirely different—a free life in God. Through Jesus, Paul learned that God was not an impersonal force to be used to make people behave in certain prescribed ways, but a personal Savior who set us free to live a free life. God did not coerce us from without, but set us free from within.

It was a glorious experience, and Paul set off telling others, introducing and inviting everyone he met into this free life. In his early travels he founded a series of churches in the Roman province of Galatia. A few years later Paul learned that religious leaders of the old school had come into those churches, called his views and authority into question, and were reintroducing the old ways, herding all these freedom-loving Christians back into the corral of religious rules and regulations.

Paul was, of course, furious. He was furious with the old guard for coming in with their strong-arm religious tactics and intimidating the Christians into giving up their free life in Jesus. But he was also furious with the Christians for caving in to the intimidation.

His letter to the Galatian churches helps them, and us, recover the original freedom. It also gives direction in the nature of God’s gift of freedom—most necessary guidance, for freedom is a delicate and subtle gift, easily perverted and often squandered.

Peterson, Eugene H.. The Message: The Bible in Contemporary Language . The Navigators. Kindle Edition.

I am a bible believing Christian. As a result of reading the bible many people like us over many centuries and in many cultures have concluded that aspects of the Sacrifice of the Mass are in flat contradiction to what the bible says.

For instance, the writer to the Hebrews says that there was one sacrifice for sins for all time, that is, Christ’s death on the cross back in about 33 AD on a hill in present day Israel (see Hebrews 10:1-18). He goes on to say that there is therefore no more need for other sacrifices. Yet the Roman Catholic doctrine clearly teaches that the priests participating in the Sacrifice of the Mass are sacrificing Christ afresh every time it is carried out.

Again, the Roman Catholic mass includes transubstantiation during which only a Roman Catholic priest has the power to change a piece of bread and a cup of wine into the actual flesh and blood of Jesus.

Many who call themselves Christians and who read the Bible have concluded that this is nonsense at best and priest craft and blasphemy at worst.

I am of those who believe that this doctrine is a hindrance to people encountering the living Christ through the Holy Spirit in true spiritual communion. We believe that Jesus clearly intended what He said in John 6 that His words about eating His flesh and drinking His blood are spirit and life (v. 66) and not to be taken literally. Cannibalism in any culture is rightly regarded as abhorrent but yet this is what Roman Catholics are taught to do with God’s Son!

There is a long tradition of dissenters that can be read in such books as E.H. Broadbent’s “The Pilgrim Church” or of Protestants which can be read about in the various volumes of D’Aubigne’s “History of the Reformation” and other textbooks.

I would advise everyone that you read some of these books rather than being led by the nose by a clergy that has been revealed in recent times to be as corrupt as it ever was in the days of the Borgias.

That is not to say that individual priests are all tarred with the same brush. Many of them, including no doubt the ones local to you are well meaning people with good intentions. However we all know what the road to hell is paved with.

My parent’s families on both sides going back many generations are Roman Catholic and if we didn’t go to Mass sometimes we would have to avoid funerals, marriages and christenings. However we remain sitting when others kneel during the transubstantiation part of the mass and we avoid taking the bread and wine. Not that it is anything but bread and wine but we don’t want to show approval of something which we disagree with so fundamentally.

^]Simon Peter, a bond-servant and apostle of Jesus Christ,

To those who have received a faith of the same kind as ours, by the righteousness of our God and Savior, Jesus Christ: ² Grace and peace be multiplied to you in the knowledge of God and of Jesus our Lord; ³ seeing that His divine power has granted to us everything pertaining to life and godliness, through the true knowledge of Him who called us by His own glory and excellence. ⁴ For by these He has granted to us His precious and magnificent promises, so that by them you may become partakers of the divine nature, having escaped the corruption that is in the world by lust.

2 Peter 1:1-4 (NAS)

Peter is telling us that God’s divine power – which gives us everything we need to live a godly life- is mediated to us through the promises scattered throughout Scripture.

For we are the temple of the living God; just as God said,

“I will dwell in them and walk among them;
And I will be their God, and they shall be My people.
¹⁷ “Therefore, come out from their midst and be separate,” says the Lord.
“And do not touch what is unclean;
And I will welcome you.
¹⁸ “And I will be a father to you,
And you shall be sons and daughters to Me,”
Says the Lord Almighty.

Therefore, having these promises, beloved, let us cleanse ourselves from all defilement of flesh and spirit, perfecting holiness in the fear of God.

2 Corinthians 6:16-18, 7:1 (NAS)

Paul tells us of the greatest promises in Scripture: God Himself will be a Father to us. He also emphasizes that holiness is required to experience this.

Here are a couple of promises from Proverbs that have helped me this morning:

The fear of the Lord leads to life,
And he who has it will abide in satisfaction;
He will not be visited with evil.

Proverbs 19:23

The righteous man walks in his integrity;
His children are blessed after him.

Proverbs 20:7

¹³ The Passover of the Jews was near, and Jesus went up to Jerusalem. ¹⁴ And He found in the temple those who were selling oxen and sheep and doves, and the money changers seated at their tables. ¹⁵ And He made a scourge of cords, and drove them all out of the temple, with the sheep and the oxen; and He poured out the coins of the money changers and overturned their tables; ¹⁶ and to those who were selling the doves He said, “Take these things away; stop making My Father’s house a place of business.” ¹⁷ His disciples remembered that it was written, “Zeal for Your house will consume me.” ¹⁸ The Jews then said to Him, “What sign do You show us as your authority for doing these things?” ¹⁹ Jesus answered them, “Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up.” ²⁰ The Jews then said, “It took forty-six years to build this temple, and will You raise it up in three days?” ²¹ But He was speaking of the temple of His body. ²² So when He was raised from the dead, His disciples remembered that He said this; and they believed the Scripture and the word which Jesus had spoken.

John 2:13-22

The Scripture is clear that, in the New Testament, the temple of God is no longer in Jerusalem but it is in the bodies of believers both individually and corporately:

¹⁹ Or do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit who is in you, whom you have from God, and that you are not your own?

1 Cor. 6:19

¹⁹ So then you are no longer strangers and aliens, but you are fellow citizens with the saints, and are of God’s household, ²⁰ having been built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Christ Jesus Himself being the corner stone, ²¹ in whom the whole building, being fitted together, is growing into a holy temple in the Lord, ²² in whom you also are being built together into a dwelling of God in the Spirit.

Ephesians 2:19-22

Jesus came out from the temple and was going away when His disciples came up to point out the temple buildings to Him. ² And He said to them, “Do you not see all these things? Truly I say to you, not one stone here will be left upon another, which will not be torn down.”

Matthew 24:1-2

Therefore it is also clear that Jesus intends the same purity for His spiritual temple, both corporately and individually, that He expressed for the earthly temple in the passage from John 2 quoted above (c.f. Mal. 3:1, Psalm 69:9). We should therefore not be surprised when we encounter various trials (James 1:2, 1 Peter 4:12) – God is cleansing His temple.

Don’t be surprised if everything is upset and in turmoil internally at times. There is a season for everything and this just might be that season for you. God might touch your hard secular work (represented by oxen), your Christian works (represented by sheep), your financial affairs (the money changers) and any other spirits that might be operating on you internally (represented by the doves).

It might have taken 46 years (more or less) to have got your internal state to the place it currently is. When Jesus comes in He could overturn it all in less than an hour and raise it up to something new in 3 days.

Enjoy!