The New Living Translation
1 Corinthians 1: 1 - 31
1 ..chosen by the will of God…
2 …called by God. He made you holy by means of Christ Jesus,
4 …belong to Christ Jesus.
5 He has enriched your church …about Christ …
8 He will keep you strong …
9 God will surely do this for you, …
12 … "I am a follower of Paul." Others are saying, "I follow Apollos," or "I follow Peter," or "I follow only Christ."
18 … power of God.
20 …God has made them all look ….
21 .. God in his wisdom …
24 … called by God …power of God … wisdom of God.
25 … plan of God ….
26 … God called you.
27 …God deliberately chose things the world considers foolish ….
28 God chose things despised by the world, …
29 so that no one can ever boast in the presence of God.
30 God alone made it possible for you to be in Christ Jesus. … God made Christ to be wisdom itself. He is the one who made us acceptable to God. He made us pure and holy, and he gave himself to purchase our freedom.
31 As the Scriptures say, should boast only of what the Lord has done.
Read this passage from 1 Corinthians 1 and see how many references to God did this and how our focus is the Lord. It ends by saying we can only boast in the Lord. The problems of disunity were caused by people following their earthly leaders instead of Christ. Again this passage is lifted out of context to support the view that these are people complaining about the system. There they go again grumbling in their tents just like Miriam in Moses’ day. It is amazing how often the leaders would misuse scripture to support their own agenda. But read on because every member is responsible to the extent that they complied with the system and perpetrated it by not investigating the scriptures for themselves.
In the assembly we boasted in (past tense):
1. our vision,
2. our devotion to prayer
3. our reading the Word of God
4. following the latest whim from Fullerton
(but has this been replaced by our allegiance to our local leaders?)
We used to demonstrate that I am of George when we said “Well this is what George or Betty said.
We now demonstrate that I am of the leading brothers (when we never question anything the leaders say when our conscience says it is wrong).
There are those who claim that things are different now. So I challenge any who have not left the Assembly because they believe this to be true to consider doing the following to be sure. Examine yourself before the Lord in these areas.
1. Is there any hint of spiritual pride (we do it better or know more than other Christians);
2. Do I have a desire to lord it over others and boss them around (Do I like to head up the outreaches, fellowships etc. and assign things to people and get upset when I am not asked to have this role).
3. Do I teach others with stewardships that equip them for service as God sees fit? (Do I see their work as a means to better my lot by having them there only to fix and clean my home and pay down my mortgage faster? Are the stewardships demeaning and do I seek only to find fault in the way they are either carried out or accomplished);
4. Do I understand what is a reasonable consequence for inappropriate behavior and do I practice the same behavior myself and not see it as a problem for me to do? (If you are mean and petty in giving consequences you are treating people like children. It is especially demeaning if the people you are assigning them are already adults). Consider what Jesus would say “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you".
5. Do you avoid non-compliant members without first hearing their side of the story?
6. Do you focus on performance in preaching, praying or outreach? (You can tell this one if you are always keeping stats on time number of points they gave and only focusing on the statistics of brothers preaching, recording how many times someone prayed and listing how many times people went on outreach and how many they are discipling).
7. Am I truly humble? (the way we tell this one is our attitude of how we think we are doing and how others measure up to us. It may be seen in this prayer. I thank God I am not like all those other Christians in other churches I pray twice or more a day I read the Word twice or more a day, I go to weekly prayer meetings, I go to bible study, I disciple many people, I invite people over.
8. Do I take pride in exhorting others for every little thing and would I respond to them the way I expect them to respond to me if the tables were turned?
If you try to fool yourself or others you may succeed for a while but remember that the LORD is never fooled and He is the judge of all unrighteousness.
Let me end by saying that I believe there may be some who really do think that things have changed. I don’t think so because the people are still saying the same old things I learned from the GG teachings and they will not seek independent outside help from a respected mature christian. Can things change? I hope so but you know only the Lord knows for sure.
Lord bless you all.
Still serving Him after all those years.
