We are getting more rain which is needed here so we are off to do indoor things like going to Toys R Us and maybe bowling before Scouts.

Devotions are from The Beautiful Fight by Gary Thomas

Transformation is a community effort. We need each other. The Bible pictures community as weak individuals being supported and uplifted by a stronger corporate experience.

We need the shelter of the Body of Christ through which we can be trained, restrained, confronted and restored.  We may be tempted to build our own kingdoms and our own reputations.
When Paul says to the Ephesians, ”In Him you too are being built together to become a dwelling in which God lives by His Spirit” he is talking to a community.

Cultivating God’s presence is a corporate experience, not just individual.

How real is God in our midst?

Sharing Christ together sounds like heaven but whenever there is a group of people together there is frustration, conflict and sin. Even with God’s power, we can be pathetic. “And yet in the midst of our failures and spectacular limitations, God still sends us out and still allows His power to break through and accomplish something through us that we could never do on our own.”
We are all called to commitment and ministry, and to exercise God’s authority and power.
Let us honor what God has done, is doing, and will do through his imperfect church, even while trying to reform it. Not one disciple of Jesus lacked some serious fault, and yet Jesus called, loved and used each one.

May He use each of us to encourage one another.