You see how beautifully this works? As God matures
the gifts that He has built into us as individuals these work to bring out and
nurture the gifts that are present in the members of the body as a whole. These
in turn work to further nurture and mature our individual giftedness which
feeds into the growth of the whole body into the full stature of Christ.
But I think we get it backwards. We concentrate on
reaching outward in much service work. This indeed produces some satisfaction
in that we feel that we are doing something for someone. But so often this is
not really “showing Christ.” It is more like proving what good Christians we
are. Our real witness, that which truly shows forth Christ into the world, is
actually counterintuitive. Our outreach depends on our in-reach. Our witness should be the fruit which grows out of the
work that we do to cultivate our inner spiritual ground. Dallas Willard in his
book The Great Omission calls this
“discipleship.” This, he says, the church has neglected. But it is just what is
needed for the church to fulfill the Great Commission.
We should be focusing more on the work of making
place for the Spirit of Christ to work within us; to bring to maturity the
person that He created us to be. If we do this through cultivating spiritual
exercises which work to create ever-widening space for the Spirit to work
within us then our “evangelistic” fruits will grow out from this ground. Beginning
thus the organic church will grow from its roots upward into the full stature
of Christ. It is not that we try to show Christ to the world, but that lifting
up Christ in our midst will draw people to Him.
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