God's Amazing Ways, Part II

I Cor. 12:12For just as the body is one and has many members, and all the members of the body, though many, are one body, so it is with Christ. 13For in one Spirit we were all baptized into one body— Jews or Greeks, slaves or free—and all were made to drink of one Spirit.
14For the body does not consist of one member but of many. 15If the foot should say, "Because I am not a hand, I do not belong to the body," that would not make it any less a part of the body. 16And if the ear should say, "Because I am not an eye, I do not belong to the body," that would not make it any less a part of the body. 17If the whole body were an eye, where would be the sense of hearing? If the whole body were an ear, where would be the sense of smell? 18But as it is, God arranged the members in the body, each one of them, as he chose. 19If all were a single member, where would the body be? 20As it is, there are many parts, yet one body.
21The eye cannot say to the hand, "I have no need of you," nor again the head to the feet, "I have no need of you." 22On the contrary, the parts of the body that seem to be weaker are indispensable, 23and on those parts of the body that we think less honorable we bestow the greater honor, and our unpresentable parts are treated with greater modesty, 24which our more presentable parts do not require. But God has so composed the body, giving greater honor to the part that lacked it, 25that there may be no division in the body, but that the members may have the same care for one another. 26If one member suffers, all suffer together; if one member is honored, all rejoice together.

About a year after I met my new friend, she told me she was thinking of doing a neighborhood Bible study and asked if I'd be interested. I told her that it wasn't exactly what I was looking for.....(I really loathe fill-in-the-blank Bible studies and I think a more organic approach is both more effective and more real....but that is yet another post, and a long one at that) We decided to just pray and see what the Lord had in mind. In the meantime, one of her believing neighbors popped over and during conversation mentioned that she wanted to do "something in the neighborhood" for other women, but she wasn't sure what. And so it was born. Thursday mornings....the highlight of my week. We started about a year ago and once a week the three of us get together and talk about what is going on in our lives and our families, bounce things off of each other, talk about what we've been reading in the Word, talk about difficult questions, and best of all....we pray and pour out our hearts to the Lord. We pray for the church in our town--not a specific group, but the church in Milford as a whole (all those who are trusting in Jesus for salvation--wherever they happen to fellowship). We pray for our spouses in detail, our kids, our husbands' businesses or careers, direction, those that don't know Him yet who He's brought into our lives, and pretty much anything else we feel led to pray for. It is unbelievable. I can't tell you how we have seen God move. It is just unbelievable. Some stories I can't even recount because the details are more than I should divulge over the internet, especially because they involve others.....but God has intervened in fantastic ways.

The body of Christ. An awesome thing. We are three completely different women from such unbelievably different backgrounds. One is a baptist lady who grew up in a catholic family, the other went to a baptist high school and now fellowships in a very charismatic church, and then there's me. I grew up in a very conservative background (I bet you've never even heard of them...the Plymouth Brethren---yet another post to come), and grew up thinking that those charismatics were the next best thing to satan worshipers (okay not that bad, but close), and that baptists were believers but they weren't quite as "on the mark" as we were. And catholics....oh my! There can't actually be any "real" believers lurking in the catholic church, can there? Another post yet.

My point being this. God supplied a need in my life. He did this with people I didn't even know two and a half years ago, with types of people I wouldn't have thought I had enough in common with years ago. We have had a ball enjoying our walk with the Lord and just living out our lives together. Any differences we may have are just not deal-breaker issues. Christ's body. United to do the work of the church.....not church work. There's a difference. I leave you with this quote.

"There is a distinction between church work and the work of the church. Church work is what you do for the organized institution of the church. The work of the church is what is done between Sundays when the church is scattered all over the metropolitan area where it is located - in homes, schools, offices, on construction jobs, in market places." Dick Halverson


Tomorrow, Part III