A DEVOTIONAL THOUGHT by Pastor Phil
The pain came on suddenly. In a matter of minutes, I went from feeling uncomfortable and thinking, “I wonder what that is?” to being doubled with searing pain and thinking, “I’m going to die!” I’ve never known an Emergency Room I liked, but it didn’t take me long to realize I needed to go—NOW! Upon arrival, the immediately suspected what it was. If you’ve had it, you probably suspect what it was. I had never had it and had no idea how excruciatingly painful a kidney stone is. Fortunately, mine passed quickly, in a matter of hours, but my brain is still seared by the memory.
I share that to illustrate a point you are likely well aware of. Our bodies are remarkably complex and little things failing to function can cause a lot of problems throughout our bodies systems. Can I get an “amen”? Paul, knowing far less about the human body than we do today, knew enough to know that it was complex and one part makes a difference on all the other parts. So, he uses it again-and-again to describe the church.
“Just as a body, though one, has many parts, but all its many parts form one body, so it is with Christ…Now you are the body of Christ, and each one of you is a part of it.” 1 Corinthians 12:12, 27.
“For just as each of us has one body with many members, and these members do not all have the same function, so in Christ we, though many, form one body, and each member belongs to all the others.” Romans 12:4-5
“From him the whole body, joined and held together by every supporting ligament, grows and builds itself up in love, as each part does its work.” Ephesians 4:16
As you know, church isn’t a show where we watch a few perform. It is a community, a body, where everyone participates and we all grow and build ourselves up in love, as each part does its work.
We all painfully know what can happen when a part of our body isn’t working. The church is no different. Our, yours and mine, growth in faith, in knowing God, in accomplishing God’s mission, in seeing our neighborhood come to Christ is either is either diminished or increased by our, yours and mine, participation.
Now the ways we participate will change as we change our circumstances and, yes, even as our physical bodies change. Yet participate we must if we want the body of Christ at Pleasant Grove Community Church to remain healthy and flourish rather than go the same way all of our physical bodies are headed.
So, how can you participate? There are numerous ways and places you can serve Christ at and through PGCC beyond the very necessary aspect of prayer and just being a good friend to one another. Below you will find several immediate needs we have. Maybe (hopefully) you can help with one of them. If so, PLEASE give us a call. But that list is not the only ways you can serve at PGCC. Give us a call and we will talk with you and help you discern where you might best fit in serving in and through our church.
And thank you for all the ways you have or are serving and generously giving to God’s work through God’s body at PGCC!
When the parts work, the body works, when the parts don’t…we go from feeling uncomfortable to “I think I’m going to die.”
