The Spirit Was There: Devotions From Time Of Graceናሙና

The Spirit was there--gathering

In life’s games and sports, it is assumed that everybody starts even, that the outcome is to be based on the participant’s skill and effort. In spiritual things, alas, we start in a deep hole, like starting a football game behind 1,000 to nothing at opening kickoff. We are born disconnected from God, born infidels, doomed and damned.

But the Spirit loves us too much to let us go. His holy mission is nothing less than to reconnect all of God’s lost children with their loving Father and Savior Jesus. Through words and washing of pure grace, the Spirit brings us back to life and changes our status from God’s enemies to his children.

More--he connects us to other believers, amplifying the wonderful experience of being saved. We become part of a giant faith network that is meant to work together for the common good: “We were all baptized by one Spirit so as to form one body--whether Jews or Gentiles, slave or free--and we were all given the one Spirit to drink” (1 Corinthians 12:13). Your economic status, your social class, your language or nationality or race all do not matter. All are loved; all believers become part of this bond, this spiritual body, the body of Christ.

The New Testament epistles frequently use the word “church” as a synonym for that wonderful fellowship of faith. “Church” in its best and purest meaning is not the building where local congregations meet for worship, nor the local corporation.

It’s the people. People connected to people by the Spirit.