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[god_whispers]

I feel like if I don't make a commitment somewhere soon that the rest of my life will not end well. That, and the fact that everyone keeps telling me this. I don't know if they're right but since ryan, robbie and walter keep mentioning this to me, it is in me that this is true. But I can't just go anywhere, I want to go where God is strong and

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[kwackin]

Hey, i was jut reaing something online and it reminded me of some stuff i said in my last comment... So i'm just gonna paste some excerpts here. Maybe it'll be insightful, maybe not. Love you!

None of us will ever know complete peace or fulfillment until we are in the place we were called to be in the Lord’s body, His church. This is because we cannot be properly joined to the Head, Jesus, without also being properly joined to His body. Just as the Apostle John wrote in I John 4:20-21, “If someone says, ‘I love God,’ and hates his brother, he is a liar; for the one who does not love his brother whom he has seen, cannot love God whom he has not seen.”

Like it or not, without all of the frustrations and irritations that come with the true commitment to a local body of believers, there is a serious limit on our spiritual maturity. We would like for the church to mature and get over all of its problems before we join it, but then we would miss out on what we need for our maturity and growth. If we are waiting for the church to mature before we join it, by the time it gets to the place where it would be acceptable to us, it will be so far down the road that we will never catch up to it.

A vital, local church life is essential for true spiritual maturity. We can grow in knowledge without it; we can still have spiritual experiences and even operate in the gifts of the Spirit, but we will be limited in our true maturity in Christ, and the authority we can be trusted with. In the times to come, even survival itself will be dependent on our being a vital part of the body of Christ, just as we are warned in I Corinthians 11:23-29.

If you were to cut off any part of the body, it would get weak and sick, and then die fast if it was not quickly reattached. This, too, is true of Christians when they leave the body. They may temporarily feel relief when they leave because they no longer have certain pressures and trials, but those are the pressures and trials that are intended to fashion them into the useful vessels that they are called to be.