TO the my brothers and sisters in Christ at The Freedom Centre Church

I praise God for the great things He is doing amongst us.  He is doing what He promised – building His church (Mt. 16:18).  I want to take a moment to talk about this church He is building.

There have been many prophecies and visions about what this church is going to look like.  I have had some as well.  This is something that I ponder about quite often.  What is God doing here?  What is he making?  What are we going to look like?  I am sure I am not alone in this.  While I was spending time with God one day, He clearly spoke to me that He is building His church.  It was one of those things you hear from God that struck me to my core.

He is building His church.  Let me try and communicate this in a different way.  Suppose someone told you that they were buying a new car. You might ask what make and model of car.  You may wonder what options the person is going to have with their car.  However, when the person said it was a car, then you knew essentially what they were talking about.  They are buying a car.  We might think about make, model and options, but Jesus is building His church.  If you don’t have a chassis, engine, and body, then you don’t have a car.  Styling and features don’t mean anything if you don’t have the basic components of the car.  We could start wondering about what it means to be an apostolic centre, or healing centre, or freedom centre; but if we forget what it means to be a church, then we will never come to a place of being the specific kind of church we are suppose to be.

This passage in Matthew is the first use of the word “church” in the New Testament. The Greek word is ekklhsia (ekklaysia), which means a called-out assembly of people for a purpose.  We are an assembly of people who need to have relationship with each other in Christ.  We all have purpose in being here and need to be active in those purposes.  I don’t have space here to go into all of that but wanted us to come back to the basics of being a church.

Let me leave you with something Paul wrote concerning the church:

Now, therefore, you are no longer strangers and foreigners, but fellow citizens with the saints and members of the household of God, having been built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Jesus Christ Himself being the chief cornerstone, in whom the whole building, being fitted together, grows into ​a holy temple in the Lord, in whom you also are being built together for a ​dwelling place of God in the Spirit.  (Ephesians 2:19-22)

Bless you all,

Pastor Merril