Did you know that your daily charge of faith and prayer and seeking God is the energy that makes the Body of Christ function? No one in the Body can say, “I’m not important. It doesn’t matter if I’m not supplying what little I have.” It does matter! And the power of oneness will only be released when each of us is manifesting what we are.
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Show Notes:
As we learned in the previous podcast, the Bible is filled with examples of God moving from a focus on an individual to a focus on a people. The prayer of Solomon in 2 Chronicles 7 shows this process. As an individual anointed by God, Solomon prayed, and God responded to his prayer. It is significant that God’s response was not to tell Solomon what he must do; rather, God told Solomon what the congregation must do.
God was saying, “Just like I answered Solomon’s prayer, I will answer the prayer of my people if they humble themselves and seek My face.” In a sense, Solomon’s importance as a singular individual ceased once he finished the Temple. Now God emphasized the importance of all the individuals of Israel. The effectiveness of the prayer depended on how each individual walked with God. The same is true today.
According to God’s plan, you are important. Without you, it does not work. Yet it is easy for us to minimize our own worthiness and effectiveness. As Christians we need to get over that mentality. We must recognize the importance of what we bring individually through our faith. Stop saying, “What I have isn’t important, and so it won’t matter if I don’t give it.” Instead, get up daily and say, “I need to bring what I have because the Body of Christ will not function without it.”
Key Verses:
- 2 Chronicles 7:11–14. “If … My people … pray and seek My face, … then I will hear from heaven.”
- Acts 4:24–33. “The congregation of those who believed were of one heart and soul.”
- 1 Corinthians 12:12–16. “The body is not one member, but many.”
Quotes:
- “The body functions only because the cells function. We exist only because of each cell in the body doing its part.”
- “You can say, ‘Well, I don’t do that much,’ or ‘I don’t have that much.’ It doesn’t matter what you have. Without you, the Body of Christ doesn’t work.”
- “We need to change an age. We need to see the land delivered. We need to see God come and answer and move. And it requires you.”
Takeaways:
- According to 2 Chronicles 7, God answered Solomon’s prayer when he fulfilled David’s heart by building the Temple. Then God said He would answer the prayers of His people. But that required that every individual walked with God and served God after the heart of David. That meant it was no longer just Solomon. Each individual was important to the purpose of God and what each individual did mattered.
- If we want the promises of 2 Chronicles 7, then we must realize that it is no longer what a singular leader does. We are all important as individuals in the Body of Christ. What we do matters, and it does not happen without us.
- Each cell in a body does not seem to do that much. But the body does not function if each cell is not supplying what it has. You cannot say, “I don’t have very much, so it doesn’t really matter what I do.” The energy you supply is important to the proper functioning of the Body of Christ.
Scripture Readings:
1 Corinthians chapter 12
Ephesians chapter 4