Knowing in parts requires discernment

2 Corinthians 11 (KJV)

1Would to God ye could bear with me a little in my folly: and indeed bear with me.

2For I am jealous over you with godly jealousy: for I have espoused you to one husband, that I may present you as a chaste virgin to Christ.

3But I fear, lest by any means, as the serpent beguiled Eve through his subtilty, so your minds should be corrupted from the simplicity that is in Christ.

Reflection:

We who are given authority over God's flock need to be "jealous" over them. Yesterday I was ministering at a cell and interestingly I spoke about the unity we need to have in the Body. God places authorities over us and there is no need to compare or compete with them or even amongst them whom He places over us. Each of us have a part to play, as in the normal human body, and there will be no two similar parts even though our mind may tell us otherwise.

Our desire to want someone else's role is similar to the temptation which Eve fell into. God will give us another role as we journey with Him but it will not be exactly the same as the role we had desired of the other person. We are all made uniquely by Him and there is no "identical twins" in this world.

Amongst our flock that God has given to us to oversee, there will be the more matured ones, who can and will have to minister to the less matured ones. These less matured ones are the ones who are starting this "Christian" journey and may have a greater worldy mindset which will naturally encourage mumuring and complaining. The role of the more matured Christian is to jealously guard the unity of the Body.

Does that mean we must submit to all authorities, good and bad? The answer to this question is, yes! Our battle is in the spiritual realm, not againtst flesh and blood, more so against our Christian brothers and sister (even if they don' t live up to our expectation) and therefore we need to battle on our knee in prayer for God to change them.

Any negative fruit that is displayed in our lives is derived from a bitter root, which if we let God reveal it to us and work in us, He will show us. We then need to work to rid of this bitter root of judgement and expectation. We can pray in Jesus name for this bitter seed to be destroyed and replaced with the seed that bring life and unity to the Body of Christ, the church. This is the only option we have as Christians - love and serve God and love and serve one another.

Let me conclude with what happened in the cell yesterday. We prayed for God to forgive us of our sins and to restore unity to and in His Body, the church and partook the Holy Communion together. Just as they did in the early church in the Book of Acts we had fellowship over food.