Love is all You Need

I've been reading this great book by Henry and Melvin Blackaby called "A God Centered Church: Experiencing God Together." I have read 2 chapter and I have learned so much about the Christian life and Salvation in a new light. I believe every Christian needs to read this book. The second chapter of this book really got to me, it's about God's love expressed. The word Koinoina is used through out this chapter to describe Love. Koinoina is the anglicisation of a Greek word that means communion by intimate participation. The word is used frequently in the New Testament of the Bible to describe the relationship within the early Christian Church as well as the act of breaking bread in the manner which Christ prescribed during the Passover meal [John 6:48-69, Matthew 26:26-28, 1 Corinthians 10:16, 1 Corinthians 11:24]. As a result the word is used within the Christian Church to participate, as Paul says, in the Communion of - in this manner it identifies the idealised state of fellowship and community that should exist - Communion. We need to experience Koinoina love with God, with each other, and in the church, and keep it in the church. The foundation for a Koinoina church is found in Ephesians 3:14-19:
Paul’s Prayer for Spiritual Growth
14 When I think of all this, I fall to my knees and pray to the Father,[a] 15 the Creator of everything in heaven and on earth.[b] 16 I pray that from his glorious, unlimited resources he will empower you with inner strength through his Spirit. 17 Then Christ will make his home in your hearts as you trust in him. Your roots will grow down into God’s love and keep you strong. 18 And may you have the power to understand, as all God’s people should, how wide, how long, how high, and how deep his love is. 19 May you experience the love of Christ, though it is too great to understand fully. Then you will be made complete with all the fullness of life and power that comes from God.

We should pray this for our church family. Only when we love each other will God be able to work in our church. But first and foremost we must love God with a Koinoina love. So many of us do not love each other in the church, we don't have time for each other, we don't listen to each other, we throw our pastors out, we fight and bicker...the list can go on and on.
A koinoina church sounds wonderful doesn't it? And while you may be thinking in the back of your mind that you want to leave your church and go find a church that is experiencing koinoina love, listen to what Blackaby says in this excerpt from his book:
"You may need to stay where you are and be the one to open the door for your church. God may have put you in your church so that He could work through you to express His love to the rest of the church. Jesus can affect every part of the church through that one persons life. Don't leave the church; the church needs you. If you have fellowship with the Father, and you have fellowship with the Son, and you are filled with the Holy Spirit, and you are walking in the light as He is in the light, what do you think will happen? That koinoina love will begin to touch everybody in the life of the church. Could you be that one? Are you willing to be that one?"
Jesus' love is placed in us. We are to love each other the way Jesus loved His Father (God). Thats a deep love. Do you think that we loved each other and reconciled with each other the world would see it? What are they going to think? Maybe that for once we are authentic?
All you need is love. When we love the rest will fall into place.

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