Today my wife sent me an article from Frank Viola entitled "A Homeless God".It's worth reading...
"The pages of history are littered with the sobering fact that God is no longer present in the places He once visited. Go to the landmarks of past revivals, and you'll quickly discover that the crowds have diminished. The joy is gone. The life has evaporated. In many cases, those places are but hollow shells today.
Contemplate this thought: If God 'visits' a church, it betrays the fact that it doesn't belong to Him. A homeowner doesn't visit his own home--he lives in it. In a divine visitation, God will bless His people, but He will eventually move on and search for a home that He can call his own. The best the Lord can do is visit--He cannot take up residency.
'As you come to Him, the Living Stone -- rejected by men but chosen by God and precious to Him -- you also, like living stones, are being built into a spiritual house…' (1 Peter 2:4-5a)
I want you to imagine countless living stones scattered all over the earth. I want you to see innumerable living stones living their individual lives. I want you to see scores of living stones who love God, but who are isolated and independent of other living stones.
The burning intent of your God is that all of His living stones be built together with other living stones to form His house. Not for themselves, but to be the house of God, by God and for God.
Without people who are being assembled together, God is a wandering, homeless God. And we are wondering, homeless Christians. Your Lord wishes to build Himself into a people, and He wishes to build a people into Himself. He is looking for willing vessels who will abandon their individualism and live a shared life with others under His exclusive headship."
There's more to participating in a local church than we realize.
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