Today, more than ever, I am seeing Christians go after fellow Christians over doctrinal differences, things one believes that the other does not understand because it was not taught in their church. I think that it is very important that Christians come to understand that we are the BODY of Christ and that all members of the body do not have the same function. Today we have the hand telling the foot that it is not doing things correctly and the knee telling the elbow that it needs to act more like a knee. More specifically, those that don’t believe in miracles are saying that those that do believe in miracles are false teachers. And those that do not believe in the 5-fold ministry are saying that those that do believe are false teachers and even anti-christ.
I really think that the members of Christ's Body need to focus more on getting their own instructions and assignments from the head and spend less time trying to condemn their fellow members that may not perform exactly as they do. Frankly, the spirit of accusation has spilled over from the world into the church.
I understand that there are times that we may see someone doing something wrong. But whatever happened to “bearing the burdens” of another, going to your brother if you see him overtaken in a fault and restoring him in a spirit of meekness (Galatians 6:1)? Instead, we have the brethren doing the work of the “accuser of the brethren”.
I see some of the older ministers and teachers that taught me the foundations of the faith (Prayer, Faith, Grace, Discipleship, Deliverance, Stewardship, Righteousness, Sacrifice) being called out as false teachers and their teachings being called false doctrines.
The Word of faith is being called “Name it and Claim it”.
The Law of Sowing and Reaping is being called “Prosperity Gospel”.
The Healing Ministry is being called out as “Fake or Occult Practices”.
The Prophetic Ministry (Gift of tongues & word of knowledge) is being called out as “New Age”.
The Casting out of devils is being called out as “Satanic”.
This is all from many who spend more time looking for the devil in the Church than they spend resisting him in their own lives. These same people are quick to make excuses for those that are caught in sin in the world but stone those that are doing the Work of God in the Church. These are they that are spoken of in 1 Corinthians 2:14, “But the natural man does not receive the things of the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him; nor can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned.” The next two verses (15 & 16) provide the rebuttal for such persons “ But he who is spiritual judges all things, yet he himself is rightly judged by no one. For “who has known the mind of the LORD that he may instruct Him?” But we have the mind of Christ.”
Ephesians 4:11-16 says it best
11. And He Himself gave some to be apostles, some prophets, some evangelists, and some pastors and teachers, 12 for the equipping of the saints for the work of ministry, for the [e]edifying of the body of Christ, 13 till we all come to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to a perfect man, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ; 14 that we should no longer be children, tossed to and fro and carried about with every wind of doctrine, by the trickery of men, in the cunning craftiness of deceitful plotting, 15 but, speaking the truth in love, may grow up in all things into Him who is the head—Christ— 16 from whom the whole body, joined and knit together by what every joint supplies, according to the effective working by which every part does its share, causes growth of the body for the edifying of itself in love.
I am praying for the Body of Christ to mature in the Lord and finally grow into the perfect man that Jesus is calling us to be in the earth.
