S.H.A.P.E. is a very popular course designed to help people understand how GOD has individually and uniquely shaped them to serve Him and to fit into the team HE is INDIVIDUALLY hand moulding and shaping to serve HIS purposes and become HIS people at one with their God.
John 17:20 "My prayer is not for them alone. I pray also for those who will believe in me through their message, 21 that ALL of them may be one, Father, just as you are in me and I am in you. May they also be in us so that the world may believe that you have sent me. 22 I have given them the glory that you gave me, that they may be one as we are one: 23 I in them and you in me. May they be brought to complete unity to let the world know that you sent me and have loved them even as you have loved me."
Sadly so many churches seem determined to take the people GOD has shaped and try and hammer them into the shape THEY and THEIR church thinks they should be. To make people in THEIR church branded and idealised image.
Church leaderships often forget that they are not meant to be in the business of making clones of themselves. Their sacred responsibility to God is to help HIM make clones of Jesus, and if they do not include themselves as among those who need to change then perhaps the beam in their eye has caused them to lose sight of their own imperfections. Unless you are claiming to be perfect you are neither a role model to be emulated nor a judge to pass sentence. The Lord has already given us the perfect role model and the perfect judge .... And it is neither us nor any of our imperfect Earth born churches by a long, long, way.
We are called to fellowship, not to judge one another, nor to shape one another to our many and varied ideas of what a "good Christian" should look like and act like. We are called to fellowship with fellow believers as one among equals in order that we might support, encourage, protect, share with one another, and to lift one another up as Christ Himself works in each and every one of us individually to grow each one of us into Himself by the path HE has chosen for us to take. Our journeys begin from very different places. The paths our lives take are many and varied. But the oneness we share is in our destination. Let us therefore try not to trip others up or tread on their toes along our way.
REMEMBER THAT THE CHILDREN OF THE LORD ARE BORN OF GOD, NOT FASHIONED BY THE HANDS OF MEN AND THE INDWELLING HOLY SPIRIT IS THE STAMP OF HIS COPYRIGHT UPON US ALL..
D.J. Ludlow.
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