In just a few days, we will say goodbye to 2024! What a ride 2024 has been for the church collective! It has been a delight serving you this year. Your feedback has been a blessing, keeping our community here engaged in making our faith and walk with God steady and unshakeable (1 Corinthians 15:58).
This has been the year of the “sheep” in the church collective. As I reflect on serving you here on Patheos this year, one of the impactful collaboration this year is about spiritual abuse. The many stories of people (young and old) who have experienced abuse of power, authority and/ or position have led to increased vulnerability than the church collective has ever known. Any form of abuse is completely unacceptable.
In a recent gathering of spiritual leaders praying for the church collective, the cries of prayer were for God’s mercies and blessings of repentance upon His body of believers. If we have learned anything from all that we have seen this year, is that the church collective could use a large dose of repentance. We have lost the fear of God! We have lost our appetite for holiness (consecration)! We are becoming indistinguishable from the world, we were commissioned to reconcile back to God.
As we look towards a new year (2025), the church collective is tasked with closing these gaps, so that we may speak the truth in love and grow in Christlikeness in all things (Ephesians 4:15). We can only do this through the empowerment and equipping of the Holy Spirit (Zechariah 4:6). The arm of flesh will always fail to live in the Spirit- only the Holy Spirit can produce the fruits of the Holy Spirit in the church collective.
As we commit to being Christ ambassadors and to being our best in 2025, the church collective must be brutally honest with herself; by re-building failed leadership, re-structuring corrupt systems, and addressing cult-like cultures that make any form of abuse acceptable. Yes, we are inherently imperfect beings, as a church collective. However, what we have seen this year is a wake-up call to get back to the heart of God and what it means to be a sheep (John 10:14). Let’s make 2025, a God-honoring year!
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