Filling The Gaps In Our Faith

Can we live a complete Christian life without others?  Is the Christian life only about "me and Jesus?"  We want to say yes but that is not what the Scripture teaches.  We are so dependent on others in our maturing relationship with Jesus.  It is a God designed dependency set in place by the Holy Spirit.   Certainly we must have a personal daily relationship with Jesus but a believer who tries to separate from the Body of Christ will never get the spiritual nourishment he or she needs.  Resistance to receiving from the ministry gifts given to the Church produces a malnourished and imbalanced disciple.  (By the way, those from whom we receive aren't perfect either so don't allow that to stop their input into your life.)

I Thess. 3:10 NLT tells us, "night and day we pray earnestly for you, asking God to let us see you again to fill the gaps in your faith."  What a interesting phrase, "to fill the gaps in your faith".  Paul and the others on his team would travel around in a circuit teaching and training the new believers in the Doctrine of Christ and the Church.  There was a lot lacking just as there is today.  We haven't arrived and we aren't perfect in our understanding and experience.  Being disciples or learners is a life long endeavor.  We all have gaps still!  The word "fill" here in the Greek is translated "to complete thoroughly, repair, adjust, fit, frame, mend." Why doesn't God just fill the "gaps" in our faith?  Because He has given spiritual gifts to the Church, His Body to help in this process.  We have used Ephesians 4:11-12 a lot in these blogs but it is certainly a perfect "fit" for here.  The responsibility of the Apostle, Prophet, Evangelist, Pastor and Teacher is to "equip" God's people to do His work.  Again, this word equip means to "complete or perfect". The Apostle Paul even goes so far as to say "imitate me".(1 Cor. 4:16)  In our day we can gain a lot of information from TV, Christian DVDs, conferences and books.  However, we cannot be totally disciplined and equipped without a connection with a real live, walking, breathing spiritual gift that the Lord has placed in our lives.  It requires humility to always be a learner. but it brings exaltation in the end.