Healthy Church

I found a little treasure in my bible exploration today. Just out of curiosity, I was looking up what my study bible says about Luke 14:26, where Jesus says to hate your family...basically. He didn't mean hate. He meant that your love for Christ should be so grand that anything compared would appear as though it was hate.

Anyway...I just happened to read 14:15-23 as well. Jesus tells The Parable of the Great Banquet. I love this parable. The man insists that everyone attend his banquet. He wants no one to go without. But everyone has an excuse. The side notes had a question that I loved about verse 21. Jesus is speaking, "...Then the owner of the house became angry (that many had an excuse not to attend the banquet) and ordered his servant, 'Go out quickly into the streets and alleys of the town and bring in the poor, the crippled, the blind and the lame.'"

The side note question: How can we build a healthy church by bringing in the spiritually poor, crippled and lame?
The answer: Healthy churches depend upon God's grace rather than human strength. God's grace can transform society's disadvantaged, bringing out their full potential. Paul wrote, God chose the foolish things of the world to shame the wise (1 Cor. 1:26-27). Jesus said it is the poor in spirit who are blessed (Matt. 5:3), so when we acknowledge our spiritual need, Jesus can transform us and use us to build his church.

Oh yeah, HIS church. Often forgotten. Often avoided. I know without a doubt, whatever church I stand in, there's at least one poor, crippled, blind or lame believer...maybe not physically, but certainly spiritually. I NEED Jesus to be anything more. Praise God that He will use the poor, crippled, blind and lame to build His church. The body as a whole could probably stand to swallow the fact that every believer is suffering from one, if not all of these spiritually bankrupt conditions...or else we wouldn't need Jesus to begin with. If we could all stand on our own, who'd need Christ?