Church Of The Lost Sheep

"Now these are the gifts Christ gave to the church: the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, and the pastors and teachers . Their responsibility is to equip God’s people to do his work and build up the church, the body of Christ." -The Apostle Paul writing to the 1st church in Ephesus, 1st century Ephesians 4:11-12 in the New Living Translation [This is the  9t h  lesson of this series ] Followers of Christ have long segregated themselves into different denominations, each slightly different than another, and each one claiming they are the real church. The interpretation of the excerpt above is an example of how the different churches differ in their beliefs. We are not going into those differences as it will be out of the scope of this particular lesson, it will not be beneficial or worse, it will just make us lose time off from what God is calling us to do. Calling First thing we need to find out is what are we called to do? The succeeding verse (Ephesians 4:...

'Jesus replied: “A certain man was preparing a great banquet and invited many guests. At the time of the banquet he sent his servant to tell those who had been invited, ‘Come, for everything is now ready.’ “But they all alike began to make excuses. The first said, ‘I have just bought a field, and I must go and see it. Please excuse me.’ “Another said, ‘I have just bought five yoke of oxen, and I’m on my way to try them out. Please excuse me.’ “Still another said, ‘I just got married, so I can’t come.' -a portion of a story as told by Jesus of Nazareth, 1st century Luke 14:16-20 We've all been there. God calls us and we are busy, right smack in the middle of doing something and at just the worst possible time ever (even in the middle of a pandemic). But is there ever a good time? Whenever anybody's call comes, it will always be like that and like everyone else, we will have so many questions (why me Lord, why not him, why not her) and our brain will suddenly shi...