God isn’t seeking to create new institutions. He is seeking to create new people with new hearts. As we have seen, God’s love for us in Christ is at work in our hearts and in our relationships and is a driving force behind all that we are and do. But we must also see that if we allow this love to be weakened or abandoned, then things will begin to break down and go bad. 

One the one hand, it is hard work to maintain course and keep God’s vision for our church before us. On the other hand, it can be quite easy during the process to lose sight of our relationships with one another. But the goal for our church body is never to thrive and accomplish much while relationally we starve on the inside. The devil knows that we are far less a true and effective biblical church if we are rich in our good works but poor in our relationships. He would, I’m convinced, be content to leave us to do many good things, if he could sow division and offenses and choke out love from our midst. 

Personally, I have frequently found that the devil is a master at raising or planting suspicion in my mind about others. How quickly and easily I entertain and follow a thought about what I suspect someone is thinking, saying, or feeling about me. Before I know it, I am angry and hurt, resentful and defensive, even though I have no evidence that they are in fact thinking, saying, feeling, or doing any of the things I’m convinced of. 

And, yet, it almost never fails that when that person appears or reaches out, even though I’m prepared for a confrontation and proof of what I am certain is the truth, their first words or actions prove me entirely wrong. I realize that the devil is a masterful liar and deceiver. 

How many relationships has our enemy uprooted, torn apart, and ruined with empty accusations. We must be prepared to stand firm in love. In love praying for one another, believing the best of one another, trusting one another, speaking truth, silencing gossip, forgiving one another, laying down our offenses, being slow to speak and quick to listen, showing patience and forbearance, having hard conversations, becoming vulnerable, being humble, repenting, confessing our sins one to another, asking for help, seeking advice, etc.. 

Let us remember that Jesus doesn’t simply save individuals. He saves a people, he saves their relationships. “But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for his own possession, that you may proclaim the excellencies of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light. Once you were not a people, but now you are God’s people; once you had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy.” (1 Peter 2:9) 

The power of our relationships is the evidence of God’s dynamic grace at work in us and through us, training us and sending us to the world. The power of our relationships is the manifestation of the presence of the Spirit of God in our midst, producing in each of us all the fruit of the character of Christ. So let us strive together, for the sake of one another and for the world, not only to accomplish the good works God has prepared for us to walk in, but to love one another as Christ has loved us.