I was sick all last week during my semi-annual battle with my immune responses. We have a spring skirmish and a fall assault each year. The fall one was late- very tricky. However, as I was giving my body a chance to recuperate, sleeping off the antihistamines, I began to wonder if we, as the body of Christ ever suffer from an allergy attack.
An allergic response occurs when the body misidentifies something as an invader and rallies a full immune system response to get rid of it. Do we ever incorrectly identify threats, or invaders? Is our ‘body’ tired, achy or ineffective because we’ve being fighting the wrong things? This is not to say that the body of Christ isn’t threatened from within as well as from the outside. John’s and Peter’s epistle say a great deal about heresy and false teachers. However, we do need some discernment to ensure we’re not at war with something harmless or worse, fighting our own body.
I’m not going to name what I believe have become ‘allergies’ for the church. Our best strategy is to look at Jesus Christ. He had three short years of ministry, so He didn’t waste any time on anything that wasn’t helping fulfill His purpose. How did He minister? What did He address? How did He touch lives?
Go, and do likewise, He said.