by Nichola Mcclenaghan

Created on: May 16, 2009   Last Updated: May 20, 2009

God says in 2 Corinthians chapter 6. "I will be a father to you and you shall be sons and daughters to me, says the Lord almighty" (verse 18).
You know what that means? If He's our father, we are His sons and daughters. What does that make us to each other? Brothers and sisters (now stay with me, I hate the way this term has been abused in N.I. as much as anyone) But the fact of the matter is, we're related to one another because of this truth found in the Word.

So the church is a place of family relationships, like it or not. You may not like some of the people in the church. Some of the people in the church may not like you, but we are family. We have to learn to love each other, to get along with each other. We're going to spend eternity with each other as a family.

Now families can cause pain; they can cause rejection. There can be problems in families, but families can also be the place of the most intimate possible relationships. To be a part of the Church means that we belong to each other, that we're related to each other.

C.S. Lewis wrote, "Christ works on us in all sorts of ways, but above all, He works on us through each other." We need each other in the body of Christ for our walk. It's in the context of the church that our lives are supposed to be getting prepared for heaven, prepared for eternity.

It's in the context of the church(and I don't mean just one service that you attend on Sunday morning)that we learn to lift our eyes up, above what happens in all the rest of our world and all the rest of our week - to look over and beyond this world with its problems and its struggles and its pressures and lift our eyes up and see Christ and see heaven and see eternity. That's where our focus on eternity should be shaped.

Over and over again in Paul's letters to the New Testament churches he says, "Greet one another." That could be considered a Biblical command at least seven times in his letters.

Romans chapter 16, at the end of the book of Romans, Paul names people he wants to greet there. He says, "Greet Priscilla and Aquilla. They have been co-workers in my ministry for Christ Jesus. Greet my dear friend Epaenetus. He was the very first person to become a Christian in the province of Asia. Give my greetings to Mary who has worked so hard for your benefit. And then there are Andronicus and Junia, my relatives, who were in prison with me. "Say hello to Ampliatus whom I love as one of the Lord's own children, and Urbanus, our co-worker in Christ,

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