If you claim to be a follower of Christ, I encourage you to consider your present commitment to a local church.

Our great need is to fall before an almighty Father day and night and to plead for him to show his radical power in and through us, enabling us to accomplish for his glory what we could never imagine in our own strength.

On popular issues like poverty and slavery, where Christians are likely to be applauded for our social action, we are quick to stand up and speak out. Yet on controversial issues like homosexuality and abortion, where Christians are likely to be criticized for our involvement, we are content to sit down and stay quiet.

As I looked at material and spiritual poverty in the world around me, including approximately 2 billion people who haven't even heard the gospel, I knew that I needed to make some major changes in my life.

Being a member of a church means realizing that we are responsible for helping the brothers and sisters around us to grow as disciples of Jesus. In the same way, they are responsible for helping us. We desperately need each other in the daily fight to follow Christ in a world that's full of sin.

I want to move from what we let go of to whom we hold on to. I want to explore not just the gravity of what we forsake in this world, but also the greatness of the one we follow in this world.

If we want to know the Glory of God, if we want to experience the beauty of God, and if we want to be used by the hand of God, then we must LIVE in the WORD of God.