#5 Who Is Jesus?
 

And he is the head of the body, the church.
(Colossians 1:18)
 

    Some time ago I went down to Brazil with Jill for some meetings. While there I made inquiries about seeing a soccer match. An Englishman just grieves over not being able to see soccer when he's living in a foreign land, but if you can go to Brazil, that's the next best thing. They told me there was only one game in the whole of Brazil that weekend, and it was the equivalent of our Super Bowl game.
  "Is there the remotest chance that we can get tickets? Could you please get me a ticket to see that game?@
  "What a relief!@ they exclaimed. "We= d all gotten tickets, and we didn't think we could go because you'd want to have a meeting.@
  "Oh, no, no! Jill can do the meeting,@ I explained. "We'll go to the game.@
  Our excitement grew when we entered the vast stadium and began to feel the thrill of the Super Bowl of Brazilian soccer, We took our seats, and the game began. The teams were evenly matched; neither could get an advantage over the other. Near the end of the game there was still no score.
    Suddenly the right winger cut away, beat his man, crossed the ball, and our man came right down the middle with a phenomenal burst of speed. He gauged his run until his head intersected with the ball, a fabulous piece of judgment. He came between two defenders, headed up the ball, brought it down on his chest, held his arms out to keep from touching it, and with his chest brought the ball down onto his left knee. He flipped it up onto his right foot, took it around a man, and hit it on the half volley with his left foot. It went straight into the top corner of the net. That made the score 1-0 and won the game.
    Why do I explain all that to you? Because it demonstrates just how wonderfully coordinated the human body is.
    Now, the church is described in many different ways, but perhaps the model we are most familiar with is the idea of it as a body. We all know what a body does and how it functions. In this passage, Paul says that Jesus Christ controls and coordinates members of the fellowship and holds the church together as a head controls a body.
    Christ is the head of the body, the church, and the church can be a disaster or it can be phenomenal. The key to making it phenomenal is to allow the Lord Jesus to be the controlling factor of each member. Individual members must allow Jesus= Spirit to direct them to be what he wants them to be and to do what he wants them to do. There can be none of this individual stuff, but instead a tremendous sense of his overarching control and wise coordination.
    What can each person do to help the church, as one body, to be truly under Christ's control?

Lord, please help me as I struggle to submit to your coordination in these areas:

~Stuart Briscoe~