You are very important part one

 

Often times I have come to realize that I learned how to move corporately more than I did as an individual.  Before I learned how to provide for my own needs, I learned how to wrap my offering up in a white envelope.  Basically, I was out of order.  I learned how to get up and give six hours or better to being in church and spend about thirty minutes thinking about my own wellbeing.  I learned how to sacrifice and go home and not know how to sacrifice for myself.  The single individual becomes a sacrifice in a world where three of the major institutions are corporate.  We don’t know how to love ourselves because the message we get from corporate institutions is that you have to forget the self in order for the institution to run effectively.  My next communications will encompass how to right this imbalance so that after you have preached to others, you yourself will not become a castaway.

Genesis 1:26-31

²⁶ Then God said, “Let us make mankind in our image, in our likeness, so that they may rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky, over the livestock and all the wild animals,^[a] and over all the creatures that move along the ground.”

 ²⁷ So God created mankind in his own image,
   in the image of God he created them;
   male and female he created them.

 ²⁸ God blessed them and said to them, “Be fruitful and increase in number; fill the earth and subdue it. Rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky and over every living creature that moves on the ground.”
    ²⁹ Then God said, “I give you every seed-bearing plant on the face of the whole earth and every tree that has fruit with seed in it. They will be yours for food. ³⁰ And to all the beasts of the earth and all the birds in the sky and all the creatures that move along the ground—everything that has the breath of life in it—I give every green plant for food.” And it was so.
    ³¹ God saw all that he had made, and it was very good. And there was evening, and there was morning—the sixth day.

We see here that God’s first relationship with man was as creator and mentor in the new world.  All of man’s needs were provided for and all man had to do was be fruitful and multiply.  Man was to perpetuate the garden he was placed in and communicate with God.  The essence of all individuals is to provide for your needs and communicate with God.  In this we understand that the individual would simply cease if he did not communicate with God and take care of basic needs like food, sleep, water and shelter.  Maslow’s hierarchy of needs tells us that we would be miserable if our basic needs are not met.  We become dysfunctional in every institution that we enter into because we have not stopped to take care of ourselves.  Sometimes this manifest in making time for doing our laundry, taking our medication, or ensuring that we at least get thirty minutes of exercise a day. It manifest as not having time for personal conversations with God and relying on corporate word which is a vital mistake.  Everyone should have that time where they talk to God for themselves.  Often this is what we sacrifice in order to have stronger institutions when a weak individual makes a weak institution.

An institution is unit of many individuals who have to move as one.  The three that we will study together is “The Family”, “Human Government” and “The Church”.  I hope through this you will understand that you as a single person are the basic building block of all three.  I pray that you take time to consider yourself and how healthy you are.  Maybe even you can make some changes.

Evg. Taylor