God’s Pattern for Building Churches

God loves it when we build according to His pattern. We see in Exodus that He commanded Moses to build a tabernacle exactly as God wanted it, and we see in the Word that Moses did exactly as the Lord commanded.

And for me, building a New Testament pattern church is about finding out exactly how does God want to build the church, exactly, and then being accountable to the Lord and to one another. With that, there's just so much blessing in building according to the pattern. And we'll make mistakes. We'll—we'll—there's things that we'll need to adjust and learn, but if our hearts are to build exactly according to the pattern, we're going to attract the favor of God. We're going to attract the blessing of the Lord, and that's what we want. We just want all of God.

The Central Pillar of a New Testament Pattern Church Is Jesus

Some of the pillars to building according to the pattern that God has for us—I think one of them has got to be a people that has seen and known the love of God in His Son, Jesus Christ. Once we've seen Jesus, once we've met with Him, once we have tasted of His heavenly glories, we can never be the same again, and He will change everything.

The most central pillar to the pattern is Jesus, and everything else flows from there. Obviously, we see in Acts 2:42, it's a by-product. What they were living in was a by-product of the Holy Spirit having taken hold of hearts. We see devotion—

We see devotion to prayer, to the Word of God, to breaking bread, to fellowship. We see a devotion to meeting with one another daily and sharing—sharing our possessions and spending time in each other's homes. And, you know, let your coffee table become a sword, you know, in the hand of the Lord.

We just see so much of Jesus in how they lived in Acts 2:42. So, and there are many other pillars we can look at, but, man, we need to just see God in the face of Jesus.