The Oneness of the Local Churches
As one who grew up in a Christian family meeting with the local church in Oklahoma City, I was quite preserved from the things of the world. In addition to being preserved, I unknowingly took for granted the believers in my locality. Although I knew that there were other local churches in the world, their reality didn't impact me until I traveled across the globe. It is one thing to know about the local churches, but another thing to experience them.
One summer during my college years, I traveled to New Zealand with a group of college-age believers representing several local churches in the Texas/Oklahoma region. It was so touching to travel to a different country and to have other believers warmly welcome us into their homes. These families did everything to make sure our needs were taken care of both physically and spiritually. There was such a mutual feeling of oneness and sweet harmony. It did not matter that we were from the United States and they from New Zealand. Nor did it matter that we had never met one another before. As members of the Body of Christ, we all shared the divine life of God, and touching that life in believers in a different country left a deep impression on me.
When I returned to Oklahoma City, I began to see the brothers and sisters in a different light and began to treasure them. The life of God and the oneness among the believers within the church had always existed, but because I grew up in it, I had never appreciated it. The oneness I witnessed in New Zealand was also present in the local churches in the United States, but the Lord had to bring me all the way to New Zealand to see it.
Christina Cheung from Oklahoma City
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