Hey, welcome to the podcast.

I want to share a really cool testimony with you.

Something that happened with someone I know, part of a prayer group that I'm a part of.

Imagine this.

You and your wife have just moved into your new home, new for you.

It's something that's been built, renovated and everything's finally in place.

And then you find out this in your township, there's a communication that comes your way that the permit for your house might be invalid and you may have to leave.

And suddenly your plans, you know, feel like they're hanging by a thread.

What do you do?

Do you panic?

Do you solely rely on attorneys or boards and bureaucrats?

Or do you turn to something far more powerful?

The ekklesia, the body of Christ.

That's exactly what one of our members faced in our group just this past week.

And this story illustrates something.

It's a teaching moment that many believers underestimate the power of a small spirit led community of faith.

We call it micro ecclesia and I'll talk about what that means.

But welcome to the podcast.

Brian Del Turco this is the Jesus Smart X podcast and you are listening to episode 352.

Before we dive into it, if you missed last Week's episode, episode 351, By Faith We Understand Hebrews 11:3.

By faith we understand how we can access Jesus intelligence in daily life with practical decisions, practical events like the one we're going to talk about now just in the preceding episode.

You can catch it, but I'm glad you're here and let's get right into it.

There we go.

What is a microeclesia?

It's a small, highly functional group of believers, growing believers, those who want to grow.

They're on a quest and they gather intentionally, either online or in person for an exchange of inspired ideas.

What they've been learning, what they feel the Holy Spirit is surfacing in them and also for prayer.

And our group in terms of the prayer edge, we focus a lot on national and even international edges, but we also have space in our gatherings for personal concerns.

And our brother, who's a tremendous prayer person, he's actually a pastor.

He works for the police department in his town.

He also works for the educational system in his town.

He shared this prayer request that they had finally come into this home.

This was something, a long standing quest, a change, a transition, he and his wife and there was like renovation that had occurred and maybe even some building on this home.

And.

But then they were told, and they were even soft, threatened the individual who communicated with them says, I've never lost a case like this, by the way.

Maybe he was on the board of trustees or, or something like that.

Perhaps an over realized sense of ego and importance, I don't know, but I've never lost a case like this.

Well, he was about to.

And you're going to hear what happened here.

So our brother came to the online prayer gathering and I, I guess I thought when he told me what was going on, I thought my goodness, if there was a subcommittee or a committee off of the board of trustees meeting tonight, reviewing your issue, I think I would be there.

And he could have been there because it was a public meeting.

But his priority for prayer and for gathering in a micro ecclesia expression trumped him going to the meeting.

Now to be sure he and his wife had already been praying about it.

But we took time in that meeting at the outset to pray about this and we took authority in prayer and think of it like this.

It's not just a prayer circle, a micro ecclesiastical, but it's a laboratory of kingdom authority.

Now this individual is a pastor.

Okay, so we're not.

You need to be planted in a local congregation.

What we're saying about this concept of micro ecclesia is that it's another layer of affiliation either in your church or perhaps as in our case could represent multiple churches.

And our group is only like six people currently, but I think there's maybe six different churches represented.

Okay, but it's a place where believers who are on a quest to be highly functional, to take more authority and to really maybe focus in a niche focus will gather together and they have the space then to, to to share what's on their heart.

And we have the space to pray and we leave a lot of white space.

I call it improv, like jazz improv prayer where the Holy Spirit in the moment can lead us on edges that maybe we had not even been thinking about coming into the gathering.

So here's what happened again.

Our member and his wife had just moved into this new home and the township board of trustees that evening, a committee off of it I guess was reviewing a claim that the homes permit issued before they bought it was improper.

And again this one individual with the over realized ego told him, I've never lost an issue like this.

Okay, big guy.

In other words, the odds were stacked.

Now that evening, instead of like panicking or you know, he chose as he always does, to join our micro ecclesia prayer gathering.

And he started by lifting this personal concern to God.

And we Prayed about it, we spoke into it, we prayed over it, and then we moved on to national matters and other, other themes that we felt, the Holy Spirit.

And it was a really good prayer time that night as well overall.

Okay, now we find out.

I found out the next day, that evening in fact, he got a phone call while the meeting was nearing its end and he and he jumped off the call.

The committee met and the vote 4 to 1 in his favor.

Not by accident, not because of, you know, clever arguments or procedural maneuvering.

We believe this was God's intervention through a small united group of believers who took their concern to him first.

And I think that God was honoring our brother because he was prioritizing the house of the Lord, which is a house of prayer for all nations.

There's sort of this principle that when we take care of God's house, he takes care of our house.

You know, Jesus put it this way, when we seek first the kingdom and his righteousness, all the things that the non kingdom people are clamoring for will be added to us.

You know, clothing, food, money, etc.

Now what is the Ecclesia?

The Ecclesia, it was first invented by the Greeks and then the Romans adopted it.

And Jesus took this secular Greco Roman concept ecclesia and he said I will build my ecclesia.

We translate it now as church.

And we could even you know, get into that.

What happened in Bible translation and the Latin and some over power hungry church authorities throughout church history, why they wanted to use that word instead of assembly had a lot to do with their own personal religious power.

I'll just say that.

But the Ecclesia was a gathering of citizens.

They would often meet in the city gates which was a place where decisions were rendered and you know, public policy was determined.

Or maybe they met in some public forum, that's what it was.

And Jesus took this really frankly a secular Greco Roman word and concept and he said I will build my ecclesia.

Okay, So I think what he's saying there is that I am going to have kingdom citizens who are going to gather in my name and I will be with them.

They will have my imperial authority present with them anytime, two or three or more meet, they will have a kingdom quorum.

And you can get into the word, you can get into prayer, you can seek to be sensitive to the Holy Spirit and if you can pick up edges that the Holy Spirit is currently putting his energy on, things he wants us to pray about and he'll join us in those prayers, he'll come Alongside of us, he'll show us what to pray for, he'll prompt us.

We're not perfect at this, but we're seeking to grow into it.

And frankly, a group, as a group gets tenure in seasons.

It gets better and better at this, working together like this.

So we join with the Holy Spirit, we join with the agenda of heaven.

And that night, again, mainly we were praying for the nation, but we took this personal concern to the Lord.

And again it's the ecclesia is this concept of gathering in a greater authority than yourself and rendering decisions, making determinations and setting policy in the Spirit.

And it's more powerful than governing bodies.

We pray in the name of the one whose name is above every name.

That includes every municipality, every national government, every corporation, every board, every agency of man.

We are meeting in the agency of Christ, and we've been given personal agency in Christ.

So even local boards are subject to kingdom authority when believers act together in faith.

Isn't that wonderful?

I think this is a small learning moment.

This is not just a principle that we make up.

Let's, let's consider as we just draw this quick episode in for a completion.

Paul writes in First Corinthians 6, why are you going before secular courts as believers?

Are there not groups of believers that you can go before that could render a judgment in your situation with another believer?

Why are you going before secular judges, secular citizens, and not the kingdom?

And he reminds us that believers will one day even judge angels.

Certainly, he says, we can judge these small earthly matters.

This was a small earthly matter.

So even now, even now, kingdom shaped Christ followers are called to exercise discernment, appraisal, authority and practical wisdom in the world around us.

We will one day judge angels.

We will be in authority with Christ through the millennium as well as the new heavens and new earth.

And we are to start living like it now.

We're to start sampling that now.

So micro ecclesia in some sense is just a small scale rehearsal of that kingdom authority.

We aren't just solving local problems, practical earthborne scenarios.

We're actually learning how to operate in the authority that God has given his people.

Now I think this is a prototype.

I think it's a smaller scale learning moment.

It's a laboratory.

We can take this and escalate it and apply it to national and even international issues.

So here's the takeaway for you.

You can ask the Holy Spirit to connect you at some point somehow with someone and begin to shape a micro ecclesia.

You can gather a small group you can not only focus on the macro, you can focus on some micro too.

You can bring your concerns, offload those to God and you can exchange his practical intelligence for it.

And let's see how he moves.

It doesn't have to be big, it doesn't have to be, you know, formal, but it can be powerful, come together.

Don't underestimate when Kingdom citizens gather, what that means.

And so the gentleman who said I've never lost an issue like this, you know, the over realized ego and sense of self importance, he lost.

He was probably the one in the four to one vote and you know, I just thank God.

I think this is an encouragement.

It's an exhortation of the power of prayer, the power of gathering and the power of a growing consciousness of what it means to operate in the principle of ecclesia with Christ as head.

Hey, think about it.

Let me know what you think.

If you have any comments, go ahead and shoot me a message at Brian with an I dot DEL Turco D E L T U R C O at Proton P R O T O N dot me I would love to hear from you.

And if you know anybody who would enjoy this theme today or be excited or be challenged by this issue, go ahead and share this issue with them.

Hey, we'll catch you next time.