7 Churches in Revelation

Juan brought up something to our house church on Tuesday that really stuck with me. I've been thinking about it ever since. He mentioned how we all study the letters of Paul to guide us and to help us in our walk with Christ. However, in Revelation chapters 2 & 3, Jesus himself wrote a letter to the 7 churches (through John), but he (Juan) has never heard a sermon on what we can learn for our church and for our walk from this letter. If you have a red-letter Bible, check it out. These words are in red because they are directly from Jesus to John for these churches. If we are willing to put so much weight on Paul's words, shouldn't we put just as much if not more on Jesus' words?

So based on this I have been reading these two chapters and journaling my initial impression of each of these churches. What does Jesus praise them for? What does Jesus rebuke them for? Do I see these "churches" in our world today?

I'm going to be sharing this with you in the next few posts. I won't be using any commentaries or any other books/notes on these two chapters. You will just get what I get from reading and praying about these. I hope you'll join me and comment on what you get out of them as well.

Another thing Juan talked about which we'll be doing and I encourage you to do is to ask yourself a few questions:

Which church am I/my church most like?
If Jesus was to write a letter to my church, what would he say?
What would he praise us for?
What would he rebuke us for?

I think these are very important questions. I encourage you to read these two chapters, meditate on them and pray about them. Open yourself to the message God has for you and take it to heart. Make the necessary changes to step into His destiny for you. I won't necessarily be sharing all of this with you, but you can be assured myself and my house church are going to be asking ourselves these questions and making changes where the Lord instructs us to.