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"You let men ride over our heads; we went through fire and water, but you brought us to a place of abundance. I will come to your temple with burnt offerings and fulfill my vows to you\u2026 (Psalm 66:12, 13).

Authentic biblical faith exists in a creative tension that, I think, 2020 has highlighted. On the one hand, there is the corporate life of the church. On the other hand, there is the personal life of the individual.

Think about it this way. We are individually called to grow up, to mature in our faith. And as we grow, we are individually called to participate in God's great Kingdom building. However, we will experience no progress in either without being nourished within the body of Christ. This, I think, is the burden of Ephesians 4 & 5. I also believe that we need to envision this growth happening not just in the large gathering of the church, such as Sunday worship. It tends to happen more effectively in smaller groups of Christians who commit to helping each other grow.

We need to be personally committed to our own spiritual growth. But growth will not happen without the assistance of fellow Christians. This is a tension that we need to live with not resolve.

Whenever this tension is broken great damage is done. Sometimes the individual is absorbed into a community that has become cult like. The sense of self disappears. No spiritual decisions are made without the approval of the leadership.

On the other hand, a Christian sometimes becomes so detached from the community of faith that she wanders alone with a private faith. We see a great deal of this in our culture. People only connect with the church if it works for them. It is clearly a current danger for the Christian.

Christianity is intensely personal, but it is not individualistic. Each person finds his or her meaning within the overall plan of God for the cosmos, the planet, and all of history.

Each of us has been called by Christ and is part of God's purpose in creation and redemption. All Christians are part of the new Israel (Gal. 6:16) and members of Christ's kingdom. We are all called into His army to do battle against the powers of darkness and we are all participants in the greatest missionary movement that the world has ever known.

The meaning of the Christian life is not just my personal salvation or my own interior spirituality but is to be found in a cause, God's purpose to unite "all things in Christ," things in heaven and things on earth (Eph. 1:10). In both Ephesians and Colossians, Paul insists that the church is the first fruit of God\u2019s plan of cosmic reconciliation. That is why we, as individual Christians, need to be connected to a Christian fellowship, otherwise called a church; it is also why the disunity of the church is such a tragedy.

Psalm 66 witnesses to both the communal and the personal nature of faith. It begins with a great confession of God's "awesome deeds" in history. He called Israel and redeemed her from Egypt. Because of her sin, God broke her in judgment. But now, God has brought her to rich fulfilment (12).

Suddenly, with verse 13, the psalm becomes intensely personal. The psalmist vows his intention to worship and declares what God has done for his own soul. The psalmist sees his own relationship to God in the wider scope of all of His dealings with His people. This is authentic faith. We live in the present before God within the context of God's community.

In this psalm we rediscover God's purposes for us: not to make us comfortable, but useful for his redemptive plan. How does your personal life's vision match up with God's? How will you stay connected with God's community as fall moves into winter?

There is something else in these two verses that is worthy of reflection. But that will need to wait till my next devotion.