{"id":4773,"date":"2010-03-26T16:28:50","date_gmt":"2010-03-26T20:28:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/example.org\/going-back-to-your-oikos"},"modified":"2010-03-26T16:28:50","modified_gmt":"2010-03-26T20:28:50","slug":"going-back-to-your-oikos","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.garycombs.org\/blog\/2010\/03\/going-back-to-your-oikos.html","title":{"rendered":"Go back to your oikos"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><em><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"asset asset-image at-xid-6a00d83524c19a69e20133ec3c30c4970b alignleft\" style=\"margin: 0px 5px 5px 0px; width: 215px; height: 302px;\" alt=\"46cf063b-00325-05317-400cb8e1\" src=\"\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/01\/6a00d83524c19a69e20133ec3c30c4970b-320wi.jpg\" \/> &#8220;They replied, &#8216;Believe on the Lord Jesus and you will be saved, along with your entire <strong>household&#8217;<\/strong>&#8220;<\/em> (Acts 16:31 NLT).<\/p>\n<p><em>&#8220;Then, leaving her water jar, the woman <strong>went back<\/strong> to the town and said to the people, &#8216;Come, see a man who told me everything I ever did. Could this be the Christ?'&#8221;<\/em> (John 4:28-29 NIV).<\/p>\n<p>The Greek word for home is <em>oikos<\/em>.<\/p>\n<p>Throughout the New Testament we\u00a0see a repeating story that begins with an individual who believes and\u00a0then immediately shares their new found\u00a0faith with their own <em>oikos<\/em>. This is what created such momentum in the early church. People\u00a0didn&#8217;t leave their family, friends, and neighbors behind. Instead, they immediately &#8220;went back&#8221; to them and told them of their new life in Jesus.<\/p>\n<p>In the modern church we often pull new believers out of their own\u00a0<em>oikos<\/em> without a thought of the consequences. We mean well. We want them to join our church family and be part of what we&#8217;re doing. But we forget that the Lord wants to use them to reach their whole family. By the time we get them all &#8220;cleaned-up&#8221; and &#8220;Christianized,&#8221; they may have lost the connectivity and passion that would have been present at first.<\/p>\n<p>The Samaritan woman that Jesus encountered at the well near the city of Sychar had to be the least likely evangelist for reaching that town. But Jesus had no problem releasing her for service. She had such a sense of urgency that she left her &#8220;water jar&#8221; at the well and ran back to her town to tell them the Good News.<\/p>\n<p>How can we experience the momentum that occurred in the early church? I think one way is to release and commission people to\u00a0go back to\u00a0their own <em>oikos<\/em> until everyone has heard.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>&#8220;They replied, &#8216;Believe on the Lord Jesus and you will be saved, along with your entire household&#8217;&#8220; (Acts 16:31 NLT). &#8220;Then, leaving her water jar, the woman went back to the town and said to the people, &#8216;Come, see a man who told me everything I ever did. Could this be the Christ?&#8217;&#8221; (John 4:28-29<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":1722,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"location":[],"class_list":["post-4773","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.garycombs.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4773","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.garycombs.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.garycombs.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.garycombs.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.garycombs.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4773"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.garycombs.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4773\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.garycombs.org\/blog\/wp-json\/"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.garycombs.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4773"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.garycombs.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4773"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.garycombs.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4773"},{"taxonomy":"location","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.garycombs.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/location?post=4773"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}