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moment it's no longer attached to my body, it is no longer useful to me. In fact, it will begin to putrefy and decay if detached.In exactly the same way Christians outside the Body will decay. You can assemble every Sunday, sit in a pew, even give your money, but, that alone will not prevent spiritual decay. You must be integrally connected to the Body to prevent decay. You've got to be connected. You need to have some people that are integrally concerned about you, that know you and check on you regularly.Every member of the body needs a group with whom they pray, share personally one-onone, listen, and respond in a time of need immediately, people with whom they are directly loving and nurturing. If you think you don't need that, the Apostle Paul disagrees with you for he stated \foot, 'I don't need you.'\Independence is an American virtue, but it is not a Christian virtue. Sometimes we tend to think in our culture that anything that is a good American value has got to be a good Christian value; often it is, but sometimes it is not. Sometimes as Americans, we boast of our independence. Christians should not boast of scriptural independence, but rather boast of dependence upon God and the body for our spiritual health. The body is not made so that its members can be independent of one another.Have you ever eaten a piece of food that was bad? The food didn't really go bad; what happened is some bacteria got on that food. One time I ate a piece of chicken. When it got in my stomach the gastric juices met that chicken and the bacteria in the chicken. The bacteria said to the gastric juices in the stomach, \you?\going to do for you. We're here to dissolve you and break you down along with this chicken and to gradually just absorb you to where you become a part of this body.\said, \you breaking me down. I want to stay just like I am.%understand, that's not the way it works around here; we break everything down so that we're a unit, we are part of a body.\The gastric juices said, \midnight we disfellowshipped the bacteria in a very unpleasant way.Do you see the point? In a body, either you are integrated into the body dependent upon it, or you leave. Our bodies are not designed to tolerate absolute independence. Do you remember the story of an independent church in the Bible? Its name was Laodicea.They thought they had it altogether, and Jesus said to them in Revelation 3, you say you're rich and you don't need a thing, but let me tell you what you are: \blind, and naked.\Folks, we're not in the body of Christ if we don't need each other. If we don't need each other, we're not in the body.