Community.
The biggest blessing AND curse on the race. You always have someone to pray with you in desperate times. There’s always someone to walk to the corner store with (since you can’t go anywhere alone). Yet, there’s always someone’s quirk that gets on your nerves. Or, you’re just tired of being around people.
Community.
That funky group of people who are your tribe. Some are like you in almost every way, but some are people you have nothing in common with except your love of Jesus. We get to learn so much from those people. They give us a different perspective, a different lens to look through.
I was explaining to someone the other day how I’m passionate about the American church right now. They asked me to explain further which resulted in me talking about authentic community and a place where freedom is a reality, not just a word thrown around haphazardly. I’m passionate about people being real about where they’re at. How can we come alongside each other in support when we don’t know there’s a need?
Newsflash! We need people. And when you try to get by on your own, you eventually come to realize how a life by yourself is exhausting and lonely. God said it was not good for man to be alone and gave Eve to Adam. Ruth, a grieving widow herself, walked alongside her grieving mother-in-law. Even Jesus had people he did life with.
Romans 12 holds a pretty special place in my heart. It was the first text I ever preached on and I chose it because I love the message it gives and the challenge it dictates. Because of my community, I got a new lens to look at the text through. There’s this really cool, well known verse at the beginning of the chapter: “Do not conform to the patterns of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind.” Your here, in the Greek, actually means y’all. It is a renewing of our community’s mind. And what happens when we allow God to transform our minds? “Then you’ll be able to test and approve what God’s will is – his good, pleasing, and perfect will.”
It is together that we test God’s will.
It is together we do life as the Body of Christ.
It is only together that we have all the parts of the body.
And how much better does the body function when all the parts are there and working well?
