This morning, I woke up feeling really empty and unfulfilled and just overwhelmingly dissatisfied with this season of life I’m in right now. In fact, I’ve been feeling like this ever since I graduated college and moved back home last May. Not everyday, all day, but there are moments when I just really want to be back there (or in Seattle). Not for the nice Boston weather or the Seattle rains, but for the community.
This longing is actually what led me to sign up for the World Race a few months ago. When I look back over my life and think about the times where I have felt the most alive and the most fulfilled, it has been during those times where I have been involved in ministry and living in real, genuine, life-giving community.
In fact, when I think about what I really want for my life, what I want it to look like, at its deepest, least superficial level, I think about the church in Acts.
Acts 2:42-47 tell us that the believers:
- Devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and to fellowship, to the breaking of bread and to prayer.
- Everyone was filled with awe at the many wonders and signs performed by the apostles
- All the believers were together and had everything in common.
- They sold property and possessions to give to anyone who had need.
- Every day they continued to meet together in the temple courts.
- They broke bread in their homes and ate together with glad and sincere hearts, praising God and enjoying the favor of all the people.
- And the Lord added to their number daily those who were being saved.
I want that for my life so bad. And I’ve had it before. I have been so fortunate in my life to have experienced and been a part of communities like this. A community of believers where we not only studied the Bible together, but hung out together. Ate Chipotle together. Prayed for our campuses and our cities together. Ministered to men and women in prison together. Fed the homeless together. Slept on cardboard boxes in a parking garage together. Drove down the East coast together. Brought in the New Year together. Laughed together. Cried together. Lived life together.
And I think community is so important and that it’s one of the greatest gifts God has bestowed upon us. We are, by nature, relational beings and we were created to be in relationship with other people and to live in community. We were never meant to do this thing called life by ourselves. And we can't. It’s impossible. And I think it can be really easy to walk away from church and even from God when you are trying to go it alone, but I think it's really difficult to walk away from community because community provides accountability.
But more than that, it offers encouragement. Encouragement that stems from a group of people who are willing to walk along beside you in this life, through the good and the bad and help bear the burden of it all. It is a group of people who love you enough to speak truth into your life, while at the same time never forgetting to extend grace.
And that's what I’m looking forward to the most on the World Race. Just being back in community. Not that community is always easy or even fun. Because it isn’t. Sometimes it’s hard. Really, really hard. Because real, genuine, life giving community doesn't take place until people begin to open up and become honest and transparent and vulnerable. Because at the end of the day, all a community is, is a group of broken people trying to live life together while at the same time, trying love one another the way Christ loved the church. And sometimes it doesn’t always work out. Sometimes, things get said or done and people get hurt, but through it all, I think God uses these relationships to draw us closer to Himself, to reveal more of His character to us, and to heal different areas of our lives.
I know that God has definitely used community and the friendships and the life experiences that have come out of it to heal different areas of my life. But even in the absence of community, God is still working. And He is still speaking. And He is still teaching me and preparing me and revealing things to me about who He is. And healing is still taking place in my life and God is causing me to walk in and experience freedom in areas that I’ve struggled with my whole entire life.
So until I am on the World Race and have the privilege of being immersed in community again, I will continue to meet with God. Because He is enough. Even when I can’t see it or bring myself to acknowledge it. Even when my heart looks for things outside of God to satisfy it, He is enough. God is always and has always been enough. I just have to be reminded sometimes 
