My faith rejuvenated after yesterday’s encounter night. I am grateful to be in this community where God has placed me.
Georg & Nat shared one of the most important truths about us being adopted into the family of God. We can choose our family we don’t choose our family members. By His grace, we don’t choose Him but He has chosen us to be part of His body and His church. Katrina Henderson pointed out that we are to make the choice to believe in the truth of us being part of the family and Jamie Scott shared on our behaviors (relative to our respective age) in the family.
Speaking about family, we can relate that to our parents, siblings, relatives and so on. On a larger scale, we often relate that to a community.
This has kept me thinking about the heart of God with regards to the concept of family and the community that God has designed us to live in.
Why He wants us to be in a family or community settings?
Psalmist in OT says
God sets the lonely in families .Psalm 68:6
Those who are planted in the house of the LORD shall flourish in the courts of our God. Psalm 92:13
But they delight in the law of the Lord, meditating on it day and night. They are like trees planted along the riverbank, bearing fruit each season. Their leaves never wither, and they prosper in all they do. Psalm 1:1-3
Having known the truth of His heart from the above passages, what then is community? A community is a collective group of people who do life together and often share the same values or interests.
As a community of Christ’s loved ones, our common interest is God, people and life.
Jesus says,
“‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’ This is the first and greatest commandment. Matthew 22:37-38
The principle of His commandment is undergirded by relationship and love. God is love and we are the people of His pasture. We belong to God and enter into a relationship with Him & His people that forms the Christian community and which love is the factor that connects all things together.
When we says community is not just among Christians and but also everyone who walks into our lives. The importance of the Christian community which commonly happen in the church settings is that of Christ centered.
Having say that it is crucial to understand where His heart lies with regards to us being part of His body. Let’s look back at the original intention of human creation. He created a community not just for Christians (Thanks goodness for this!) who decided to follow Him but also the non-believers. His love is all inclusive but the choice to love Him back is exclusively ours and it is precious.
From the beginning of creation, He created Adam and said it is not good for him to be alone. Before the creation of Eve, Adam was alone but had a full and intimate relationship with God. He was whole but it is not good enough. As God says it is not good for man to be alone. After He created Eve as a suitable companion for Adam, He said it was good.
Essentially, God created Adam and Eve and the concept of community was initiated right then from the beginning. This simply means human relationship is important and good!
As I was just pondering on the word community, I am amazed that the word co-join two important words. ‘Comm’ ( Communication) and ‘Unity’. Communication speaks of relationship and Unity speaks of the union. This is so embedded in the truth that God places importance in a community. My heart lit up when Jamie Scott explained the undergirded reasons of the commandments given by God and they all support the reason for relationship and life giving.
Back to the original intention of creating Eve, the importance of the human relationship was unfolded by the creation of Eve for Adam. In short, if you are human you need to belong to a community. God said before the fall: “It is not good for man to be alone.” Adam was lonely not because he was imperfect; he was lonely because he was perfect. God has wired us in such a way that we cannot be what he meant us to be unless we are living in a community.
Why we need community?
We need community for three reasons:
1. To Grow.
We learn and grow and are transformed not so much by what we do but by why and how we do it. - Sharon Salzberg
From the natural perspective, we cannot grow healthy in just some parts but we need to grow both spiritually and the soul (includes emotional) aspect of life. With our individual diversity we can only grow individual & collectively[an1]. For the purpose of illustration, we can only grow physically if we have stomach to digest food, blood to transfer the nutrients to other parts of the body for physical growth. Our individual talents and gifts can bring synergy to our growth as both as an individual and collectively in a community.
This can also be illustrated in a song. A song is a collection of different notes and words that come together to form a series of chords that complete the music. At each phrase of our lives we play difference keys in each other ‘s lives but we need to stay together as one for a greater song.
Our lives are essentially a collective connection of different individuals. We often rub each other’s shoulders but being in a community also meant that we need to “look over the shoulders” and accept people who are different, grieve the death of a loved one, handle unemployment, resolve conflicts, grow old in grace. Some says we grow in Christ’s likeness in community not in classes. Classes are important for conveying truth content, but real change comes in community. Jesus and his disciples lived together, ate together, experienced life together. Jesus modeled to his followers what it meant to love God and neighbor in very specific situations.
2. To Serve & Discover
The quality of our community is the real secret to finding our calling in life[an2]. God has given each of us gifts—special abilities and skills—to serve him in the world and in the church. But how do we discern what our gifts are and how best to employ them in service to others? It is by living in a community of believers[an3] where we can discuss our passions, test our gifts, and be encouraged, counseled and prayed for by those who know us.
To serve is also to discover who we are.
Just as we have eyes to see and hands to touch. We need each other’s strength, encouragement and advice to achieve our destiny. Quite often, we can’t see where we are going until someone else pointed it out. We are all given different gifts but it often takes one to see another person’s gifts and vice verse.
Why is this so? This is back to the very fact that we are wired to connect with each other from the beginning as mentioned earlier in Genesis. By serving each other we will discover our calling and function. Some are called to be “eyes” who are the visionaries; some are called to be the “hands” in mobilizing events. A community will not move forward if it only consist of those who can only visualized but with no hands to mobilize. This means mobilisation of a vision will not go far by just having the vision but implementation by means of “works of the hands”.
3. To Witness.
It is all about Him.
For in him all things were created: things in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or powers or rulers or authorities; all things have been created through him and for him. Colossians 1:16
A candle lights a room, when we all light our candle together we can light a city.
“A city on the hill cannot be hidden.”
Jesus says He is the lights of the world so shall we.
The quality of our Christ filled life together is a witness to the world. As a community stands together, our statement of faith lights the world. A body can’t function well without all parts connected and functionin as one . Our diversity and unity are lights to the world.
Jesus prays in John 17:23, “May they be brought to complete unity to let the world know that you sent me and have loved them even as you have loved me.”
Our unity in community is the main reason that people will believe in the truth of the gospel.
How diversity and unity comes together?
This is so well mentioned by Paul, the apostle in 1 Corinthians 12:11-19
“All these are the work of one and the same Spirit, and he distributes them to each one, just as he determines. Just as a body, though one, has many parts, but all its many parts form one body, so it is with Christ. For we were all baptized by one Spirit so as to form one body—whether Jews or Gentiles, slave or free—and we were all given the one Spirit to drink. Even so the body is not made up of one part but of many.
Now if the foot should say, “Because I am not a hand, I do not belong to the body,” it would not for that reason stop being part of the body. And if the ear should say, “Because I am not an eye, I do not belong to the body,” it would not for that reason stop being part of the body. If the whole body were an eye, where would the sense of hearing be? If the whole body were an ear, where would the sense of smell be? 18 But in fact God has placed the parts in the body, every one of them, just as he wanted them to be. 19 If they were all one part, where would the body be? “
We are different yet one in Spirit. Whether we agree or not, we are created to be part of His family. But we are given a choice whether to live in or out of a community. We have to play our parts to create the dynamic of the community that we are currently in.
Therefore being part of each other in a community is a crucial and joyful element in our journey with God and each other. When you make a difference in your community, you make a difference in your life and others as well.
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