I was thinking this morning as I listened to this sermon about biblical community that the essence of this thing called community can be boiled down to these three things.
EAT--- there is something inherently special about sharing a meal together. Other than the relationship between a man and a wife (those intimate moments), breaking bread is the most sacred thing you can do together with other believers. The sad reality is that we don't do this very often. Due to our busyness and overscheduled lives, we do good just to cram some food down our throats on the way to the next event and the thought of having conversation and life exchange over a meal is dropped by the wayside. What a shame that we don't take one of the easiest things to build community and just do it.
PRAY---Whew! This is another one that hit me this morning. We just don't do this. Oh, yes, when there is a crisis or there is trouble we circle the prayer wagons and go to town, but eventually we head back into our own self-centered lives and become internally driven instead of eternally driven. I'm not talking about some over spiritual exercise, but the act of praying with someone else is also an intimate connection that cannot help but make the heart grow closer. There is no pretense in a heart felt prayer. It is the window to the soul. Why don't we do this---is it that it just feels awkward and weird?
LOVE--Hold on now--this is the hardest one of all. I'm a failure at this one big time and the sermon this morning talked about why we don't do this. We are failures as human trying to love out of our own flesh and self-centered lives. We don't become vulnerable with one another because we're afraid. We don't share intimately because we don't trust. We don't have deep community because we'd rather have "a gathering of convenient relationships"(not my quote--listen to the sermon) instead of an authentic biblical community that shares joys, pains and life on life experiences. We'd rather settle for the "gathering of convenient relationships" than doing the hard work of "community"(speaking truth in love) Believe me, I'm pointing the finger at myself this morning,but it sure explains a lot of what I've been feeling lately. We (the Body of Christ) lack so much in this area. Can we ever have true biblical community?
As Pete said " we were all created for community, for deep relationships and if we don't have those things we will find other things in our lives to take it's place" We all know how that turns out.
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