Monday, October 10, 2011

Community

C.S. Lewis points out that the saying, "God is love" requires more than one being involved, for how can you love with no one to love? In the very nature of the trinity of God we see the perfect Unity of God - a great love between Father, Son and Spirit, and when God created man, he wanted to see that Unity played out - Unity with man and others as well as a Unity with Him.  

Genesis 2:20-22 
"... But for Adam there was not found a helper comparable to him.  And the LORD God caused a deep sleep to fall on Adam, and he slept: and He took one of his ribs ... Then the rib which the LORD God had taken from man He made into a woman, and He brought her to the man."

The passage continues to explain that the man and woman shall become one flesh.  Yes, this is the perfect portrayal of marriage, the Unity of Man and Wife, but consider why God wanted a comparable helper for Adam.  God, a Holy Triune God, wanted the Unity He shares for eternity to be experienced in His creation.  As man was created in the image of God, we were created for that Unifying Bond that the Father shares.  
In John 14: 7 we are amazed to see that we can know the Father through His Son, because we are brought into the perfect bond of God.  We, as the elect of God, are Unified in the Body of Christ.  We're created for that community composed of believers.  Therefore, we must be unified.  James doesn't say lightly, in James 5:16, that we should confess to one another and pray for each other - that is a bond within the body, a bond built on mutual trust and the Love of God.  That is a "Passionate Fellowship."

I know that it is easy to fall into the trap of feeling as weekly attendance at church and maybe some scattered bible studies is enough fellowship, but its important to analyze the bonds we have with the believers in our lives.  Do we have fellow Christians we can go to and ask for prayer? Ask for help? And we know, that stemming from they're love for Christ and us, they will respond?  Would we act that way towards anyone?  Do we have a bond with believers that will hold us accountable? As I ask myself those questions I have to crawl once again to my Savior, asking Him to help me to have those bonds.  I need to ask that I can have the mind like Him that is described in Philippians 2:3-5, where I place others before me for the sake of the community of believes I'm in.  

The Lord is good. He has ordained our paths before we were even conceived, and He desires for us to be surrounded by a body of believers so we may encourage one another.  This is incredibly important as we seek to do His will in our lives, because it is in community that we are refreshed.  We see Paul's struggles to resist sin as he describes it in Romans 7, and he had a group of men to support him, how much more so if the world pressed down on him without his friends to be praying over him!  We need that community in order to run the race set out.

The challenge is to Step out of our Comfort Zones, step out of our fear of Trusting people, and go seek that Deep Fellowship of Community with 2 or more believers - people we can open up to and share where God is taking us, people we can love in the Unity of Love that God has within the Trinity and for us - we who've been grafted into that trinity.  Yes. It's hard.  All people inevitably let us down because of sin, but with community comes forgiveness, so learn to forgive as Christ forgave.  When we have this bond within this community of believers, we can go forth with a support system.  

No comments:

Post a Comment