Life is Better Connected

The LORD God said, “It is not good for the man to be alone. I will make a helper suitable for him.” Genesis 2:18 (NIV)

At one time in my life I believed all I needed was God and me. Despite growing up in church I didn’t value enough the connection that came with it. Between legalism, judgementalism and hypocrisy often practiced in the church I grew up in; I believed I was better off with God on my own. After all He has given us His Word through the Bible and His Spirit what more do we need right?

A few years of following that format and I realized how difficult it is to stay connected with God on my own. Even when I was able to it was easy to develop blind-spots without a trusted outside voice who could speak into my life. I came to miss the connection of being in a small group like the one my parents had that met in their home. I missed the working of the various gifting coming together to accomplish something larger than one could on their own. I also in a way became less me…it takes community for our real selves to be fully revealed.

C.S. Lewis suggests that it takes a community of people to get to know an individual person. Reflecting on his own friendships, he observed some aspects of one of his friend’s personality were brought out only through interaction with a second friend. That meant if he lost the second friend, he lost the part of his first friend that was otherwise invisible.

“By myself I am not large enough to call the whole man into activity; I want other lights than my own to show all his facets.”

Genesis 2:18 is stated at the beginning of this post. There is meaning to this verse in regards to marriage but more so we also learn that God created us to be in community with other people as well. The Bible is full of other references that support this understanding. Below is a list of 59 verses in the Bible that give an exhortation to actually “do” something towards another person.

The primary activity of the church was one-anothering one another. – Andy Stanley

Take a moment and think about the quote above… Consider that statement and then consider how intentional we can be at strategies that don’t include this primary activity. We can be intentional about getting people assigned to positions to serve in, plugged into programs but where are we intentional about one-anothering?

When everyone is sitting in rows…you can’t do any one anothers. – Andy Stanley

If the majority of a church’s focus is getting people into rows we will not have an abundance of opportunities to “be the church.” When we’re intentional about guiding the church towards Biblical community we create more space for the “one anothers”. It’s so much easier to do one-anothering in circles than rows.

Here is a visual info-graphic created by the overview bible of the 59 “one-another” verses.

Inspired by: Connected

https://dailypost.wordpress.com/prompts/connected/