I have been listening to Steve Timmis over at the Resurgence teach on total church over the past week or so, and I am really being convicted about community. Community is not easy, safe, or something people want to do. We want to be left alone, to have our space, and to do with our lives what we will without interference from anyone. We hold people at a distance, and find whatever excuse we can to not let people into our lives. I have found, both in myself and in others, a violent reaction against the kind of gospel community Timmis was talking about. We claim we don't have time. We claim that other people just don't get us. We complain that we have nothing in common.
We need each other, and we need each other desperately. We need to be challenged out of our selfishness, security, and lack of love for the people around us. We need to make time. We are a community bound together by the love of Christ....what else do we need to have in common but the reality that we have been dramatically saved by grace and given a mission to love and serve the world around us as we take the gospel into the depths of our darkened souls? We are the community of the broken, bound-up, sinners saved, losers, loners, addicted, harried, stressed-out...all of this swallowed up by the full love of God. This is not a teaching, but once again, an experience with the Risen Christ who have united us in the power of His life, death, and resurrection.
What do you and I have in common? Jesus has saved me. Has He saved you? Then let's get to work on building the community He died to give us.
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