Living In Community

The Others: Living In Community

Bottom Line: The best shot you and I have of following Jesus. The best shot you and I have of making it through the storms of this life is when we do life together.

Intro

Good morning Real Life, my name is Curtis and I’m the Connections Director here. And it’s great to be here with you all this morning.

We are continuing our series called The Others this morning. Throughout this series we are going to be looking at what it means to live life together. Because we believe community is important. We believe life is meant to be lived together.

A few years ago before my wife and I moved here and start working here at Real Life we had sold our house and left our jobs. And we decided to travel. So we spend a month in the Pacific Northeast, we drove across Montana, went to the grand canyon, spent a week in Vegas, and just went all over the place.

It was some of the best months of my life. Some of my favorite memories of our marriage. But towards the end, after 3 or so months I started sensing something was missing. Well besides our jobs and our house… With all the traveling and we left our community. We left our people. So by the end of that part of life I really started to understand the importance of having others in our life. And I was ready to get back into living life with others.

It was one of the first times I felt the need for that in my life. I have always known community is important. But that was the first time I felt the need for it.

And that’s what we hope to do with this series. To show you why you need community. And to challenge and equip you to do life with others.

Last week we talked about how we can get along with people that don’t look, act, think, or vote like us. And if you missed that message I would encourage you to go to our website or download our podcast and catch up.

The verse that we have been using for this whole series is Eph 2:14… 14 For Christ himself has brought peace to us. He united Jews and Gentiles into one people when, in his own body on the cross, he broke down the wall of hostility that separated us.

In other words, what we have been saying throughout this series is that it is Jesus sacrifice that allows us to live in community with people. The others, with those people… Whoever they are in our life. We can now live at peace with them because of what Jesus has done.

Today we are going to look at what it actually means to actually have a relationship with those in this church. How do we live in community with other Christians.

Tension

We are one of, if not the most, connected cultures in history. We get notifications ever hour delivered to our phones about the latest news, weather, sports, what our friends are doing, and comments on how your latest photo you posted. We are connected in a way never seen before. But yet we are also some of the most disconnected people ever. We might be able to know a few things about a lot of people. But we don’t have deep relationships with almost anyone.

The problem is God created us for community. God created us for deep relationships. Life is not meant to be lived alone. I’m convinced that the best shot you and I have of following Jesus. The best shot you and I have of making it through the storms of this life is when we do life together. I believe that. And I think you do to. I think we all know that’s true. We just don’t know how to get to that place.

Here’s the reality… We all have something that keeps us from community. We all have something that keeps us from going into something more then surface level relationships.

And today we are going to look at the early churches example of community and what God says about why community is important. But before we get there I want to look at what some of the common barriers in our lives our to community.

Busyness

I think we can all relate to this… I don’t have time to get into deeper relationships because…. Fill in that blank for you. Work, school, sports, kids, hobbies, projects… The greatest time of the year is just around the corner, football season… And I guarantee you I will at some point decline some kind of invite to do something because I want to watch a game.