Building Family
Acts 2:42-47
The huge redwood trees in California are the largest living things on earth and the tallest trees in the world. Some of them are 300 feet high and more than 2,500 years old. You would think that trees that large would have a tremendous root system, reaching down hundreds of feet into the earth. But that is not the case. Redwoods have a very shallow root system. The roots of these trees are, however, intertwined, tied in with each other and interlocked. Thus, when the storms come and the winds blow, the redwoods still stand. With an interlocking root system they support and sustain each other. They need one another to survive. So do we! God has given us His Church to be our support system. Through Christ we are bound together in a community of faith. Belonging to Christ, we belong to each other. Through Christ, God has made us a family, a community of faith. This is our God-given support system. As such, it is intended to meet some crucial needs in our lives, the need for connection. Connections are essential.
First, connections are the essence of life. Your body’s organs, muscles, and bones only work because they’re connected. If they weren’t connected, your organs would wither and die. Now that’s true in life too. The person who says, “Well, I think I’ll go over to Dove this week and next week, I’ll go over to the Cathedral and the next week I’ll go over to Believer’s Life” are reattaching to a different body every week. They become attenders, not members, spectators, not participators, consumers, not contributors. As a result, they never really grow in their faith or their relationships in the body of Christ and miss the essence of life.
Second, we need connections. Rick Warren put it this way: you were created for relationships. We have this longing for belonging. That’s why loneliness is so painful. The very first thing God said was it is not good for man to be alone. Whether you ever get married or not is irrelevant but you need a spiritual family. You were made for connections to God and to other people. When you’re not connected, life is empty. Third, connections teach us to love. That’s why when Jesus was asked what mattered most, he said, “Love God and love your neighbor as yourself.” Love is what connects us. But we are not called to love as the world loves but as God has loved us. And the only way to learn that is through relationships in the church. Fourth, connections help us understand life. You cannot understand what life is all about without connections to others. Connections enlarge our perspective. It’s through our relationships with each other that we come to have a deeper appreciation of ourselves, our purpose and others.
Fifth, connections empower us. Power flows through connections. A disconnected toaster produces no warmth. A disconnected television has no picture. It is the connections that empower us, and without them, you don’t move forward. If we are disconnected from God, or each other, then we cannot grow and move forward in life. Sixth, connections keep us growing. Knowing the right thing to do is rarely enough. How many of you know you need to be healthier? You need to exercise, eat better and get more sleep. But knowing what to do is never enough. The same is true with your spiritual life. I can tell you on Sunday, You need to be in a Bible study, you need to pray, you need to witness, you need to worship, you need to fellowship, you need to serve others. Knowing what to do is rarely enough. To do it and keep doing it over the long haul, you need partners, people to whom you are accountable. It’s the way we keep growing. Seventh, connections help us balance our lives. Life is more than about yourself, your job or your family. Without a connection to God, we’re powerless. Without a connection to each other, we become lonely and self-centered.
Eighth, connections increase our confidence. We’re better together. The less connection you have, the more insecure you are. The more connected you are, the more secure you are. We gain assurance in knowing that other people love and care for us. Ninth, connections make us more productive. “Two are better than one.” Why? Because we can accomplish more when we work together. Your life will largely be determined by your personal connections. And the better connected you are, the greater impact you’ll have with your life.
Tenth, this is a big one, we have to learn how to connect. Nobody teaches us how to connect. Making the right connection with God and making the connection with other people is neither natural nor automatic. That’s why God sent Jesus, to do what we could never do. Jesus is the connector. He is the mediator. He connected us to God. And God gave the church to connect us to others as He intended. We don’t connect as the world does but as God has connected to us. We have to learn how to connect like that and that comes only in the body of Christ. That’s why one of our values is building family because we believe in the need and vital role connections play in our lives and our journey of faith.
Building Family is valued by us because the faith is lived out in relationship to one another. In his book, “The Connecting Church”, Pastor Randy Frazee writes, “The experience of authentic community is one of the purposes God intends to be fulfilled by the church. The writings of Scripture lead one to conclude that God intends the church, not to be one more bolt on the wheel of activity in our lives, but the very hub at the center of one’s life…..” The church is essential to our spiritual well-being and our growth. The early church needed each other and God expected them to be there for one another. Likewise, we need each other and God expects us to be there for one another. God has ordained that we play a vital part in each other’s faith. For that reason we are commanded in Hebrews 10:25 not to, “…give up meeting together, as some are in the habit of doing, but let us encourage one another…”
Our text for this morning tells us that the very first community of believers was all about connecting and building family in the body of Christ. Acts 2:44 says, “…all that believed were together…” It wasn’t easy to follow Christ in the 1st century. Times were tough and persecution rampant. But they were bound together into a community because they needed each other for support and strength if they were going to remain faithful to Jesus. It isn’t easy for us to follow Christ and truly live for Him today. Discouragement. Temptation. Sin. Apathy. Failure. Doubts. Rejection. We face so many obstacles in our desire to live for Jesus. God, however, has not left us on our own to run the race and fight the battle. He has given us each other.
The early church “… devoted themselves to the Apostle’s teaching, and to fellowship, to the breaking of bread and to prayer.” Acts 2:42 The teaching to which they devoted themselves was the message about Jesus proclaimed by the Apostles. The fellowship was coming together and sharing life together, their joys as well as their frustrations. The breaking of bread was celebrating the Lord’s Supper but it also referred to gathering around a common meal, the first potlucks of the church! Lastly, they prayed, prayed for the church and praying for specific concerns in each other’s lives. Teaching, fellowship, communion, and prayer were the focal points of connecting to one another and to God. It’s what built the family of God because first century people could not find anything like it in the world. And yet, they had a need for it. So they became a part of the church to get it.
The community of faith is a source of support and strength. Luke informs us that “All the believers were one in heart and mind.” They were united in Christ into a community of faith. They made every effort to be led by God’s Spirit and to think and act like Christ. Consequently, God used this community of faith to do some powerful things in the lives of countless believers, living in a pagan, godless world. God’s plan hasn’t changed. He still desires to use His Church to do powerful things in our lives. The community of faith is absolutely crucial to our spiritual well-being as well as our emotional and physical well-being. As we face the inevitable trials, troubles and tragedies of life, God intends that we be supported, strengthened, encouraged and empowered through the community of believers. From each other, we should receive strength and encouragement. Such is God’s plan. Author Gary Burge says “When God ‘s love feels distant or non-existent, the body of Christ’s love is real and tangible….” That is why we cannot afford to stand alone or to go it on our own. We need each other; we need the community of faith.
Carl Conner writes about a few winters ago when heavy snows hit North Carolina. Following a wet, six-inch snowfall, it was interesting to see the effect along I-40. Next to the highway stood several large groves of tall, young pine trees. The branches were bowed down with the heavy snow - so low that branches from one tree were often leaning against the trunk or branches of another. Where trees stood alone, however, the effect of the heavy snow was different. The branches had become heavier and heavier. Since there was no other trees to lean against, the branches snapped. They lay on the ground, dark and alone in the cold snow. And then he writes, “When the storms of life hit, we need to be standing close to other Christians. We need each other; we can’t stand alone.” The closer we stand in community, the more we will be able to be held up and strengthened through the community of believers. That’s why we need to be an active part of a community of faith and why we are committed to building family. We need others and they need us.
The community of faith is crucial to our well-being because it is also the source of much needed guidance, direction and even correction. None of us is as smart as all of us!” God yearns to guide us safely through our earthly pilgrimage, sparing us many wrong turns and harmful paths. Ephesians 3:10 declares that “God’s intent was that now, through the church, the manifold wisdom of God should be made known.” God wants to guide us but he has chosen to do it through His people in the community of faith. He gives us wisdom for the journey as we study His Word and pray together. Through the community of Christ, He helps us make right choices and good decisions. He guides us into paths of righteousness and we are able to resist the ways of the world. It is a fact: we all need the community of faith more than we often realize.
Being in the community of faith is, however, not without its difficulties and frustrations, It can’t be otherwise since it is made up of sinners. The mark of community - true biblical community - is not the absence of conflict and difficulties but the presence of a reconciling spirit to overcome it. In our humanness we all do things to rub others the wrong way and to offend. We all, at times, will be hurt and we will hurt others. Our sinful nature often causes problems.
Nevertheless, we must not back away from our value of building family. We must make an unwavering commitment to a community of believers where we can be strengthened, and receive much needed guidance. Our plight is not unlike that of a group of porcupines who were marooned one bitter cold night in the middle of a large frozen field. There was no way to escape the biting wind. They could not burrow into the frozen ground. As they huddled together to keep warm, their sharp quills began to pinch and hurt. The closer they moved together, the more the pain increased. Some of the porcupines could not bear the pain and drew apart to sleep alone. In the morning they had frozen to death. There are times when we hurt each other and the tendency is to pull away and go it alone. We must resist that tendency individually and as a church because we value building family, no matter the cost and Christ’s reconciling love can reconcile us to one another.
This year will be a tough year, relationally and financially on families and individuals. People are going to need four things. They’re going to need a deeper connection to others. This way they don’t feel like they’re going through this crisis all alone. Second, they’re going to need their questions answered. Third, they’re going to need solutions to the most common problems and to know what do you say to a friend who’s got this problem? And fourth, they’re going to need to learn how to deal with the temptations of life, because when stress increases, temptation goes up. No where better can they find those things and have those needs met than in the body of Christ and a church who values building family.
