"Becoming a Caring Family"
Text: Acts 2:42-47
A. Introduction: The early church
B. God made us to relate to one another
1. Relating is our greatest need
2. We are commanded to love
C. Becoming real
1. To love and to learn
2. We don't show the "real us"
3. Time, talk, and trust
4. Two are better than one
D. Practical steps to caring
1. Identify who needs your love
2. Don't wait for them to act first
3. Communicate
4. Empathize
5. Listen without judging
6. Respond with a caring gift
E. Everyone is important
F. Conclusion: A letter from the church
Becoming a Caring Family
Text: Acts 2:42-47
Introduction
They devoted themselves to the apostles' teaching and to the fellowship, to the breaking of bread and to prayer. Everyone was filled with awe. Many wonders and miraculous signs were done by the apostles. All the believers were together and had everything in common. Selling their possessions and goods, they gave to anyone as he had need. Every day they continued to meet together in the temple courts. They broke bread in their homes and ate together with glad and sincere hearts, praising God and enjoying the favor of all the people. And the Lord added to their number daily those who were being saved.
God made us to relate to one another
Just like the disciples in the early church, our decision to receive Christ puts us into a relationship with him and with all who believe. God made us to be relational beings; we need to be loved. God did not make us a new creation in Christ to be alone.
When God saw Adam, his first creation of the human species, he said, "It is not good for the man to be alone" (Gen. 2:18).
God made us to be relational beings who live in relationship with him and with others.
Our greatest need, then, is to grow as relational beings.
The only way we can do that is through loving God and loving one another.
First John 4:7-12 says,
Dear friends, let us love one another, for love comes from God. Everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God. Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love. This is how God showed his love among us: He sent his one and only Son into the world that we might live through him. This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins. Dear friends, since God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. No one has ever seen God; but if we love one another, God lives in us and his love is made complete in us.
Becoming real
In other words, we can become complete by loving with God's divine love.
We can become real. Many of us are asking about life, "Why am I here?" The answer: Because we need to be loved, and we need to love. "How can we become real?" By loving others.
The Skin Horse had lived longer in the nursery than any of the others. He was so old that his brown coat was bald in patches and showed the seams underneath, and most of the hairs in his tail had been pulled out to string bead necklaces. He was wise, for he had seen a long succession of mechanical toys arrive to boast and swagger, and by-and-by break their main springs and pass away, and he knew that they were only toys, and would never turn into anything else. For nursery magic is very strange and wonderful, and only those playthings that are old and wise and experienced like the Skin Horse understand all about it. "What is REAL?" asked the Rabbit one day, when they were lying side by side near the nursery fender, before Nana came to tidy the room. "Does it mean having things that buzz inside you and a stick-out handle?" "Real isn't how you are made," said the Skin Horse. "It's a thing that happens to you. When a child loves you for a long, long time, not just to play with, but REALLY loves you, then you become Real." "Does it hurt?" asked the Rabbit. "Sometimes," said the Skin Horse, for he was always truthful. "When you are Real you don't mind being hurt." "Does it happen all at once, like being wound up," he asked, "or bit by bit?" "It doesn't happen all at once," said the Skin Horse. ". . . It takes a long time. That's why it doesn't often happen to people who break easily, or have sharp edges, or who have to be carefully kept. Generally, by the time you are Real, most of your hair has been loved off, and your eyes drop out and you get loose in the joints and very shabby. But these things don't matter at all, because once you are Real you can't be ugly, except to people who don't understand." (Margery Williams Bianco, The Velveteen Rabbit, Holt, Rinehart, and Winston Publishers, New York, 1983, pp. XX.)
Our greatest need is to see the kind of loving that occurred in the early church as recorded in Acts 2:42-47.
Upon receiving Jesus as their Lord and Christ (Messiah), the disciples devoted themselves to two things: to learning God's Word as the apostles taught it and to loving by fellowshipping together.
We are the body of Christ, interwoven into an everlasting tapestry.
On the Day of Pentecost, the Holy Spirit was poured out on the disciples of Christ. They all spoke in languages with the exact dialects of the people from many nations who had gathered in Jerusalem. The disciples told about the amazing, wondrous works of God, and many people believed. Three thousand people believed when the apostle Peter stood up as the disciples' spokesman and made it clear that this Jesus, whom they had crucified, was Lord and Christ.
Notice in Acts 2:42-47 that the birth of the church resulted not only in decisions, but in discipleship.
In addition to committing ourselves to obeying the Lord and his Word, my greatest desire for this church is that it be a place where people are "becoming real" by loving one another and by loving our great Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ.
The problem is that we isolate ourselves from one another.
We separate ourselves from each other by putting a layer of protection around ourselves so that the real "us," our needs and anxieties, never touch the real part of anybody else. Facade meets facade, we exchange pleasantries, and we talk on a superficial level. We need to follow this week's action step, to "Learn to Listen with the Ears of Jesus." By taking the time to ask caring questions and to be active listeners, we can communicate to one another the love and compassion of our Lord. I encourage you to get together with other Christians during the week, to call them up on the phone, and to ask how you can pray for them.
A Christian who was fed up with the "cliche" level of communication in her church decided to conduct an experiment. To everyone who asked her, while passing in the hallways of the church, "How are you?" she replied, "Lousy!" Many missed the cue that she needed some tender loving care.
Let us break through the "layer-to-layer" fellowship and have "heart-to-heart" fellowship.
Too often--and men are the guiltiest of this--we protect ourselves so securely that we put our hearts in a box. We don't want to be hurt.
Someone once said that the Ten Commandments of Men are:
1 He shall not cry.
2 He shall not display weakness.
3 He shall not need affection, gentleness, or warmth.
4 He shall comfort, but not desire comforting.
5 He shall be needed, but not need.
6 He shall touch, but not be touched.
7 He shall be steel, not flesh.
8 He shall be inviolate in his manhood.
9 He shall stand alone.
No man--or woman--is an island. We really do need one another.
We have to make time for loving.
Our habit is to say, "I don't have time to care.
There was a student who used to say, "I'm too busy to get involved in my church or other people's lives. I work, in addition to going to school. I just don't have time." A funny thing happened, though. He met a woman and fell in love. Somehow, he found the time to meet with her three or four times a week.
We say that we don't have time, but when we truly love one another, we make the time.
Acts 2 shows us that the disciples spent a lot of time together. Verse 46 says, "Every day they continued to meet together in the temple courts." If we are going to build a quality fellowship here, we need to make one another a priority. We need to spend time with one another. The three "T's" of relationship building are time, talk, and trust.
Let me give you six important steps in loving someone practically.
1. Identify those people who specifically need our love.
There are distressed people all around us. Don't forget your family members.
2. We must act first.
Take the initiative to show love to that spouse, church member, or neighbor. Don't wait for people to come up to you; reach out to them. Shake their hand and introduce yourself. Get to know them.
3. Communicate with them.
Begin on a superficial level, but then pursue depth and meaning by asking questions.
4. Empathize with them.
Say, "I'm with you." And make sure your actions back you up.
A certain man was going through chemotherapy. In the hospital, he shaved the patches of hair that were left on his head, and that made him completely bald. Before he went home, he was afraid he wouldn't be loved and accepted. But when he was released from the hospital, he was met by his family members. They had all shaved their heads and were completely bald. When he returned to his neighborhood, all of his neighbors had shaved their heads. A newspaper report quoted a neighbor as saying, "I've known this guy for 15 years and he's always loved me and shared with me, and I just wanted to show him that I feel what he's going through." The joy and comfort this man felt from the empathetic demonstration strengthened and encouraged him.
The ministry of empathy is as practical as you can get.
It means walking in another person's shoes.
If you spend time communicating with a person that you have chosen to love, and you empathize with this friend, he or she is going to open up and show you his or her hurts and fears. That will give you a window of opportunity for touching that person's heart as Christ ministers through you.
5. Actively listen in a non-judgmental manner.
Good listening requires concentration. It involves eye contact and body language. It means focusing exclusively on what the other person is trying to communicate. In this way, you can hear a person's heart, needs, and anxieties.
6. Respond with a caring gift. This can be in the form of something tangible that says, "I'm thinking of you," or "I'm with you," or something intangible, like the gift of forgiveness or the gift of encouraging words. You can do that. If you follow this approach, you are showing practical, Christ-like love. We need to do that, because Christ commanded us to love one another as he loved us. Love is the oxygen of the kingdom of God.
Everyone is important
Imagine, if you will, walking with me into a new church building. As we walk through the doors, we admire the carpet, the walls, the skylights, and so on. As we are commenting on how nice everything is in that building, imagine that a lone nail holding down a shingle on the top of the roof says, "I'm not getting any praise. No one is saying how good a job I'm doing holding this shingle to the roof. I think I'm going to pull out. I think I'm just going to quit, because my role is not as important as others', and people are certainly not recognizing me." So the nail pulls itself out from the shingles, slides down the roof, and falls into the dirt. Then it begins to rain. The nail removed itself from the protection of being under that shingle and a part of the church. It threw itself in the dirt, exposing itself to mud and rust, destruction and decay. (That is what it is like to be apart from the fellowship of believers. We must be intact.) The nail did not realize that its action not only affects itself, but it also affects others. For as the rains comes down, the shingle that no longer had the nail to keep it attached to the roof also comes loose. As the rains comes down, the water seeps through that shingle down the wall and ruins the carpet, causing greater damage than the nail could have imagined.
Every single one of you is important to the body of Christ.
Whether you're recognized or not, whether you sense that you're loved or not, you are part of the body of Christ.
You've been baptized into the body of Christ.
No one is insignificant. Let us fulfill the purpose for which God made us, to love one another, and to receive love from one another. The church we have always longed for is a warm, nurturing place where we can grow in Christ and be renewed through loving him and one another, thus attracting others to the Savior.
Conclusion
Here is a letter to you from the church:
I am your church. Make of me what you will. I shall reflect you as clearly as a mirror. If outwardly my appearance is pleasing and inviting, it is because you have made me so. If you find my spiritual atmosphere to be kindly yet earnest, reverent yet friendly, worshipful yet sincere, sympathetic yet strong, divine yet humanly expressed, it is but the manifestation of the spirits of those who constitute my membership. But if you should by chance find me a bit cold and dull, I beg of you not to condemn me, for I show forth the only kind of life I shall receive from you. I have no life or spirit apart from you. Of this may you always be assured: I will respond instantly to your every wish, practically expressed, for I am the reflected image of your own soul. Make of me what you will.
Outline by Rev. Lou Diaz
Senior Pastor
Wheaton Evangelical Free Church
Wheaton, Illinois
