Spiritually Connected
Ephesians 2:10-18
Stephen Arterburn and Bill Farrel tell the story of a small boy pleading with his parents for the gifts he wants for Christmas and when he doesn’t think he’s getting anywhere writes a letter to God about the Christmas presents he wanted. "I've been good for six months now," he wrote. After a moment's reflection, he crossed out "six months" and wrote "three." After a pause he changed that to "two weeks." There was another pause and another erasure. Finally, the boy got up from the table and went over to the little nativity scene that had the figures of Mary and Joseph. He picked up the figure of Mary and went back to his writing and started again: "Dear God, if ever you want to see your mother again ..." Have you ever had difficulty connecting with God, let alone the other people in your life? In this series, we’re going to talk about getting connected spiritually. But what does that mean? What we’re going to find is that you can’t separate one from the other. We connect with God and through that relationship learn how to and are empowered to connect with others. Life is all about relationships.
In fact, we’re made for connection. Why? Because we’re created in the image of God, who is a relational God, and more than anything wants to have a personal relationship with you. We need healthy connections in your life. We have never been more connected. No matter what happens in the world, we hear about it now within seconds. Bombs drop in Gaza or Apple releases a new iPhone or iWatch and we know about it almost instantaneously. Companies are laying billions of miles of fiber optics. We can talk, text, or Facetime with anyone, anwhere in the world. But despite the fact that the world is more connected than ever, people have never felt more disconnected. In fact, Gallop polls have found that Americans have never been lonelier. We’re so busy, so overcommitted and so rushed that we have lost the time and ability to make vital connections in life, with God and with others. Close friends in our lives have been replaced with acquaintances. One recent study found that over half of all Americans don’t even know their neighbor’s names. Human beings are not made for isolation. Without connection, we die or go crazy. Studies have found that in orphanages where there is not enough physical contact with babies, there is a mortality rate of up to 40%. Mississippi has actually ended solitary confinement in prison because it’s now considered cruel and unusual punishment. Close connections to God and other people are the key to a healthy and happy life.
So today we’re going to look at what it means to be spiritually connected to God, to the Church and to each other through four metaphors in the Bible. First, to be spiritually connected is like being built into a building. Ephesians 2:22 says, “In Christ you are built together into a dwelling place for God.” If you’ve ever watched a building being built, you know there are literally 1000’s of different parts welded, glued, stapled, and nailed together. And they all have to be connected to one another for it to be sturdy. I have a friend who’s a Physical Therapist in Slidell. After Katrina, Richard raised his flooded house 12 feet off the ground. When his house was finished, he started to move in and noticed that as he walked through the house, it began to sway back and forth. Why? Because the pilings the house sat on had no cross ties and thus weren’t connected to each other, making the house unsafe and structurally unsound. Everything has to be connected. Connections provide stability and support in our lives. I’ve also noticed as they construct a building that there are always alot of spare parts laying around in the building – wood, brick, stone, nails, screws, wire, electrical wire, etc. and none of them are connected. I was helping remove a center island cabinet after Katrina in a flooded house and we were surprised not only to find spare parts of the building underneath the cabinet but even tools too. They weren’t connected to anything, just laying there on the floor. We joked about whether the guy looked for hours to find his tools.
This really is a metaphor for life. There are people who come to church but they’re not connecting to God or others. But if you’re not connected to others, you have no support. That’s true in any area of life. And what happens is rogue winds are going to blow you over, emotional and financial crises are going to crumble you, and the storms of life are going to sweep you away. That’s why it’s so important for you to be connected. You’re meant to be connected to the God and others as he builds his kingdom. Paul puts it this way in the Message translation of Ephesians 2:20-22 “You’re no longer strangers or outsiders. You belong here…God is building a home. He’s using us all—irrespective of how we got here—in what he is building….he’s using you, fitting you in brick by brick, stone by stone, with Christ Jesus as the cornerstone that holds all the parts together…a holy temple built by God, all of us built into it...”
Second, being spiritually connected is like being part of a body. One of the most common descriptions of the church in the Bible is the body of Christ. What Jesus Christ did when he was here in his physical body – teaching, preaching and healing – he wants us to continue today. In his absence, we are his hands, his feet, and His voice. God wants us to be united together, by one faith, one God and one Savior. “In Christ’s body, we’re all connected to each other.” Romans 12 says, “Just as there are many parts in our bodies, so it is with Christ’s body. We are all parts of it and it takes every one of us to make it complete. For we each have different work to do. So we belong to each other, and each of us needs all the others.”
There are four things we learn about spiritual connections. First, we are all different or unique parts. God designed it that way. Second, everybody’s needed. We are all vital parts of the body for it to function. Third, we belong to each other. Not only do you belong to Jesus, you belong to everybody else who belongs to Jesus. In fact, we need each other. Fourth, when connected to God and other believers, we grow. If not, we shrivel up and die. A hand that’s cut off from a body not only won’t grow, it’ll die. It’s only through being connected that you’re fed and will grow for “we grow only as we get our nourishment and strength from God.”
Third, being spiritually connected is like being attached to a vine which produces fruit. Right before Jesus goes to the cross, he gives these last minute instructions to the people following him, “Live in me and I will live in you. A branch cannot produce any fruit by itself. It has to stay attached to the vine. In the same way, you cannot produce fruit unless you live in me.” Romans 12:5 In other words, your life will not produce any fruits if you’re out there on your own. Not only that, you’ll start to wither and die. You’ve got to be connected to God to have fruit. What kind of fruit? “The fruit of the Spirit is this [there are nine qualities] love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self control.” I don’t know about you but I’d like to have those nine things in my life. I’d like to be more loving, more joyful and more at peace in a chaotic world. I’d like to be more kind, and more faithful to God. I’d like to be gentle with mean and rude people. And I’d like to have more self-control. How about you? What fruit is there in your life? Some of us are fruitcakes. Some of us are fruitloops! Sometimes, we’re all a little tutti-frutti. But you can produce spiritual fruit in your life only by being connected to him.
Fourth, being spiritually connected is like being born into a family. There are only two ways to get into a family: you can either be born into it or adopted. And God does both for you. In Jesus’ day, Roman law said you could disown a child you birthed. I think this arose when the Roman empire had just begun and first children had become teenagers. But if you adopted a child, you were forbidden to ever disown them. God says you’re not only born into my family but I have adopted you and there is no way I could ever disown you. No matter what you do! Once you become a member of the family of God, you’re in. You’re part of the family. You’re welded into the building of the temple of God. You’re sown into the body. You’re grafted into the vine. You’re adopted into the family of God.
Most people think that Christianity is a belief system. There are beliefs that are involved but it’s more than that. It’s about a relationship, a relationship to God but it’s also about a relationship to the body of Christ, other believers. Romans 15 makes this promise: “You will all be joined together and you will give glory to God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. Christ accepted you, so you should accept each other, which will bring glory to God.” It’s about being a relationship to God and to one another. They go hand in hand. You cannot fulfill God’s purpose for your life by yourself. The number one thing God wants you to learn in life is how to love him, so that you can love other people. You can’t do it on your own. It’s all about connections to God and then connecting to others.
Matthew Barnett tells the story of Jonathan whose father left when he was 8. He took full advantage of it. By age 10, he drinking, age 11, he was smoking pot and by 12, he had started his own gang painting graffiti which grew so large that they were invited to join one of the hardcore, violent gangs. By 13, he was a successful drug dealer and by 15, he had been arrested several times. His mother, who was working three jobs to provide for her family, was so exasperated thatshe put him in a drug rehab program in the Dream Center in LA, which ministers to inner city LA. After four days, he stole a toaster and ripped out a page of the Bible to roll a joint with some weed he had snuck with him. He lit it and stuck his head out the window so no one would smell it. Thinking he had got away with it, he hid the rest of the weed. The next day, he returned to his room to find his weed was gone and was informed that he was now knocked down to Level 1, which meant a lot of time confined to his room staring at he walls and ceilings while the other kids were enjoying activities, games and TV. He was so bored that he picked up a Bible and started to read it. He went to the bathroom, took the Bible with him and opened it up to Matthew 5 and started reading Jesus’ first sermon, the Sermon on the Mount. He had never read the Bible before but right away, it began to change him. What Jesus was saying just blew his mind that if he even looked at a woman the wrong way, he had committed adultery in his heart or that if he kept anger in his heart toward someone, it was like murdering them. But in that bathroom, yes sitting on a toilet that, he encountered God and made a decision. “Jesus, I’m going to serve you, I’m going to serve you with all my heart.” He went through a discipleship process. When he went home on leave, he changed his life, broke up with his girlfriend, threw out a pound of marijuana, and quit the gang. He told God he was committing his life to the kingdom and would serve him however he wanted. He began discipling others in the program, finished his GED and then became a ministry leader. And then he writes, “I fell in love with serving. I started dreaming about what it would be like if one day I could love these people so much that they ask, what’s different about me? There’s nothing better!....I love it when they get that look. Like they’re thinking, “I don’t know, man, there’s something different about you. You serve them without being asked and they start asking things like, “Hey, why’d you carry my luggage for me?” “Why’d you help me with that task?” Why’d you pay for that?” …So you start thinking about ways to be generous, ways to be a blessing, ways to serve…and (to always) be aware and conscious of what’s going on around me so I can be a blessing….so when the moment’s there, I can drop seeds of blessings.”
It all starts with first getting connected to God. That’s what God wants more than anything else. Over the next few weeks, we’re going to talk about some very practices to help you do that. But what you’ll find is that not only will they improve your relation or connect to God, it will positively impact the other relationships in your life too. Getting spiritually connected: this is what life is really all about: getting to know God, learning to relate to God and then through that connection and relate to other people in your life, leading to serving God and sharing the blessings of God with others. Amen.
