A Different Calling in a Dark World

You are listening to a message from Thrive Community Church, a church located in Southwest Florida. For more info, visit us at thrive-fl.org. When you say you, what do you mean? Do you understand what I mean by that? Is it you singular or you plural? Now the South, we tend to do the you all so that we understand the plural. In other languages, it's either you singular or you plural and they are very specific and you know just by that. But in English, it's just you. And so we read passages in the New Testament like this, you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people belonging to God. And immediately in my individualistic mind from the American cultural system that I'm in, I always think it's just about me and it's not, right? It's an all you all are. How could I be a holy nation on my own? Or a royal priesthood, a priesthood is always with people or a people belonging to God. But we always think individually and there are a few passages in the New Testament that do speak about how the individual believer is the temple of the Holy Spirit like 1st Corinthians chapter 6. I think we used that last week. But here, if you read 1st Peter chapter 2, you'll see he's speaking about how we are together built into a spiritual house. Together. So I think the first point about how to be different today is the fact that we are called to be in community. We are called to be in community. It's a big difference between Christianity and, I mean, a lot of people think, 81% of Americans, I don't know if you realize this, think you can be a good Christian and actually be flourishing without actually being connected to anybody else. You can just kind of do it on your own. I'm kind of surprised at that because what kind of Christianity are they talking about? Jesus himself called 12 apostles and probably had 20, 30, 40 people in his cohort anytime he was going anywhere. Women came and they actually paid for the ministry. They were together all the time. They lived in community. The way he set the thing up from the beginning was to be in community with others. How can you possibly expect God to be really at work in your life if you are not connected to other Christians in one form or another? It's going to be a very diminished, reductionist experience because the New Testament almost everywhere is an all you all. The only way to really experience or understand God is your connections through each one of us. Now, C.S. Lewis, I think, does a great illustration of this in his book, The Four Loves. If you've never read it, it's a worthy read. In the chapter that he talks about friendship and the love or friendship type of love, he has a marvelous passage about how he experienced the friends that he had and the whole cohort and how he grew in friendship with more than one person. It wasn't just my friendship to you and that's it, but how he grew with others. And he experienced such a wealth and depth of friendship by having more than one or two friends. And when one of his friends, Charles, passed away, he noticed something about the entire friendships around him. And this is what he writes. In each of my friends, there is something that only some other friend can fully bring out. By myself, I am not large enough to call the whole man into activity. I want other lights than my own to show all his facets. Now that Charles is dead, I shall never again see Ronald's reaction to a specifically Charles joke. Far from having more of Ronald, having him to myself, now that Charles is away, I have less of Ronald. We possess each friend, not less, but more as the number of those with whom we share him increases. And what's true about friendship, you can't know someone one-on-one that well. I mean, you do, but you also know them even better with their reactions to others around, with the whole idea of community. You grow in your appreciation for how they interact with all the different people involved, not just one. So much so, even more so, with God. How in the world? All that I can know of God by just reading the Bible on my own is a little piece of the full experience of his grace and mercy. It was always meant to be shared. And then I'm holding that from you if I'm not in fellowship with you, and I don't get to learn from you. That's why here at Thrive, we've emphasized the whole idea of home huddles, places where we are gathered together. And it's not just so that you have some friends, although that is good, but that you also are able to grow in connections to your God through the relationships, through the experience of God's grace and truth in the lives of others, and how encouraging it is to see God at work in so many other people's lives. I grow best in community with others, encouraged, supported, and sometimes it can be tough. It can be tough because people can call me out on stuff I don't want to be called out on. And yet I need that to grow in my relationship with God. You're called to be in community. And in this ...