Relationships

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. Good morning. Welcome to Thrive. It's good to have you here. For those who are here in person, welcome. Today we're talking about another way to replenish, and that is relational unity, okay? And this is where I think the thing I've missed quite a bit this summer, and yet at the same time I'm getting to experience it in a lot of phone calls with many people, with the Zoom huddles that we do have, with events. Any time now that I am with someone, either through a digital means or in person, it becomes the more precious. It is not a guarantee. I think it was Dietrich Bonhoeffer in his book, Life Together, that says there is no guarantee or promise that we can physically be gathering together. And there are Christians throughout this world that are in prison because of their faith, and persecuted, and living kind of in underground churches, and rarely get together because of a lot of other reasons than us. And he said it is not a given that you and I can actually get together and worship the same God together. But he said when it happens, it's all the more precious. And I think we're finding that out. So let's start with prayer, and then we will get into the session today, okay? Lord God, wow. We need this more than ever. We need you to be present here. We need to have a unity with your goodness and grace that you would be in communion with us today, and that we would be unified and have and experience the beauty and the glory of living together in unity as you so see fit, Lord God. You know how many people are facing loneliness these days in isolation, how many have been cut off. You see how polarized our society is right now, Lord God. You also see how we're not building each other up, but tearing each other down. And there are some deep wounds right now that are exposed in our society as well, and we pray, Lord, that you bring your healing, and that you bring the unity, and that your church would actually display it more than anyone else, so that we know, that the world knows that you were sent by the Father. Lord God, I lift up to you right now, specifically our school system in these counties around us, through all the leadership that is trying to figure out a way to safely come back into school and to teach children in our area. We pray, Lord, for your wisdom and grace and understanding. Right now, a lot of things are still up in the air, and there's a lot going on. I pray for the safety of teachers and administrators, for the children as well, for all those in the service industry, from bus drivers to the maintenance staff at any of the schools, Lord, to all of those individuals involved with the care of our children, Lord God. We pray that you would be with them and protect them and keep them in your care. And give to us, may your plans, that may this go forward in a way that is pleasing to you. We lift up to you, Lord, the return to the university system as well, and pray that the plans for FGCU and all the universities throughout the United States would be done according to your will. We pray, Lord, for our state and our nation. We pray for our leadership, Lord, that you grant them both wisdom, courage, humility, that they would be seeking your face, and that they would be aligning themselves with you, Lord God, and that we as well, Lord, individually would be listening to you and looking to you for all good things. Lord God, we lift up to you our hospital system here, our healthcare workers as well, as they reach and get close to capacity at this point in time, as so many are now over 20, I think about 24%, the latest figure I saw, of those in the Lee Health System are COVID positive. We pray, Lord God, that you bring your protection to each one who's working there, that you bless them, Lord, that you would have them be replenished so that they, too, can keep serving, and Lord, that you would teach us all wisdom and prudence in how we conduct ourselves, Lord, at this time. We need you more than ever, Lord God. And Holy Spirit, we need you more than ever, that this word does not just bounce off of our ears or just hit our minds, but sinks deeply into our hearts and our lives, that it rearranges our desires and our aspirations, Lord, that all our hope and our love and our goodness and our purpose are found in you. All this we pray in Jesus' name, amen. So today we're looking at relational unity, the fact that we were made for a community, for relationships, and that can be extremely replenishing when you're in those relationships. So we're going to look at three points today from these two texts, okay? So we're going to look, read Psalm 133, and then, which is a psalm that just says how beautiful it is, how wonderful it is to live in unity, and then from John 17, the prayer that Jesus prayed right before his crucifixion for the church, for you and for me. So let...