Everyone needs to be a part of a team that enables you to live life together more easily and more efficiently and more productively than trying to do it on our own. It’s especially true in our spiritual lives – Christ-followers need great teams of people to help us grow in our Christ-likeness; we CAN’T do it on our own.

We need teams for FELLOWSHIP. . .
We need teams for LEARNING. . .
We need teams to SERVE ALONGSIDE. . .
We need teams to show us how to LOVE. . .
We need teams to CHALLENGE US. . .

Living in community – belonging to others – allowing them access to your life and uniting with them requires great courage. It also requires great patience, generosity, surrender, compromise, forgiveness and much more!

It may take courage to unite with others, but, make no mistake - you will receive courage when you stand with others and belong to them!

Yes, living in community is messy and difficult and irritating and challenging and scary, but the rewards of living and working and serving together far outweigh the detriments.

In survival training, you’re taught how to stay alive all by yourself - finding food, water, shelter, protection. Yet, one of the first things you’re taught is to find someone and work together. Two people can do far more than one. In fact, they can do far more than both individuals can do separately. It’s called “synergy” – the whole is more than the sum of its parts.

On his or her own, 1 person can do so much, the other person can do the same. Put them together and 1 + 1 does not equal 2. . . it equals 4 or 5 or 10.

Two people lost in the woods can build better fires, get more food, help each other build shelter, fend off wild animals, and keep each other warm in the cold.

Working together makes any task easier. Working together makes any load lighter.

Unfortunately, too many of us have been brought up or have chosen to live independent lives. There’s something about living separately that we commend in our society.

• We invent things to help us live independently.
Tape Measures
TV Dinners
Shoe Horns
Internet
ATM Machines
Crossword Puzzles
Solitaire
• We applaud people who can live on their own.
• We require and will do anything we can to protect our privacy.
• We are do-it-yourselfers who want everything to ourselves on our own terms and want to do it “my way.”

But that isn’t how God designed us – and it’s not how He designed His Church!

“If you have any encouragement from being united with Christ, if any comfort from His love, if any fellowship with the Spirit, if any tenderness and compassion, then make my joy complete by being like-minded, having the same love, being one in spirit and purpose.

“Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit, but in humility consider others better than yourselves. Each of you should look not only to your own interests, but also to the interests of others.”
(Philippians 2:1-4)

This is what the Apostle Paul is saying:

If you’ve gotten ANYTHING at all out of following Christ, if His love had made ANY difference in your life, if being in a community of the Spirit means ANYTHING to you, if you have a heart, if you CARE – then do me a favor and do what God expects: agree with other, love each other, be deep-spirited friends. Don’t push your way to the top. Put yourself aside, and help others get ahead. Don’t be obsessed with getting your own advantage. Forget yourself – and serve everyone else instead.

That’s the only way community is designed to exist – and it’s the only way community CAN exist correctly.

When we live for ourselves – it runs counter to community.

Let me explain counter-community by paraphrasing that passage in reverse:

Since you don’t get anything out of following Christ – nor understand what it means to follow Him – and since His love hasn’t done a thing for you or made any kind of difference, and since fellowshipping and belonging in the community of faith is pointless to you; since in fact you tend to be heartless and have little or no love or care for others, then do what you want to do naturally: disagree, argue, fight and work at limiting your friendships to shallow, unyielding, spiteful, self-seeking pseudo-relationships. Push your way to the top; seek your own selfish interests; don’t give a hoot about anyone else, except for what THEY can do for YOU. After all – you’re what it’s all about!

Friends – there is nothing in this previous statement that even resembles what Jesus wants you and I to be. NOTHING! He wants each of us to live our lives as if they are FORFEITED for everyone else! In fact – this is what Jesus said:

“My command is this: Love each other as I have loved you. Greater love has no one than this, that he lay down his life for his friends.”
(John 15:12-13)

We’re to love like He loved and give ourselves like He gave Himself. Can you die for your friends? Queen Esther did.

In chapters 2 through 8 of the book of Esther, the young Hebrew girl Hadassah becomes Esther, the Queen of Persia.

Haman, an angry advisor to her husband, King Xerxes, talks the king into signing a general execution order to be carried out against all Hebrews living in Persia. It is up to Esther to make sure this genocide does not occur.

Esther sends word for all the Hebrew people to pray and fast on her behalf, because to go to her husband the king unbidden carries an automatic penalty of death.

However, Queen Esther did approach the king - in public – but instead of sentencing her to death, her husband extended his gold scepter to her – the only official way to allow her to speak to him.

Through a series of banquets with her husband and the evil Haman, Queen Esther reveals the treachery in which Haman has engaged, and King Xerxes condemns Haman to the same fate as he had wished upon the Hebrew people - death.

It took a great deal of courage for Esther to unite with her people and put her life on the line for them. She might have died – but she summoned her courage to unite with them and stand up for them and save them.

Now, that’s community at it’s messiest!

But, that’s what the Church is supposed to be. Scripture tells us “The entire law is summed up in a single command: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’”
(Galatians 5:14)

Everything we know about God’s Word – the Bible – is summed up in the simple instruction to “Love others as much or more than you love yourself!”

So, how can you take this teaching in and absorb it and incorporate it into your life? How can you learn to stand with others? How can you unite with the people of God?

How do you live out Christ’s style and depth of love to the people of your church, Christ’s Church at large throughout the world, and to your next-door neighbor?

How can you live out “community?”

I love this passage from Esther – words from Esther’s uncle Mordecai in chapter 4, very 14.

“Perhaps you were put in this position so you could use your influence to help others.”

Wow! That’s what we all need to hear. Maybe you’re here on planet earth so that you can use your position in Christ, which is your most powerful influence, to help others!

The reason you’re here is to love God, love each other, love our neighbor, and make disciples of the whole world by teaching them to obey everything Jesus commanded us.

In Romans 12:10-18 we get a glimpse into how we’re to live.

Be devoted to one another in brotherly love. Honor one another above yourselves. Never be lacking in zeal, but keep your spiritual fervor, serving the Lord. Be joyful in hope, patient in affliction, faithful in prayer. Share with God’s people who are in need. Practice hospitality.

Bless those who persecute you; bless and do not curse. Rejoice with those who rejoice; mourn with those who mourn. Live in harmony with one another. Do not be proud, but be willing to associate with people of low position. Do not be conceited.

Do not repay anyone evil for evil. Be careful to do what is right in the eyes of everybody. If it is possible, as far as it depends on you, live at peace with everyone.

Queen Esther was willing to give her life for her people. The disciples all died in service to Christ and His Church. Jesus died for all who would receive it and ask His forgiveness and His leadership in their lives.

He asks the same from each of us. . . to love like He loved us, to look out for each other before ourselves, to treat others the way we would like to be treated, to sacrifice our lives for one another.

It takes courage to unite with God’s people – but it’s the actual belonging and living in community with God’s people that gives us courage!

“. . . let us consider how we may spur one another on toward love and good deeds.

Let us not give up meeting together, as some are in the habit of doing, but let us encourage one another — and all the more as you see the Day [of Christ’s return] approaching.
(Hebrews 10:24-25)

I urge you to work at finding out more about what it means to unite with God’s people, and then to take the plunge to belong to one another – growing closer and closer to your brothers and sisters in Christ.

May you know the joy of living life in the loving community of the family of God!