God has called us to a public, corporate life in the Church, the Body of Christ. WE are God's family and there are NO healthy LONERS in that body. When we bow the knee to Christ as Lord and Savior we not only get Jesus, we also get His body. We BECOME part of His body. We CANNOT thrive spiritually without the other parts of the body and they cannot thrive without us. We are linked organically and our life depends utterly on Christ, and secondarily on each other.
But some of us DO NOT come into this new life with a background of knowing how to love and live and communicate with others. All of us have to LEARN to live with each other in an understanding way and with a service mentality, but SOME of us come into the Body of Christ so far back that it is a long, painful process learning to live with and for others.
An example of this came to my attention recently during a lunch conversation with some other area pastors. One pastor was a Vietnam vet and before Christ was a loner with a capital "L." He was SO MUCH of a loner that when he married his wife, for the first two weeks he said "Good morning" to her in the morning and then "Goodnight" at bedtime...nothing else. After two weeks of this "nothing-in-between" life as a newlywed, she asked him if something was wrong. He wondered what she meant. She shared with him that he spoke to her in the morning and at night and nothing else. What was wrong? Believe it or not, he was puzzled as to WHY she thought something was wrong. Why did he not speak to her during the rest of the day? "I didn't have anything to say." Learning to live and communicate with a wife (and others!) has been a long, painful process for this brother. But do you know what? God has brought this brother and his wife many miles of growth from those silent days as newlyweds. Today he communicates very well and is deeply loved by the people of his church. Wow.
Some of us are the same. We came into Christ as loners, our lives and our tongues all tied up within ourselves. But our calling is outward. We DO NOT have to become extroverts or the life of the fellowship. But we DO have to learn to open up to others and to seek out others. We are called to the corporate, other-centered life of the church. And God WILL SEE TO IT that we grow towards this body-life life. He IS currently doing that in all of us. Let us cooperate. Let us CRY to Him to keep doing His good work in us.
And if you seem to have started MILES BEHIND in this corporate life of open communication...don't worry, God is THE expert at freeing us from ourselves to the truly FREE life of loving others.
An old saying, "The world's smallest package is a man tied up within himself."
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