The Gathering of the Good News

Alright this week, we are going to explore what it means for the good news of Jesus Christ, the gospel, to reshape our idea of community and friendships and relationships together. So we’re in Hebrews chapter 10. I’ve taught in other contexts the entire chapter 10 of Hebrews, but its so long. I remember thinking to myself, if I could just hone in on this little paragraph, there’s so much for us here as a church. So lo and behold, I have the privilege of doing that here with you all this morning. So we’re gunna be in . We’re going to read these verses as a hole, to get the overarching structure, and then we’ll dive into the particulars.

Scripture Reading:

The Author, and we have no idea who that is, says,

Therefore, brothers, and that includes both the brothers and the sisters in the community. Therefore, since, because, we have confidence, to enter the holy places by the blood of Jesus, by the new and living way that he opened for us through the curtain that is through his flesh and since we have a great priest over the house of God, here is how we should respond. Let us draw near with a full heart and a full assurance of faith with our hearts sprinkled clean from an evil conscience and our bodies washed with pure water, referring, I think, to baptism. Christian Baptism is a symbol of us being washed with the grace of God. How also should we respond. Let us hold fast to the confession of our hope without wavering for he who promised is faithful and third response, let us consider how to stir up one another to love and good works, not neglecting to meet together as is the habit of some but encouraging one another and all the more as you see the day drawing near.

The Gathering of the Good News

This is one of the most power and dense statements about genuine christian community that you have anywhere in the Bible. What’s important us that in the last couple of sentences, you have a couple of the practices of genuine christian community and just in verse 24 and 25, we’re going come back to them in just a second here, but the description of what genuine community looks like, only comes after the power and the source that generate it. So that’s what we’re going to do, we’re going to talk about does it actually look like practically to be in gospel reshaped types of relationships with each other and as a community. And where does the power to do those types of things come from. I hope that’s clear, because it sounds like an easy task, but Hebrews is a long hike up a mountain. That’s what this paragraph is all about.

Let me give you all a big framework for how to understand this using a metaphor that I came across while studying the passage that has been helpful for me. So here’s what I’d like you to consider and we’ll keep coming back to this metaphor again and again as we go through the passage. Who played marbles as a kid? I had a large bag of marbles but I never played the game of marbles with the circles. I always used them as cannon balls for my legos. But I had a lot of marbles nonetheless. So I’d like you to consider a bag of marbles, think about a bag of marbles with 200 glass marbles, you have a collection of 200 individual entities. And I’d like you to consider how a bag of marbles is similar but also different from a cluster of grapes. Because a cluster of grapes is also a collection of individual entities, isn’t it. So marbles are a bunch of individual entities, it makes a very distinct noise when you clack em around and they might crack or break. If your mesh bag had a hole in it sometimes a marble would fall through and you wouldn’t really notice it because there’s just so many marbles. They are alike and similar, but if you shake the bag the marble that’s down here is gunna kinda wind it’s way up here, and nobody would be able to tell the difference or have missed it. There’s a lot of slippage and movement in a bag of marbles. It’s transient. Contrast that to a cluster of grapes, which is also a collection of individual entities that are about the size of marbles. There’s a profound difference, say you laid the bag of marbles side by side with a cluster of grapes.

If you were to to examine the cluster of grapes at all, what would you discover? You’d discover this organic network that is connecting all of the grapes together, and so while it’s a bunch of individual entities yes, they are all connected to the same source. There’s one source, one life energy source, coursing through the network of vines that leads to all the individual grapes.

If you were to to examine the cluster of grapes at all, what would you discover? You’d discover this organic network that is connecting all of the grapes together, and so while it’s a bunch of individual entities yes, they are all connected to the same source. There’s one source, one life energy source, coursing through the network of vines that leads to all the individual grapes.

So here’s what this means for us. No grape can touch all the grapes at one time, there’s only five or six grapes grapes around any individual grape, but because of how the network works a grape on this side might be connected to a grape on this side just by two degrees of separation. So let’s say a grape goes bad here, is that only a concern to that grape? No that’s a sign that there’s something happening one or two links up the chain and it might affect another grape on the other side that you would never have put the two together. There’s an organic connectedness to a cluster of grapes because they are all connected individually and personally to a life source. You can kinda see where I’m going with this. But I am going to ask you, at any given church community or is it more like a bag of marbles, or maybe you can say it this way, that the great and constant challenge to any church community is the constant temptation to drift from becoming what it ought to be which is a cluster of grapes and instead drifting into the weak bag of marbles.

And actually I think that’s the precisely the type of idea that’s underneath this paragraph that we just read. Look at verse 25. Something that was a warning or a danger for the some of the people in this little house church community was to stop meeting together to stop connecting, marbles falling out of the mesh bag and so the author says “No, that’s deadly!” He says “Don’t neglect meeting together.” The greek word that the author uses right there is a word you actually already know, can you guess? It’s a word you already know even if you don’t know that you know it. it’s a greek word, συναγωγή. From which we get our english word, synagogue.

So all of the early communities followers of Jesus were Jewish because Jesus was the Jewish Messiah. They later came to refer to themselves as the greek word ἐκκλησία or the assembly, but the earliest term they used was this Jewish term, it’s a congregation. And a congregation is very different from an aggregation. An aggregation is a bunch of marbles in a bag, an aggregation is a bunch of people who might have a common interest, or they might look a like or have similar backgrounds, they all like the same music or like to ride bikes together. I don’t know whatever, people do in LA. But in an aggregation, apart from that superficial connection in that common interest, they exist unto themselves. They aren’t there for each other or because of each other, they are there because of the common interest.

But with a cluster of grapes, in a congregation, genuine christian community is very different. Because there is a common fate and interconnectedness between them. If there’s something wrong with one grape of one person is falling through the cracks, that’s a sign of somebody some where in the community losing contact with the source. And there’s a noticeable gap when somebody plucks one of the grapes. Not that everybody can be close friends with each other or that we have to all be best friends and know each other. But there is something else that transcends us just being congregated around music that we like, there’s something deeper and much more personal connecting us. Each grape or each person in the congregation has a personal connection to the source of life. This might come as a shock to you when I say this, the Gospel does not create people who love Jesus and then get together to love Jesus together and that’s the reason why we gather. No not at all, or at least not primarily. No the Gospel creates a community of people who are personally being impacted and transformed us into a people , a community that leads to a personal connection within the community and the transformation happens when the story of Jesus gets retold through the lives of the community. That is why we gather, because we met Jesus and he brought us together. Our relationship with Jesus is deeply and absolutely personal, but it is never private. It’s personal, but never private. And so what this means is that whats happening between me and Jesus is actually deeply connected to what’s happening to you and you and you and you and Jesus. Because odds are, that you know somebody who brought you to this church and you brought your family because of that one person who lived up the street from you. Did you know that the world average for degrees of separation between people is now 4.7 because of the internet. That means at any given time you are 4.7 introductions away from any one person on the planet. But at a community as small as this, it’s probably as low as 2. Whatever is happening to one grape, because we are connected to a common source, whatever is happening with you, is not private. It’s not just you and Jesus vs the world. There is a common fate. Because we have a common source. This personal Jesus interconnectedness is what is underneath genuine Christian community.

And this is very counter cultural, do any of you guys read online news papers, not online news sources, but newspapers that publish online? Any way, I do, and a few years ago there was a popular opinion poll about what west Coast Americans think about money, sex, race, god, love, and death. And I was actually shocked at some of the numbers concerning what people thought about religious belief. 64 percent of west coasters, don’t believe that we are just random molecules just crashing into each other as an accident. 2/3 people believe there is something bigger going on here related to a spiritual realm or to god or to the gods. 2/3 the odds are really good among your co-workers that they have some kind of intuition or some kind of bigger idea. Of that 64 percent, here’s what’s interesting, 25 percent describe themselves as religious, meaning they describe themselves as affiliated however loose to some form of religious institution or community. So that’s 39 percent left that describe themselves as spiritual but not religious. This is a growing category or mindset in american culture. And this isn’t just among people who are not christian. It’s prevalent in people who are christian’s because of the idea that I have a personal relationship with Jesus so that means my business with him is between me and him. So churches end up looking like churches that are aggregations of people who are all having religious experiences and singing 15 minutes of spiritual songs together maybe they go to bible study after church, but the moment I actually begin to get real, my very human anger problem surfaces, human pride shows up, it’s no no no. People can’t go there with me. My spending habits? You can’t talk to me about that. Then we just bring 15% of us to the community but everything else is private.

Whatever

And in our culture at large it becomes the hodge podge religion. Just find what works for you and then Sigmund Freud’s critique on religion comes true that all we’re really doing is projecting our biases and anxieties and our sexual frustrations into the sky and calling it god. And then people who have similar enough ideas about God congregate into churches. And there’s elements of that that are totally true, many of us have such deeply distorted views of God but we wouldn’t know it because we would never open up or ourselves up to people to people who would speak what we need to hear. Our churches, like this one here, are probably filled with lots people who are kinda connected to the cluster of grapes, but really our churches are more like a cluster of grapes mixed in with a bag of marbles and shaken up really hard. So my guess, is that many of the 39 percent of west coasters are people who have been in a bag of marbles and they got hurt they got burned, they fell through the cracks and they were forgotten, or nobody helped when they needed help or nobody challenged them when they needed to be challenged and stuck around when they ran away.

Genuine Christian community is a rare thing. So let’s keep that in mind as United Baptist, as we dive into this paragraph and look at what real genuine christian community could really be. Look at verse 24 and 25, were going to look at the marks or the practices of genuine Christian community, and then we’re gunna explore the source of that community. He says “Let us consider how to stir up one another to love and good works as is the habit of some but rather encouraging each other and all the more as you see the Day drawing near.” Did you see that? There were four character traits for community. Let’s take it one at a time 24. He says what, let us consider, this is ESV, let us consider. Christian community begins with intentional attentiveness to others. It’s not about I go there to get something out of it, it’s i go there to intentional to invest in others. It’s consideration. So think about this, if you’ve had the opportunity to see a therapist or a counselor, which I have availed of many times at this point and something i recommend to every human being. Go see one, what happens in a situation like that, you’re sitting in the couch or the chair, they are asking you question, they are listening, they are studying you actually. And most often you will find them taking notes, jotting down things you’re saying and doing. Your body language. Things you repeat and non verbal cues. All the things you are saying and all the things you’re not. They are considering you. They are studying you. Genuine Christian community is marked by intentional attentiveness to the other grapes that are around me because what happens to them affects me and what happens to me whether I realize it or not affects them. There’s a problem with their connection to the source or maybe its a problem with my connection to the source. And if theres something wrong with their connection to the life source then it’s likely that it’s somehow connected to what is happening with me. And so I need to be involved and need to pay attention.

I don’t know if youre the note taking type, but if that’s mental or physical ask yourself, are these the character traits that define me at United Baptist? Ask yourself. Do I come into this building with the mindset of attentiveness to the people around me, am i considering who is in my bible study group, the people who sit in the pews with me, am i considering who is in part of my community. DO i remember their stories am i thinking about their wellbeing? It’s very simple. considering them? But that’s the first mark, a community of consideration, ok. Now what are we considering, what does he say here, he says let us consider how to stir up one another. That’s English Standard Version, any other translations out there? How to spur one another on, How to provoke, that’s my favourite one. I think that get’s the idea most. It’s a greek word that typically used used by farmers who have to deal with a group of really stubborn oxen. It refers to what a farmer does when theres a whatever ton stubborn oxen that won’t come to the water trough or something. You have a stick or a staff or something and at the end of it there’s a sharp end or like a nail. It’s irritating. But you move forward. It’s a harsh word, so you’re intentionally considering them and paying attention to them and one of those things you pay attention to is how to in love have that hard conversation with them. About areas in our life where we are making really bad decisions. We don’t like this so in the name of individual liberty, and privacy of religion, we don’t talk about that stuff.

And i have this with my closest friends when we have situations like this and usually our first response is “don’t tell me what to do.” But the author of Hebrews is saying that’s precisely the mark of an unhealthy community. If we were wise we would beg people to tell us what to do. Because I actually don’t know what to do and the moment I think I do, I’m blind and naive. And part of it is that I don’t think that we believe what the scriptures say about how just how screwed up we are. About how pervasive the problem of sin is, and how perpetually self centered we actually are. And it’s those things we need to change most are precisely the character flaws that we are most blind to. The ones that we rationalize and minimize, those are precisely the character flaws that are going to shipwreck us. Because we think it’s normal and when our friends lay eyes on it, we get defensive. You talk to your mother that way? No that’s normal for us, Well it shouldn’t be. Don’t tell me what to do! You’re always broke and borrowing money but you always have new things. You should change that, but that’s normal for me. Yeah exactly why you’re so broke. It’s these blindspots, these character flaws where we need another set of eyes studying our lives. And paying attention to use and if need by allowing them the space to tell me the hard things. There are some Christians who like this verse a lot. You know what I mean. They are too good at it. There are some Christians who like to do this at it but not the part that matches it later on. “Not neglecting to meet with one another as is the habit of some, but doing what to one another, encouraging one another, there’s only two one another’s in those verses, provoking, one another prodding, and encouraging one another.

And encouraging One another is about coming alongside, listening, encouraging, speaking a strong word, a comforting word, consoling. Some people like to provoke and prod and get in your face have the hard conversation, but they don’t have a clue about how to console and sympathize. And there’s a lot of people who are great at being the listening ear and the shoulder to cry on but they are so insecure about how they are going to be viewed that they never have the hard conversation that might create some tension in the relationship. But both prodding and encouraging are marks of ALL of the members genuine Christian community. It doesn’t say hey if youre good at confronting do that and if youre an introvert encourage and console those who need it. We should all aspire to do all of these things for each other. Nowhere’s the thing, not every grape is immediately surrounded by every other grape, most of us here max out at five or so close relationships in our lives. Most of us max out, here’s something practical, have you paid attention to those around you and initiated intentional relationships. Not just watching movies together or biking together, but having intentional considered set aside time or space in that friendship where you can talk about the things that matter most. Where there’s space where you can invite and listen to encouraging words as well as prodding words that are Jesus centered. And for many people that’s a cup of coffee, that’s a breakfast with two or three of you. Every week once a month, or whatever form that takes. It isn’t happening right now at this moment. How well can you follow the one another’s here, when you’re all sitting facing one direction listening to one guy talk. This church gathering plays an important role for the community of believers to hear from the scriptures together but the working it out happens outside of this 2 hour block. And that’s the church.

But it’s precisely the working it out of studying each others lives and inviting the difficult words and offering the consoling words, that’s where growth happens. That’s where people begin to find real traction and change when you allow people to speak into your life in Jesus name and let them invest. Have you done that? Are you doing that? And maybe you want that! So what I think it comes down to it if you want to be a be a part of a Christian Community that’s marked by these practices it’s totally cliche, but you just have to start now. You can complain that nobody is doing it or you can just start doing it for someone else. Just see what happens. And you’re likely to see the favour returned at some point. And the end results of it are the fourth mark. 24. We are considering how to provoke and encourage one another, To what goal and end, love and good works.

Love is maybe another greek word you already know, agape. And in english Love is a feeling. We’re passive to it, love happens to you, you fall in love, but that’s not at all what love is for the biblical authors, love is an action in the Bible, it’s not a feeling, it’s an action that demonstrates loyalty and choice, to seek the wellbeing of another regardless of what I get out of it. That’s agape. And so if were’e intentionally gathering together, saying the hard things and the encouraging things in love. What will result, love and other’s centeredness, love and a community of grapes that just oozes the seeking of the wellbeing of others. And so good works, which is the phrase, in the new testament which means acts of service for others and usually in the New Testament, for the poorest in our community. This is what will naturally result. These are the traits of the community. Consideration and intention, poking and provoking, encouraging resulting in love and good works.

So there you go, good luck. I’ll pray, and let’s close. No I’m kidding but think about it. What’s your batting average here? How good are you doing here? And listen, I’m not even trying to be a jerk here but just even if your response is, nobody is doing that for me, that tells you a lot about yourself. Because ok well if this is an others centered community, what if I am brave enough to ask in what ways can I do this for others and then just see what happens. So that’s the challenge. How do you create a community that’s marked by these traits. And there’s a sense in which i don’t think we can, because the fundamental trait of this community is people who are just completely others centered, and that doesnt describe me at all at most times. They aren’t self absorbed, they don’t come just to be fed or see what they can get out of it, or that they get to be around that girl or they have cool music but because of what Jesus is doing inside of me and how can i help and serve and be involved with that process in other peoples lives. That’s what this is about a rewired heart. And so i can try to give you a practical feel good message as your pastor and so can pastor James but it seems to me that what’s required here is a fundamental rewiring of our hearts. Because our hearts are prone to looking for number one, they tend to care only about me and my little story. Our hearts tend towards the wellbeing of me and my little ring of people or my tribe. And so whatever it’s going to take to create a community like that, nobody in this room has the power to generate that.

There’s a sense in which how it happens in a community is sorta mysterious. And that begs the questions of what the source of this beautiful thing called community is. And that my friends is the first half of the paragraph. how do you generate that kind of community, he says “Therefore brothers, since we have, confidence to enter the holy places, by the blood of Jesus by the new and living way that he opened for us through the curtain, that is through his flesh and since we have a great high priest over the house of God let’s draw near with true hearts in full assurance of faith, our hearts sprinkled clean from an evil conscience and our bodies “washed with pure water.” Let us hold fast to the confession of our hope without wavering, for he who has promised is faithful.

Now that’s a very powerful statement, and you might be hung up because of the weird stuff about blood on curtains. It’s strange imagery. And the author of Hebrews just assumes you know things, he is assuming you know all that Jewish imagery of the temple in ancient israel. In the temple in ancient Israel there was a a fence curtain that would create this big court yard and on this courtyard was an altar, and on the altar was bloody slaughtered animals so it would look like an ancient butcher. And those are being offered up. Who among the israelites could enter into the courtyard? The priest but your average Israelite, they can come into you average moshae, levi or miriam could enter into the courtyard. And if it’s their sacrifice they can go with the priest to offer their sacrifice, but behind the altar was another two part structure, called the holy place and inside was another place called the holy of holies. Which is a Hebrew way of saying the most holy place. And so the concept is that, if you had like a radiation meter that could measure the presence of God that theres a low reading everywhere on earth because God is sustaining the world but in the holy place the readings would be off the charts, but in the holy of holies the meter would break.

Who can go into the holy place? Well many priests can go in to that part, but what about the holy of holies, who can go in there? The high priest but when can he go in? any old time he wants? No one moment of one day once a year. This space was separated was separated by a huge thick curtain. This is strange because the whole story was God wanting to be with his people but then why was it that no Israelite could go in to meet him? Well the Author of Hebrew is saying that we can all do because of Jesus what no Israelite before could do. Which is insane, because encountering the holy presence of God is exactly what we need. When we encounter something so other, it arrests us and shapes us. Before a great mountain under the stars, I feel very small, and my very real problems feel very small in the grand scheme of things. I just came back from hume lake, and that place really is otherworldy. What we need is the presence of God to shape us but the story of the Bible shows us how this inward turn of the human heart creates lives full of distortion times 7 billion people and it creates havoc. And humans have estranged themselves from the very being who can change the game. And the scandalous claim is this, and some of us are so used to it right now and that’s sad, but for some, what I am about to say is a new idea, but Guys what happened in Jesus changed the world. Remember that scene when Jesus was breathing his last, what happened in the temple, it curtain ripped in two. And it’s ripped in two because the cross of Jesus does away with this separation, some how. Access into this is now fully available to anybody because Jesus on the cross came among us and bore all of that havoc all of the pain and tragedy and mess.

And he says we have confidence because of the cross to do what no one could do before, so let’s draw near, let’s hold fast, and let’s keep meeting together we have full access to the presence of God. That’s good news right? Amen. Now hold on, there’s a question that I have asked that I am sure many of you might be wondering right now. Which goes like this, this would be way easier if there was still a temple. Because at least I could actually know that I’m in the presence of God. So how do I do that now? How do I know I’m in his presence? Where do I need to go to get that access to the presence. If I have full access to God then how do I access the access? Do i read my Bible and wait for the ground to shake? Do I pray on a mountain top? How do I access the access? Has anyone ever struggled with this? LIke that’s really awesome that that’s true but how is it true, where do I experience the presence of God. He says we have confidence to go into his presence, we have a high priest, the cross broke the curtain, we need to draw near, how do you do that? What does it look like and he says, two ways, let’s hold fast to the confession of our hope, in other words there’s a personal element that nobody could do for you. Nobody can treasure scripture for you, no one can immerse you in the story of the Bible for you, it’s about prayer and meditation and speaking truth to yourself. No one can hold fast for you. That’s the first way that we experience and enter the presence. What is the next way? Verse 24 & 25. With eachother apparently. When you are brave enough to ask somebody to confront you in Jesus name. When you in love come to encourage and console a brother in jesus name. Or when you confront somebody in the way they treat and view the poor or immigrants, those are moments you can experience the transforming presence of God. C.S. Lewis said, Christ works on us in many different ways primarily through eachother.

This is why the cluster is so crucial because if you’re not sourced in the source of life, you’re going to have all sorts of weird stuff that will affect the bunch, and if im not sourced in the God who gave himself on my behalf then I will affect the bunch as well when I try to help you with these messy and weird mixed motives. The Gospel is always personal, each grape is personally connected to the source, but it is never private. I can’t grow without people. drawing near to the presence of God is to draw near to the people in your community and consider them, provoke them, and encourage them in love. How do you access the access into God’s presence? Well, who are you meeting with? Who are your friends? When was the last time you asked somebody to speak into your life even if it’s challenging? Are you really together working on each other? Show me that friendship and then you’ll have a pretty reliable indicator on how directly you’re encountering God’s presence. It happens personally but mostly in drawing near to each other. We belong together. And hopefully you see the responsibility it places on each and every one of us here. It affects how we think about the people we don’t like in our community, how we engage in close friendships and even the idea of leaving one church for another. To purposely fall through the mesh bag as a marble or to pluck a grape from a bunch. We belong together because we all came from the same source and that source connects us.

but its purely for Closing thought, what is it that is going to generate such a transformation in my heart that I would now have an others centered point of view that I can just focus on considering them and its not driven from an agenda. C.S. Lewis explores this in a little essay called the inner ring, 10 pages. One of the fundamental drives of human beings isn’t sex or money even though those are powerful in themselves, the one thing that drives human beings is the desire to be known by another, to be fully known and fully know another, and to be accepted and even admired and validated.

He calls it the quest of inner ring, and it’s happenin here in this room and it happened before we gathered, and and it will happen after. He calls that the inner ring, that there are circles around each and every one of us that are our boundary lines. some people are in our inner ring and some people are not. It’s so basic even as a child I had my people. We begin to find to our worth and identity in the rings that we belong to and we are like black holes. I mean I feel this all the time, maybe you can relate that when youre talking to somebody and mid sentence and somebody walks by that they like more and they just find a way to just drop you and move over to that person ring. And it’s a horrible feeling. And of course we have done it to others ourselves. Why is it that we seek out certain people and not others? There’s almost always the inner ring going on. But its the worst because it never ends, we despise ourselves because we dont belong to the rings we most want to belong to . And we are envious of the people in the ring, and if i finally get into the ring i despise the people outside the ring because what if they take my place.

So here’s what happens, in a bag of marbles if I make friends with you its not about you, its about me. I just want to be validated by you so i can feel good about myself. And you might actually like them but youre also in it for the high of how you feel when you’re with them. because you wouldnt be around them unless you saw a benefit to being around them. We call that selfish in any other context. And we can’t escape it or so it seems.

C.S. Lewis closes his essay with this profound line. The quest of the inner ring will always break your heart unless you find a way to break the inner rings hold on your heart. And what is that? What has the power to break that and rewire my thinking and make me so others centered that I stop caring about the rings altogether. I would argue that it’s the story of the cross. Because God has an inner ring, that is true shalom peace and rest and worth and meaning, and the author is saying that through the cross of jesus Christ you are standing in the inner ring of God. You’re actually in the ring that matters most in the world. You are fully known and loved by God already. You are already included in the most important ring and its precisely when I neglect this ring that I go looking else where and break my heart on the rings of others.

When jesus cries out “My God My God Why have you forsaken me, is that beautiful mystery of the cross, that Jesus so fully absorbs our lonliness and and relational disortions to wreak havoc on him instead of on us and he lets it tear him in two, I don;t know how else to say it. Jesus felt so alone on the cross that he felt estranged from the father inside God’s on triune being. I don’t know how to explain that but there it is. Jesus took our exclusion to include us in the most important circle known to man, and that’s the cross. The new testament authors will describe that act with the word agape. It’s an act of love for your wellbeing at Jesus’ cost. It will not be until you and I are dead convinced that jesus’ overwhelming love for you and that you already stand in the presence of God that these inner rings start to shatter, And what it means is that any church community will always be a bag of marbles until one by one by one we are converted personally grafted into the grape vine. This my prayer for myself, dear jesus yes, it is, But it is also my prayer for you all. because it’s when you get a critical mass of people who finally get jesus that that church community begins to grow and ache and pain and cry and love as a community of Jesus people. People who throw their lives under buses for strangers and enemies and people who have no blood relation to them. Then and only then can we ache. So my challenge to us all is to dig in deep. If youre shallowly rooted at this church, hey, dig deep, and if you’re feeling left out, be brave, if youre provoking, encourage, if you’re encouraging, admonish. I will pitch these practical questions to you.

Who are the people in your life that you can invite to speak hard words in?

Who are the people in your life that you can encourage?

How are you spending your time at church? Are you looking for the next move to the thing or position you want? Or are you reminding yourself of you personal inclusion into the family of God?