Eternity In Our Hearts // Build The Community

What Is God Forming?

This year’s theme is Eternity in Our Hearts. Week one asked us to Embrace the Essentials. Week two called us to Commit to Stretch. Now the focus turns to the third core value, Build the Community, and how God uses community to build each of us, how community builds us.

Ecclesiastes 3:11 says, "Yet God has made everything beautiful for its own time. He has planted eternity in the human heart, but even so, people cannot see the whole scope of God’s work from beginning to end." To live with an eternal perspective is to allow God’s perspective and His design to shape what we value, what we desire, and who we are becoming. We were made by God and for God. God sees the beginning, everything in between, and the end, and we do not. If that is true, a simple but searching question rises to the surface again and again: If I was made by God and for God, what does God want to form in me?

Community Builds Us

Community is one of the things God uses to build me. In Ephesians 4, Paul describes what it looks like for believers to grow into maturity in Christ, and he does not picture that growth happening in isolation.

Ephesians 4:15-16 says, "Instead, we will speak the truth in love, growing in every way more and more like Christ, who is the head of his body, the church. 16 He makes the whole body fit together perfectly. As each part does its own special work, it helps the other parts grow, so that the whole body is healthy and growing and full of love." This is a picture of maturity that depends on a Body speaking truth in love and each part doing its work. God designed the Body so that we contribute to each other’s growth. That is why community is valuable in my life.

There are things God wants to do in me that He will often use other people to do. And community is not only valuable because someone might point out something that needs to change. These are the people who pray with us when life falls apart. They celebrate with us when something good happens. They notice when we are not okay. They remind us we are not alone. They help carry burdens we were not meant to carry by ourselves.

Be Known

Sometimes I am too close to my own life and cannot see clearly. I need people who love Jesus and love me enough to encourage me and sometimes to say, "Can I tell you something I am seeing?" Nobody can do that if I never allow myself to be known by others. There are ways God wants to grow me that require me to let other people into my life.

God’s design for community is not another obligation He is putting on us. It is a gift He has given us. God created us for community. Genesis 2 shows that relationship was part of God’s design from the beginning. Even in a world untouched by sin, God identified human aloneness as not good. Community was not invented as damage control because sin messed everything up. Jesus forms His disciples in community. After the Resurrection, we see the birth of the early church and the Holy Spirit forms a community in which believers actually need one another. In Acts 2, the early church gathers together, devoted to teaching, fellowship, eating together, prayer, generosity, and sharing life.

Biblical community is not perfect community. We are imperfect people, which means relationships can be messy. But God uses relationships with other believers as part of the way He forms us. Do I actually believe God’s design for me is good?

We Need Each Other

Becoming people who recognize we need one another begins with trusting that God knows what we need better than we do. In 1 Corinthians 12 it says…

1 Corinthians 12:18-21 says, "But our bodies have many parts, and God has put each part just where he wants it. 19 How strange a body would be if it had only one part! 20 Yes, there are many parts, but only one body. 21 The eye can never say to the hand, 'I don’t need you.' The head can’t say to the feet, 'I don’t need you.'"

Sometimes, without ever saying the words, I do not need you, we can live that way. I can follow Jesus on my own. I do not really need people knowing what is going on in my life. I do not need people speaking into my life. I will come to church, but I do not necessarily need relationships with people in the church. And yet Paul says that is not how God designed the Body. God designed the church so that we need one another. The eye does not get to decide it does not need the hand. God designed us to need one another.

So ask yourself, do I trust that God knows what I need better than I do? Have I allowed the way I feel about something to become more authoritative in my life than what God says about it? Do I value community? Do I value being known? Do I value knowing others? Do I value making room for people in my life? Maybe I regularly rush out. Maybe I wait for everybody else to initiate. Maybe I keep myself disconnected. None of those patterns automatically mean there is a heart problem, but sometimes our patterns reveal what we value. Am I willing to be honest about where I am right now and invite God into it? Am I willing to let Him show me what may need healing, challenging, or transforming in me?

Transform the Root

What is underneath my resistance to being known and knowing others? Becoming people who let God transform the root means we resist the temptation to simply tweak behavior. Changing behavior alone is not the same thing as having our hearts transformed. We can perform community without actually valuing community. Do not settle for doing without becoming.

Think of the unenthusiastic greeting moment, everyone turn around and shake the person’s hand next to you. It is possible to do all the things, to join a small group, to be on a team, to come to church, to invite people to our house, and never have our heart change.

Romans 12:1-2 says, "And so, dear brothers and sisters, I plead with you to give your bodies to God because of all he has done for you. Let them be a living and holy sacrifice, the kind he will find acceptable. This is truly the way to worship him. 2 Don’t copy the behavior and customs of this world, but let God transform you into a new person by changing the way you think. Then you will learn to know God’s will for you, which is good and pleasing and perfect."

Notice, transformation does not mean try harder. It begins, because of all He has done for you. Transformation begins with God’s grace and mercy, with what He has already done for you. Our response becomes, God, you can have all of me. Then it becomes about more than changing behaviors, and God begins to change the way we see Him, myself, other people, and even my need for other people. God is not only interested in changing what I do. He wants to transform who I am, and as He transforms who I am, it begins changing why and how I live.

Write this down, what belief about myself, people, or relationships does God need to renew? There may be things underneath the surface that make community difficult for us, things God may want to heal, free us from, or transform in us. Fear of rejection, what if I reach out and they do not want me. Fear of awkwardness, what if I do not know what to say. Fear of vulnerability, what if people really know me. Past hurt or disappointment, relationships or church have hurt me before. Some of the reasons we struggle with community are not excuses at all. Some have been genuinely hurt. God is not asking you to pretend that did not happen. He also loves you too much to let what happened to you determine forever what you are willing to receive from Him through other people.

Insecurity or comparison can whisper that everyone already seems to have their people. Self protection and control can convince us that if we do not need anyone, then no one can disappoint us. Independence and self sufficiency can sound like, I can handle my own life. Busyness can build a life with no margin for relationships. Comfort can make us avoid the energy, inconvenience, and sacrifice that relationships require. Self reliance can insist that I do not need help or people speaking into my life, and pride can hide underneath that for me. Waiting for others can become a habit, if someone wants a relationship with me, they can approach me. Has the way I describe my personality become a boundary around where I am willing to let God stretch me? God is not trying to turn introverts into extroverts. He is transforming both introverts and extroverts into people who love. What does loving people look like through the personality God gave me? Maybe yours is not even on this list, the question is, what is underneath it for you? The beautiful truth is that God is not standing over us frustrated that we are not there yet. He is committed to forming us.

Belong To Each Other

Becoming people who genuinely love others grows out of the reality that we are one Body. Romans 12:3-5 says, "Because of the privilege and authority God has given me, I give each of you this warning, Don’t think you are better than you really are. Be honest in your evaluation of yourselves, measuring yourselves by the faith God has given us. 4 Just as our bodies have many parts and each part has a special function, 5 so it is with Christ’s body. We are many parts of one body, and we all belong to each other."

Paul does not merely say that we attend the same church. He says we belong to each other. And then he shows what that kind of life looks like. Romans 12:9-10 says, "Don’t just pretend to love others. Really love them. Hate what is wrong. Hold tightly to what is good. 10 Love each other with genuine affection, and take delight in honoring each other." God is not forming us into people who merely perform loving behaviors. He is forming genuine love in us.

Ben Witherington, a New Testament theologian, describes Paul’s teaching here as a community forming ethic. Following Jesus was never meant to be just me and Jesus. God is forming us as part of a Body, and the way He changes my heart changes the way I live with other people. We were always meant to do this together, to have others come alongside us and for us to come alongside people. Building community becomes an overflow of the love and genuine care we have for people.

Philippians 2:3-5 says, "Don’t be selfish, don’t try to impress others. Be humble, thinking of others as better than yourselves. 4 Don’t look out only for your own interests, but take an interest in others, too. 5 You must have the same attitude that Christ Jesus had." As God renews our minds and reshapes our hearts, our internal questions change. Did anyone say hello to me, becomes, who can I say hello to. No one invited me, becomes, who can I invite. No one reached out to me, becomes, who can I reach out to. Does anyone really know me, becomes, who am I willing to let know me. What did I get out of church, becomes, God, what might you want to do through me in someone else’s life.

As God begins to transform me, I become someone who builds the community. This is what Build the Community looks like. It is not first about becoming busier or adding more things to our schedule. It is allowing God to transform our hearts so that we increasingly become people who genuinely see, love, know, and make room for others. God begins shifting my attention from only considering myself to also considering the people around me. When God changes who we are becoming, it changes the way we live.

Become Builders

Imagine the problem solved by grace at work in a community that is learning to live with eternity in our hearts. Becoming people who recognize we need one another, and trusting that God’s design for community is good. Becoming people who let God transform the root, asking what is underneath my resistance, and whether I am willing to let God transform it. Becoming people who genuinely love others, and as God changes my heart, becoming someone who increasingly makes room for others.

Over the next year, as we consider what it means to live with eternity in our hearts, the prayer is that we will do it together. That we will grow in our relationships with Jesus together. That we will have our minds and hearts transformed together. That some of you will find some of your best friends right here in this church. That we will become people who are willing to be known, who allow others to speak into our lives, and who genuinely know, love, and make room for one another.

Community is not just something God asks us to build. Community is one of the things God uses to build us. And as He builds us, we become people who build community.