Monday, October 08, 2007

community blessing

This evening some of our church met together as a homegroup. It was a blessed evening. I came in kind of down and struggling, but came out renewed, reinvigorated and refreshed. We ate and chatted at first, then sang some hymns with guitar, worked through Psalm 1 together, and then had closing prayer for needs that were shared.

God's grace, which we need to pray for and seek to live in seems especially evident and manifest to me when I meet with other believers and we share together in our gifts from God to build each other up and encourage one another. There is nothing quite like it.

Of course we must not stop at just building each other up through the Spirit in the faith. We need to go from this into mission. Whatever our calling in mission is in this world needs to flow out in some way, or be a part of who we are as a community of believers. This needs to become an intentional part of who we are together and individually.

We all have our special part to play not only in our meetings together, but also out from those meetings into the world of our homes, our neighborhoods, work places and wherever we go in this world. We're salt and light. The question is are we letting that light shine in this world or are we hiding it? Are we letting ourselves as salt impact society or are we becoming worthless to do that?

Community blessing is for each other- blessing us, but it doesn't stop there. We're blessed in Jesus to be a blessing to the world. We need to think more and more in terms of both. Not accepting less in either than God's will and his working in and through us in Christ Jesus.

What would you add to this?

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

good post.
i agree there is more to our life in Christ than we think there is most of the time.

Ted M. Gossard said...

Nancy,
I thought it was remarkable how the community in our homegroup blessed and lifted me up yesterday, just by our being together and doing what we do.

The Walk said...

Good thoughts here. It's so easy to swing to one of the two extremes--either living sheltered lives of hiding within community, or trying to be salt and light to the world w/o having the necessary nourishment from believers around us, time in prayer, scripture, and ultimately, from Christ.

Your post also reminds me of how important it is to be available to one another and to support one another as we serve in the unique areas God has placed us.

Ted M. Gossard said...

The Walk,
Yes. And this needs to become more the way of life with us. It is too often too sparse among us. And I speak for myself here.

Smaller group interaction where everyone can be involved is so important. And from that is God's blessing which is certainly meant to spill over beyond just us, in fact it must.

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Desert Pilgrim said...

Well, I was uplifted just reading about it, thanks!