You Can’t Have Community While Playing Hide and Seek
Café Menufor Tuesday, March 29, 2016
Today’s Special is: It Takes Courage To Live In Community
Carefully prepared just for you by your friend, Alyssa Woollard
Main Ingredient:
“And let us consider how we may spur one another on toward love and good deeds, not giving up meeting together, as some are in the habit of doing, but encouraging one another—and all the more as you see the Day approaching.”
Hebrews 10:24-25 NIV
Entrée:
I had a preexisting condition, a malignancy of the heart. For a lifetime mistrust persuaded and persisted as I played hide-and-seek within the body of Christ. Always seeking, always desiring deep community, but always hiding from it too. Until the day God challenged me to invite a faithful friend deeper into my life and my struggles, deeper into my truth.
As iron sharpens iron, so one person sharpens another.
Proverbs 27:17 NIV
And sharpened me she has. At first I resisted, but our healer God, Jehovah Rapha insisted. He knew I needed to let someone see the real deal, the hot mess of a woman behind the smile.
Healing begins with humility. It begins with admitting need. But breakthrough can feel a lot like breaking, so we run and hide and pray, “Come find us.” Terrified someone actually will, we pretend everything is fine and suffer alone together. All around us are hurting, lonely, hide and seek people - just like us.
It’s time to stop this madness, this silly childish game, stop pretending our souls aren’t slipping and step out of darkness, take a chance and talk long, plant trust and grow deep rooted friendships and healing within the body of Christ.
Stop judging and start loving. Sometimes we all need help. We just do. Like it or not we need each other. We need community. We need God. And isn’t it high time we just stinkin’ admit it.
Throw away our “self-protecting pseudo Sunday smile” and break the code of silence. Tell someone, “NO! I am not ok.”
It’s time to abandon the fear of being hurt or rejected and just get real. It’s time to love for real.
Take Out:
Prayerfully ask God how you can grow deeper in relationship with the body of Christ.
Dessert:
Sweet Holy Father, Our healer Jehovah Rapha thank you for creating us to commune with you. Lord teach us what real community looks like. Bring us friends who are closer than a brother, friends who make us stronger in our commitment to you. Thank you God for allowing Christ to die so that we might have the ultimate communion with you. In Jesus Name, Amen.
© 2014 by Alyssa Woollard. All rights reserved.
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