Coming Home to Community I, Coming Home to Love

I want to mention that, you know, each week, as the Lord leads us, we'd like to have those testimonies of people whose lives are being changed, and if you're one of them, let us know. Put it on your communicator. Sometimes we hear about them, it's real clear, and other times it takes a long journey to discover the great things the Lord's doing. I want to thank Joel for that. And Joel's part, he mentioned TNT, that's the 20s and 30s group, and that's singles and married couples who come together on Friday nights. They have cell groups, which you'll be hearing a lot more about in the coming weeks, and also they have a corporate meeting, I think this coming Friday, it's gym night. I don't know what that means, but I know it's athletic enough that you absolutely stand in the gym and throw a ball, if nothing else. But lots of folks are finding a connection point there, welcome to that. Let's take our notes out of the bulletin, please, and if you have a Bible, you might want to turn there as well. Scott read the text for today in Acts chapter 2, and as you're turning there, I just want to remind you, always use your name tags, a lot of you just slip in late, take that extra 30 seconds, pick up your name tags so folks know who you are, it's helpful. And those of you who didn't get your envelopes, they're out there in the name tag base, and it's time to get those, get in sync, and if you don't have either of those, just put them in the communicator, and we'll help you with that, get those things to you right away. I'm sorry you missed the reception that Scott talked about, because it was a good group, we'll be doing it again in about another month, but if you're new, it's not too late to sign up a little later, using the communicator for discovery groups. I want to start with a question this morning, a little response from you, if you would please. How many of you, in the last few weeks, even few days, have had someone ask you the question, how was your Christmas, or how were your holidays, let me see your hand. I mean, I must have been asked that question 500 times it seems, how was your Christmas Jay, how were your holidays? Now this is probably not a revelation, but stop and think for a minute, how many of the times that you were asked that question, did you answer it, and evaluate the quality of your holidays, by giving a description of the gifts that you received? I mean, if you're above the age of 10, you probably didn't say, oh it was a great Christmas, I got three ties of juice, or a clap light, and a tia pet, or something like that. No, we don't talk about how good a holiday was based on what we got, at least as we mature. We talk about the quality of our holidays based on the experiences that we had in relationship. Well my family got together for the first time in a year, it was great, all our kids came home for the holiday, or none of our kids came home, I mean one or the other. We went to visit our family in Chicago, or Raleigh, or Tampa, we just, that was the highlight of our Christmas. Our community group got together and celebrated, and that was the high mark for us. And if I were to ask you about 1996, in terms of the high points and the low points, you would probably determine them, to a major degree, by some experience you had in a particular relationship. Because when we peel it all back, the quality of our lives is largely determined by the quality of our relationship. Isn't that true? I mean, would you agree with that? It's not really our stuff, it's more than anything the quality of our relationships that determines how our life is going. How many of you remember the testimony about a month ago from the grandmother who shared of her addictive problems and then how God has delivered her? Barbara Snow, remember that? Well Barbara wrote a note to us as a community, and she's here in the service, and it's okay if I read it in to Barbara because it was to the whole community. It's a lovely note. I just got it last week. She said this, Dear Pastor Jay, and all the great people who helped me in my time of need, this is a Christmas I will never, ever forget. It was the best one ever for me and my family. All of the past Christmases were just a holiday, but this year we all had the love of Jesus in our hearts, and it was an awesome difference in us all. I thank my God, North Way, and all you beautiful people who have so much love to give, and I look forward to walking into January with you all. Then she adds this, Please feel free to call anytime if there's any way I can help someone. For, and she quotes Isaiah 42.3, He will not break the bruised greed, nor quench the dimly burning flame. He will encourage the faint-hearted. Best wishes, Barbara Snow. Isn't that neat? You see, her life, the quality of her holidays was not determined by her stuff, but by the people that God put into her life. If there's anything that would cause most of us to recoil back, if there's anything we fear like the plague, in my experience, it's the antithesis of relationship or loneliness. It's being isolated that we fear. You know, the book of Genesis, which many of us are reading the first chapters again for the 400th time, trying to read through the Bible, we start. How many of you get through Genesis and then it goes downhill from there, you know? Well, we're in there now, and as we read, especially Genesis 1, 2, and 3, when God created the universe and He looked at what He created, the heavens and the earth, and He said, oh, that's really good. And then He saw the plants that He created and the animals. He said, that's really, and then He created man on the sixth day, and He said of man, He said, that's very good. He distinguished, that's very good. But then He saw, the Bible says, the loneliness that was in the heart of man. And for the first time in all of His creation, God had created the heavens, the earth, the galaxies, which by the way, I just read an article in Newsweek magazine, they've now determined there's not 10 million galaxies, but there's at least 50 billion galaxies, and that's not even a final guess. Galaxies upon galaxies upon galaxies. And the Lord said for the first time when He saw the loneliness in the heart of man, He said, uh-oh, that's not good. That's not good. I see the loneliness in man and in his heart. And God felt very deeply about that. And so we know what happens. He caused man to go into a deep sleep, and He took the rib from man, and He formed a woman. And out of that, He gave to them the miracle of the power to recreate life, and children were born, and from that extended families, and then, you know, eventually friends and colleagues. And God created a massive global community, so that we could be together, because God saw that it was not good for man to be alone. Don't misread that as, well, he has to have a wife, or vice versa. He just doesn't want man to live in isolation. And in fact, what community is, is just the extension of who God is. Friends, God lives in perfect community of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. We're created to share the community that God lives and exists in forever. But what's, to me, an astonishing reversal of God's plan, it seems that many Americans, particularly, are falling away from community, sometimes unwittingly backing themselves into isolation. I mean, they send signals, don't bother me. You know, they put smoked glass in their cars, and they live in gated communities, and they take their phone numbers out of the book and unlist them. And they, you know, they just get themselves all covered up so that no one will know, and hide behind computer terminals, and then talk to each other in chat rooms, because they don't really want to be in isolation, but it's safe behind that terminal somehow. Well, all the while, in their hearts, they want someone to be in community with them. You ever wonder why, well, let me ask you a question. How many of you know what the number of the top ten television programs, consistently, week after week, what are most of them? What? Come on, you watch television, what are they? Sit-coms, thank you. It's not a sin to watch it, I mean, okay. Sit-coms, why are sit-coms always in the top ten? Because we look at them, and we laugh at the people, and we see something of relationship happening there, and we think, well, wouldn't it be great if I had some friends like that, or if I was in a situation like that? That's the thing that we're yearning for. Maybe a little deeper level, a little better illustration. Scott Peck wrote a book that some of you read, many of you have heard about, called The Road Less Traveled. It's sold millions of copies, a very popular book. He wrote it two decades ago. Here's what Dr. Scott Peck said, he's a psychiatrist. During the two decades since I wrote The Road Less Traveled, my fundamental thoughts about living honestly, spiritually, and with integrity haven't changed, but I do see the world somewhat differently. For one thing, I'm less opinionated now than I was then. When I once saw two sides of a question, I now see five or six, and by the way, that normally does come with maturity. And, listen to this, I have come to realize the importance of community. Where I once praised independence, I now stress interdependence. We are involved in each other's lives in virtually everything we do, at work, at play, in marriage, raising children, everything. He's changed how he views the world. The world was created, we were created loved ones to live in community. That's why Jesus' most profound prayer in the Gospel of John, chapter 17, for his disciples, when he was about to die, he gathered them together and he didn't pray for blessing on their financial resources, and he didn't pray for health, and he didn't pray for them to have just great time together doing miracles. He prayed, Father, that they may be one, even as you and I live in perfect harmony and are one. The heart of Jesus beat deeply that the disciples would know unity, community of relationship. That's our eternal destiny. That's what God wants us to have now and forever with him, to enter into a meaningful life in little communities where we can fully experience the joy of relationship as God intended. Now, what is supposed to happen in community? Because so many other congregations have discovered what North Way has discovered is that we can't press ahead and be all that God wants us to be in isolation. And I appreciate again, Joel, use the very word. We can't do this on our own. The day of the Lone Ranger Christian is long gone. At North Way, we've been investigating all around the country. Significant churches are discovering that people have to be bonded into little communities where they can learn to grow together in Christ. One church that we've discovered that's much like us is down in Louisiana, in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, a church of 5,000 members and growing. 3,500 of their members meet weekly in small groups. It's revolutionized the church. I'm going to tell you a little bit more about it later, the Bethany World Prayer Center. Willow Creek Community Church, many of you have heard of that out in Chicago, 15,000 in attendance on weekend services. They discovered five years ago that people were coming in the front, going out the back. And they've discovered the power now of community and building groups together. Their pastor, Bill Heibel, says define community and its essence in this way. Take your notes and make sure you have that handy because you're going to want to refer to it. I'm going to want to refer to mine here if I can pull it out on time. Here's the definition I want to use. Community, in its essence, is the experience of knowing and being known, loving and being loved, serving and being served, and discipling and being discipled. Let me talk about each of those for just a moment. Being in community means that you're a person who wants to know and be known by God and others. It's the first blank. To know and be known by God and others. If we really are truly honest here for just a moment, if we let our masks down a little bit here in church this Sunday morning, most of us would say I would love to be known completely and fully and deeply. I believe we'd all say that we would want someone, in fact we would cherish if someone was willing to disclose themselves to us and we to them. The tender and vulnerable parts of who we are. See, most of us establish friendships, most of us even get into dating relationships, most of us even get married. Or some other kind of social pursuit, you know, a golf league or a bowling league or a health club or a small group perhaps, a support group. We do all those things because there's this yearning inside of us to be known by someone else. Why does this seem so hard to do? I mean, why don't I just sort of wrap this sermon up right now and then you can get home in time for kickoff and your life would be saved. Why don't I just end the sermon and say, hey, just go out and hang out in the gym or in the foyer right now and just get to know each other. What would happen? We would fumble, we would be awkward in our, you know, our approaches to one another. Some of us would head directly to the car because we don't know what to do. The number one thing that would happen is that fear would keep us from reaching out to one another. And fear, I've seen it operate now for years on two levels. There's a fear inside of us that if someone really knew us, if they had the key to our confidential failure file, if they knew our dark side, what we've really been thinking about in our minds, and so they'd be repelled and in shock and in horror and leave us standing all alone in a heartbeat. They wouldn't want to be with us if they really knew us. And the second fear that I see very commonly is that if we get to know someone, we may get pulled into the vortex of their needy life and have just a little bit less of our own precious time and resources, which we need. And there's just so much that one person can do. So we keep a distance. We fear being known and rejected and we fear getting involved. Those two great fears are what keep us from knowing each other. So we take those desires in us to be known and to know and we shove them way down deep in our hearts and we cover them over with sort of superficial friendships and we smile on Sunday and turn to each other and give a hug. But deep down inside, this surface dancing doesn't really satisfy. And there's more than one of us that have laid in our beds late at night with our eyes open, looking at the ceiling, realizing there's no one that really knows me. Maybe not even the person that's laying in the bed with me. Fear holds us back. You know, in Psalm 38, if you have your Bible, turn to Psalm 38. David, the writer of most of the Psalms, is incredibly transparent in his writings and that's why I love to read them again and again and again. And he says in verse 9, if you have your Bible, you see David was in some deep weeds. He'd committed some spectacular sins, if you will, adultery, murder, and he was wondering, what in the world is going to happen when I come clean with God? Verse 4, my guilt is overwhelming like a burden too heavy to bear. My wounds fester and are loathsome because of my sinful falling. Verse 9, all my longings lie open before you, O God. My sighing is not hidden from me. My heart pounds. My strength fails me. Even the light has gone far from my eyes. What's happening? David is dying on the inside. He's struggling with sin. Do you struggle with sin, church? Do you struggle with sin in your life? Look on your outline. How constantly I find myself upon the verge of sin. This source of sorrow always stares me in the face. Underline that. Do sins stare you in the face and say, do me? I confess my sins. I'm sorry for what I've done. Friends, David is torn with the tension in his life that if he should come clean with his sin, God might reject him and he'd fall away. And the very thing that he wants the most, he would be prevented from having. And that's a relationship, an ongoing love relationship with his God. And some of you have lived with that tension. Listen carefully right now because this is the reason why some of you have lived in isolation much of your life. You live in attention every day of your life because you've submerged that yearning to be fully known by God and others. And you're afraid that if you reach out, someone else will reject you. So you hide those feelings and you like David feel like you're dying a little bit more each day because you can't resolve this tension. But take a, take a cue from David in Psalm 51. We find that he does come clean. He finally pours his heart out to God. He opens up his spirit and he says, look on your outline, create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a steadfast spirit within me. Do not cast me away from your presence or take your Holy Spirit from me. Restore to me the joy of your salvation and grant me a willing spirit to sustain me. And David finds not a God who says, get away from me. I want nothing to do. He finds a God that when he repents, reaches out his arms of love and embraces him and forgives him and restores him. And he's restored to deep communion with God. He's back to being known and to knowing. Dear ones, that communion is essential. If you're to go on, look at the bottom quote down there, would you please? David Wilkerson wrote this. The one thing about when I underline that one thing our Lord seeks above all else from his servants and ministers and shepherds is communion at his table. This table is a place for spiritual intimacy and it is spread daily. Keeping the feast means coming to him continually for food, strength, wisdom, and fellowship. God wants you to know him, friend, and to be known by him. And the reason why some of us today came and though the worship was anointed by God and though it was easy to enter into, some of you stood coldly to your feet for those 30 minutes and nothing happened inside. And can I submit to you that maybe the reason for that is that you don't know God. You can't worship someone you don't know. So begin today to say, God, I want to enter into a community with you and with others so that I might flow in the love that you have. You see, I'm going to ask you in coming weeks, listen, I'm going to ask you in coming weeks, every one of you to take a risk. Being in community means being a little bit vulnerable, putting your feelings out on the table, knowing full well that when someone gets to know you, they might trample on your feelings a little bit. They might marginalize or even trivialize you a little bit. They may even in worst case scenario reject you. It's happened to me in groups and I've felt it from people. And it may happen to you, but friend, you've got to risk it because otherwise you stay isolated. And there's nothing like the joy of knowing and being known. It's powerful. It's a manifestation of this gift called community. Think about it. Question for you. How many of you could say honestly today, I am in community now. I am in relationship. I am loved with others. Just think about it. And if you're not, let me encourage you. It's time to be. The second thing that God would say that in community is to happen to us is that we're to love and be loved. There's something very unique about loving. Do you know this? If you don't express love, you will lose love. If you don't use it, you'll lose it. If you don't express it to God and others in significant ways, you'll die slowly on the inside. You'll lose the capacity to love. That's why some of you are sitting here listening really with one ear already closed wondering. Something in you has already died to this because in your own heart, you've lost that capacity. You haven't been expressing love. You don't know how to do it. Some of you have lived your entire lives trying simply to survive. You've never been able to give love because frankly, you never received it in a way that you could open up to it. Maybe your parents didn't express it in a way that you needed. Maybe your spouse didn't. Maybe your friends haven't. Maybe you're numb to it all. It doesn't have to be that way, but I have to tell you some of you are going to have real difficulty moving forward from here in love today if you can't resolve those issues inside of your heart. I'm going to encourage you to do that because God wants to. When I think about our faith, dear ones, you know what it comes down to in the end? When Jesus was asked to give the summary statement of what the faith was about, what did he say? What's the greatest commandment? Love the Lord your God with all your heart and soul and mind and strength, and love your neighbor as yourself. That's the cliff notes, right? If we don't have it, I was reading in, I guess it was the end of the year, the 31st, 1 Corinthians 13, and I was stopped short. Have you ever been really just stopped short in your Bible reading by a passage? I read 1 Corinthians 13 and it talked about giving up my body to be burned, giving away everything I own, not just a little extra in the offering for year-end giving. I could do all these radical things and it would profit me what? Nothing, zero, if I have not love. Oh God, don't let us miss the capacity to love. Look at Galatians 5, 6, the only thing that counts, underlying only thing, is faith expressing itself through love. And friend, it could be that that love doesn't come through you because you don't know how to give it, and we're going to talk in the future about that, but it also could be that you've never really received it. And I know in this service this morning, some of you are here today and you've never opened to the love of God as a gushing fountain in your life. I've shared with you on a couple of occasions, but it probably wouldn't hurt to share again, that the single biggest change in my walk as a Christian happened when I was at Fuller Seminary. And I know a lot of people bang on seminaries and say cemeteries and make all these jokes about theological deadness and there is some of that, but there's also some life there. And I remember when I was there, I discovered for the first time the power of worship in my life. And I discovered it because for the first time in my life, I really came down to the bottom that Joel was talking about, where I wasn't just pretending that I didn't know how to go on, I knew that I didn't know how to go on, especially if I was going to be called into ministry. If you read Oswald Chambers this morning, he said this, when all our vows and resolutions end in denial because we have no power to carry them out, when we've come to the end of ourselves, not in imagination, but really, then we are able to receive the Holy Spirit. Receive ye the Holy Ghost. The idea is that of an invasion. You see, you can't receive all that God has until you get to the end and say, Lord, I don't have that love, I need it. I call out to you. When I had that experience, my life began to change and has been changing now for the last 22 years. Because once your inner life begins to have the resource of love, your outer life, the outer world, starts to take care of itself. At least I've had the horsepower to handle it because love has been at work in me. Now I suppose you could say again, why don't we just love one another then? Let's just love. Let's put on some beads and get in our Volkswagen vans and love. Let's have a love fest. Well, frankly, once again, whereas fear of being known holds some of us back, the inability, or could I say the ineptitude of not being able to express love holds many of us back from doing it. I had a counseling session not too long ago with a couple who had been married 16 years. I had the husband come in first. He told me how he treasured his wife. I believe he was sincere. He said that she was the dearest thing to him, that he really cared about her. I said, fine, good. Then the wife came in a little bit later. She said this, he never tells me that he loves me. He never shows me how he feels. He never talks to me. I'm thinking, well, wait a minute. I've got a man who loves and a woman who doesn't feel love. What's the problem here? It's communication. It's knowing how to love. To express love takes two things really. It takes will and skill. Will and skill. You have to know that you want to and you have to be able to know how to. Joey up there, just turn the air conditioning down. A couple people are passing out over here. A little bit easier. You have to know that you want to and you have to be able to. And friends, you know if you really want to, but if you lack the skills, here's the good news, there's lots of ways that you can improve your skills in communicating. We're going to give you, during the course of this series, at least one message in that. And there's lots of books out there, lots of resources to help you grow in that skill. And by the way, this skill of expressing love in Christian circles is really called fellowship. It's called fellowship. You know, fellowship gets a lot of funny things attached to it. How many of you grew up in a church that had a fellowship hall? Now you had church in the church and you had fellowship in the fellowship hall. I had a church like that. Or we have fellowship when we leave here a little bit and go and sit in front of our TVs. Let's have some fellowship, Scott, and go watch the game together. Well, that's not fellowship in the biblical definition, is it? The word fellowship, koinonia, means to participate in the life of another. To have communion together. So you're really fellowship when you are opening yourself up in love and in knowledge to each other. And can I say, just in summary, on the quotes that's on your notes, if you want to turn it over on the back, halfway through it says, it is of first importance that we know and are clear in our minds as to what Christian fellowship really is for. Rather, it will always be the case that the church will flourish and Christians will be strong only when there is fellowship. For the people of God to recover the true meaning of fellowship is a crying need at the present time. And may I say, I couldn't agree more. And that's what communities are going to do. That's what groups functioning together will do. It will establish a basis of fellowship. Fellowship, I mean, listen, social activities are fine. Watching the game together is fine. Going out together on a Friday night is fine. But that's not fellowship unless it's engaging you in the life of another. Let's move on and talk about the third thing. Serving and being served. The thing that happens in the context of community that's unique to that is the opportunity to be served and to learn to serve. Which, by the way, the Bible says, the very reason why the Son of Man came. He came not to be served, but to serve and give his life a ransom for many. Friends, the fact of the matter is that most of us still prefer to be served. We look for ways many times to get our burden lifted rather than coming alongside and lifting another's burden. We look for a way to lighten our load rather than helping to lighten another. And that's why Jesus in a dramatic act, an unforgettable act recorded in John 13, got a basin somewhat like this. He knelt down. All the disciples were gathered together. It was usually the new guy on the block in the house that would clean the feet of the people coming in. But this time Jesus did and he took a towel. It's the only one I could find. It was late. I thought of this late. Sorry. Don't send me any letters. It's just illustrative. He took a towel and he washed the feet of the disciples. Now in that act, he not only said, well, I'm the only one here. I'm going to do it. He said this, what you have seen me do, what? You do the same thing. I pray you'll never forget that. That we're called to be servants of one another. And I'm going to leave this here for a moment just to reinforce the point that I'm making, which is this. Friends, if we're to have community, we need to be willing servants of each other. And that doesn't mean, you know, just showing up a little bit early to set up the chairs. Being a servant is an attitude of the heart that means that there are times when you set aside what you would prefer to be the case in a particular setting. When you come and get underneath the load of another person and lift it up and share the burden of someone, it means that you prefer someone else in love. That's what it means to be a servant. And I've observed this after 15 years of being in community. A lot of people come and they're all fired up about being in community, about getting together with others. And it fades very quickly, very quickly unless the heart of a servant is present. Because lots of times in community, things get a little bit uncomfortable. It takes someone who's willing over the long run to serve for community to work. But when you do discover that, it's a joy. It changes you. Something in you gets, just gets blessed when you learn to serve. This Christmas season, we were planning our staff Christmas gathering, which we do every year to just kind of celebrate together. And we were just talking about what could we do differently. And Scott came up with the idea. He said, you know, wouldn't it be great if we just did something for someone else together? And so we contacted a family member of a widow in our church and then asked this widow if we might just plan a little surprise. She didn't know what it was. And so on a particular day, just before Christmas, the whole staff, I mean the secretarial team and everybody, spent the better part of a day, some went out the day before, some a few days afterward. The better part of a whole day went into our home. I mean, we cleaned everything top to bottom. We painted major portions of the walls. We remodeled two bathrooms, pulled up the flooring, fixed the plumbing leaks, did all this kind of stuff. We decorated the house all over with Christmas decorations and trees. We baked cookies and cooked food. And she was gone the whole day, didn't know what was happening. She came back into the house at the end of that day. And this woman who lost her husband four months ago said it just had indescribable impact on her life. She called her family. She called her friends. She said, look, look what my church did. And I have to say in my heart, beloved, you know, when Scott said let's do this and I said well fine and I have to tell you, when it came time to do it, I was not the first one running out there with my sweatshirt on because I had all my things to do, you know. I had all my other stuff to do. I had a sermon to do. But when I got out there, we had community and we had a great time. And, you know, we laughed at the way people cut linoleum and painted walls crooked and did everything imaginable, you know. And yet, by the end of that day, we felt bonded together. We felt the joy of the Lord. And I said to the woman who was in the first service, we got more out of that than you did. It was a great experience, serving in community. Do you have a place where you can serve specifically or do you just kind of show up now and then? If something's fading in you, if that relationship that you used to care about is growing old, if you're stuck, get alongside of someone. Lift up their burden a little. Serve them. Get up underneath their load and carry it and you'll find that God will soften your heart. And I want to encourage you. We're going to have some seminars coming up beginning on Wednesday the 15th of January to help you discover the giftedness of your serving. Because once you find your giftedness in serving, wow, I mean, it just ignites. Let me close with this. Number four, being in community means that we are able to disciple others and be discipled by them. You know, in the purposes of God, the primary function that summarizes all the activities of group life together really is this, it's discipleship. That's what happens in community. I don't know why it's so easy to lose sight of this, but it is. Can I recall to mind with you this one important fact? When Jesus Christ, the Son of God, set out to change the world, not only did he lay his life down on the cross, as we've talked about in previous weeks, but Jesus undertook a strategy to change the world. And what was that strategy? Who can remember? Well, he called 12 men to himself and he said, you're going to be my disciples. He