Well,
welcome again to another podcast of Struggling Well. We're glad that you joined us. And if you happen to listen to last week, podcast, you know that we talked about the importance of church community. Well, it's just it's strange sometimes the way the Lord drops things in your mind and won't let him go. since then I've listened to a podcast that I listen to often, Luxio 365, and in that recent one, they said this. He they quoted Dietrich Bonhofer, who's a fascinating character to me of just somebody who he wrote a book called Life Together about community. and he was a prisoner of war and he died in a prisoner of war camp and in that book he says we can have what he calls our wish dream community and disappointed when the community doesn't live up to the standard in my mind.
key phrase there.
Yeah. In my mind. In my mind.
Yeah. But he goes on to say I build community when I love its messy reality. In this way I learned to live a life of love. And that word messy I can often remember Larry Crab, our mentor, said it was his favorite Christian word, messy, because that described life in most people and all of us really. And when you put messy people together in a community, guess what you're going to have? You're going to have a messiness.
Big mess. And it's I community has always been something that scripture speaks to. And the New Testament, Paul definitely speaks to that. In the Old Testament, God was developing this massive community of the Israelites. And then like I said in the New Testament, Paul speaks about the issues that come up in community because it does get messy. And yet I think we all long for something that outside of heaven, I don't think it's going to happen.
No, it won't. And it's and I would say obviously there's multiple purposes to community, but I recently read, in fact, it was On Monday, I read in a email that went out from I do some work at Charlotte Christian School and one of the faculty members there had done a devotional and interesting is on community. So that's why I don't think I could get away from this idea of community and why we're talking about today and in that she said this biblical community is doing life together with other Christians in a way that reflects the love of God to a watching world.
And that's the thought I don't often think of I think of what community will do for me, how it will help me with my burdens, it will help me with my joys, but that the community that I live in, that you and I choose to live in, Suzi, can actually reflect the love of Christ to a watching world.
Recently, you spoke about the Trinity, and I thought it was fascinating because the Trinity is a an incredibly hard topic to talk about, and for us as mere mortals to understand. Can you maybe elaborate a little bit about the Trinity and the community there?
Yeah, I mean the Trinity has existed for all time in eternity past and eternity future. It will always be there and it's the perfect community of self-sacrificing love for the other. the father loved the world to send his own son. That was a sacrifice for him to do that. Jesus came to this earth and he did not what he wanted but he did the will of the father and the spirit shines the spotlight on Jesus.
And so this unbelievable community of the Godhead, Father, Son, and Spirit, one God. And they again, a phrase that Larry got us to think about. They dance.
The Trinity dances, and we're invited into that dance, and we're invited into it's as if the Godhead, God who needed nothing, he didn't need anything, does doesn't need anything but so much enjoyed I believe what they had for all of eternity that he invites us as beings created in his image to enter into what they've enjoyed as we relate to one another and as we reflect him to the world around us.
So why is it so hard? Why do people steer away? I mean I'm talking about people who love Jesus confess and profess that they love Jesus. Why is it so hard and why do I mean we talked about this last week about the importance of being in church just to be under someone's teaching etc. being in community with one another and we're going to beat that word dead in this podcast as we should
but why do people not flock to community? I
I'm probably there are many reasons but I think one of the reasons is I don't think we understand how important an influence we can be in the lives of other people that we actually can breathe life, Christlike life into other people when we interact with him.
But I'm talking I hear you there. But I'm talking about the people that feel like they're on the fringe or they have their issues, their mess is, as they perceive it, way, way too messy. And so they steer away from being with other people.
Yeah. Well, I think some of that, again, there probably are many reasons, but I'm just going to focus on one I think some of that is we live in a culture in the world that we live in the United States of America where we prize individualism and we prize that we don't need anybody that we can figure it out that we can to use an old phrase that probably is younger people who listen to this podcast may have to get someone to explain it'll pull ourselves up by our bootstraps we can do it and we don't want to We don't want to get involved with other people because we don't need other people. That's the lie that the subtle lie that we don't need other people.
Yes. But I think there's something more.
Well, since you don't like any of my answers so far, you go ahead and tell me what
you know because you and I you and I talk with people all the time, right?
And we talk with PE we have friends that go to church are in community, small groups, Sunday school classes, whatever. And then we also have friends that don't go to church anymore. They're in maybe they're in a small group or whatever, but what I found lately, and you know where I'm going with this, because I've been in conversations with people lately, that we I don't know if that I think yes, it's true that we don't think that our lives have any impact, especially when we're in a hard place, especially when we're hurting, we've experienced loss, we've experienced death of a dream or whatever. we tend to come away and maybe I'm really speaking for my own experience which matters not in the scheme of things according it doesn't match up to the word of God but I know for myself that if I'm in a hard place and feel like I'm too much then there's that and we talked about maybe going here today there's that lie of isolation like just stay away and some of it is I don't want you to ask me anything I don't want you to tell me anything. I just want to be by myself. And that's the lie that isolation is going to give me relief. What do you think about those incredible thoughts that I just
Well, no, I think it's I think it's true. And I think it's probably we're coming to a time where we're going to draw this particular podcast to a close, but I think it's where we can pick up with our next podcast. the lies that we believe that Satan tells us Because again, he's the great deceiver and he's the one who will do anything, not just blatant things, but he'll do anything to undermine what God wants to see happen in our lives.
I think that's a key point, Jimmy, because I think that when we are so caught up in our troubles and our mess, and we stay away from one another that we miss that opportunity to share and care for each other and go before God together and weep and struggle and wrestle and spur each other on to good works.
So, we'll leave that as a teaser cliffhanger for next time.
Cliffhanger. Yes.
Yeah. We'll come back and we'll talk more about those lies that Satan can get us to believe as to why community is not important. We hope you have a good week struggling. And we just want to do a shout out to a friend Robert who has recently experienced the loss of a loved one, his wife, and pray for him and his family as they go through this time of grief that the body of Christ will be real to them. Have a good week. Thanks for joining us. To learn more about the Struggling Well podcast, visit tandemspirituality. com.