Called to live in community

Called to live in community

(p. 43-4) In the church we are called to live in community, where our actions (or inaction) impact the lives of everyone else. God calls us to lay down our individual preferences, not simply for the desires of the majority, but for the will of God. He calls us to respect and submit to the spiritual authority of the leaders he has placed in the church, as well as to submit to one another in the Lord. He calls us to ...

• forgive one another
• love one another
• serve one another
• support one another
• encourage one another
• pray for one another
• be of the same mind with one another
• accept one another
• bear with one another
• greet one another
• admonish one another

None of this can be done by our power or wisdom, and it certainly cannot be accomplished by employing worldly strategies. It is only as God energizes every aspect of the life of the church that we see the wisdom of God revealed. When we allow him to be in charge, we discover what he had in mind.

Through the church — and only through the church — God reveals his manifold wisdom and the unsearchable riches of Christ. Therefore we must commit ourselves to be the church, to act as those who have entered into a new covenant of grace and thereby into a new relationship with one another. As we do, then God will reveal his plan through the church to us, to others, and even to angelic beings.

~ Glenn Wagner, The Church You've Always Wanted