This is it. Starting this semester, I will start leading our community group. It is so difficult to relate how much work God has done on my heart about this. First of all, because we have all been so blessed with the Godly leadership he's given us since the group's inception. Also, I have been absolutely blessed to have a few days where I could meditate on the Word, pray, and read scripture. A self-imposed retreat, if you will. Again, what an absolute blessing. I was anxious at first, because I wanted to be back in Raleigh with the community that I love, but now I see that God has given me this time to meditate on his Word. As I look to the new semester, I MUST take time to be in the Word before I go back to Raleigh and serve our community. Not just to be continually reminded that Christ is our sole focus, but to begin to understand the weight that this role carries.
Colossians 3: 3-4 says, "For you have died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God. When Christ who is your life appears, then you also will appear with him in glory." That is absolutely what we must pursue as we engage this new semester. We cannot seek an ideal community, because even if we base that idealistic community on Christian ideas, the community is not centered on Christ. As Dietrich Bonhoeffer said, "Those who fashion a visionary ideal of community demand that it be realized by God, by others, and by themselves. They enter the community of Christians with their demands, set up their own laws, and judge the brethren and God Himself accordingly" (Life Together - Bonhoeffer). Oh how I pray that we would always see each other for who we are; broken sinners who desperately need Christ. "I have been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me. And the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me" (Galatians 2: 20).
And as I look to this new semester, I rejoice at the opportunity that God has given me. I have spent time thinking of everyone in our group, and, with anticipation, waiting to walk with them, to listen to them, to pray with them, and to serve them. God's love fills me up as I remember how each of the people that are in our community reflect God's brilliance, and how they have labored to know him. As it says in Matthew 9: 36, "When he saw the crowds, he had compassion for them, because they were harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd." How I desperately pray that I would be removed, and that Christ's passion would be seen for the people that he loves. In all my relationships, I ask Christ to humble me to the point of death so others may only see His glory.
"Once a man has experienced the mercy of God in his life he will henceforth aspire only to serve. The proud throne of the judge no longer lures him; he wants to be down below with the lowly and the needy, because that is where God found him" (Life Together- Bonhoeffer)
"I myself will be the shepherd of my sheep, and I myself will make them lie down, declares the Lord God. I will seek the lost, and I will bring back the strayed, and I will bind up the injured, and I will strengthen the weak, and the fat and the strong I will destroy. I will feed them in justice" (Ezekiel 34: 15-16).
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