This Sunday we continue our series on Intentional…our Intentional Journey in discipleship. What we’ve come to realize is this journey into becoming more like Jesus is the invitation to be with Jesus himself…to walk with him, work with him, learn how he does things….
What we are discovering together is…we can’t bring about this transformation by direct effort but we can create a space in our lives…place ourselves intentionally in environments… where we can encounter the life-giving Spirit of God in transformative ways.
Last week we talk about the environment of community: Going to church with hundreds of other people to sit and hear a sermon doesn’t ask much of you. It certainly will never expose you. That’s why most folks prefer it. But community will. It will reveal where you have yet to become holy, right at the very moment you are so keenly aware of how they have yet to become holy. No doubt community is messy and there are times we will be deeply hurt by each other.
We found, however, that as we engage on life-on life- activity and invite other believers into our lives we are further made into the image of Christ. We learned how in admitting and owning our human brokenness with one another, we discover it is we who are healed and experience the restorative and redemptive presence of Jesus. In the “Fellowship of the Broken” all the “one anothers” in the Bible make sense.
We found that a community that has been transformed by Christ may be our greatest witness to the world. We can try to build proof after proof after proof to defend our beliefs. But at the end of the day, the proof is in the way we relate to one another. That is the final apologetic. The ultimate defense for Christianity is community.
This Sunday we will talk about Experiential Discipleship: We are transformed when we encounter and experience Christ transcendentally in worship, beauty, tragedy, and the miraculous.
Gail Johnsen 