Partnership with God and Others

I want to read you guys something from the book of James. I find his story very interesting because he was actually the half-brother of Jesus. Can you imagine being the brother of Jesus? Your mom always saying “Why can’t you be more like Jesus? He always cleans His room.” Talk about tough. Later on though, James became one of Jesus’ followers and sent this letter to the churches throughout the region. These two verses are from a paraphrase, but I really like how it was worded.

James 3:17-18 says:

“”Real wisdom, God's wisdom, begins with a holy life and is characterized by getting along with others. It is gentle and reasonable, overflowing with mercy and blessings, not hot one day and cold the next, not two-faced. You can develop a healthy, robust community that lives right with God and enjoy its results only if you do the hard work of getting along with each other, treating each other with dignity and honor.””

I went on a trip to Oshawa with my aunt a month ago. She goes to a charismatic non-denominational church. If you ever get to go to a church like that, do it! It is intensively loving and spirit-focused. There is some stuff they believe that I don’t agree with, but it was an awesome experience.  My favorite thing to do in a church like that is: observe. I have my notebook and I just write down everything that strikes me as interesting.

 One day, a friend of my aunt’s came over who went to the same church. Her name was Denise and she had a very quiet voice and was very sweet. After we had dinner together, my aunt asked if we could all pray together and see where the Holy Spirit took us. I thought that as long as we didn’t end up dancing in a circle naked, it would be cool. J

We all sat down and began praying by ourselves. Then Denise looked over at me and asked me if she could share a vision God was leading her to tell me. Well, what do you say to that? Of course I wanted to hear.

 She spoke gently with her eyes sparkling.

“I see Jesus with His disciples and a large crowd walking down a road and He is looking around. He’s asking, “Where is Laura? Where is she?” You are sitting contentedly a little ways away, observing. You smile because it makes you happy just to be noticed. He loves you Laura. He thinks you are beautiful. He loves every part of you because he made every part of you. Nothing you can ever do – ever did or ever will do – can stop His love for you.”

I started crying. I usually try to be a tough person. Not that I look like it, but I do try. I couldn’t stop crying. Tears rolled down my cheeks and my heart hurt. She reached out her hand to me and repeated gently: “He loves you Laura.”

God speaks through people. We can see that all throughout the Bible. He continually partners with us in order to accomplish what He wants to happen. That’s why God calls us to community.

He seems to always call us to the harder road and community is no different. We don’t get along with everyone. Some people aren’t our “type”. The geeks won’t hang out with the preps etc. That’s why James says that it is hard work. It was just as hard in Biblical times to have a community. But he says to treat everyone with dignity and honor.

You don’t have to be best buds with everyone. That’s impossible. God does however call us to treat everyone with respect and love. As followers of Jesus, we are supposed to love everyone. I mean, look at Jesus. He hung out with prostitutes, drunkards, and outcasts.

However, when we truly love someone we don’t accept everything that they are. I believe that every person is like a book. When I become invested in a person, I become invested in their story. English class has taught us that a good story has twists and flaws and character development. We should love people and desire them to become better versions of themselves. We desire for them to have a happy ending. That’s real love and that’s the love that Jesus shows us.

You know I don’t have this figured out. It’s ridiculously hard to love all people. Some people drive me nuts. Some people have challenges that make them different. Some people are angry and put others down. I’m called to love them. We all are.

God wants us to love people because He partners with us. He works through us, and His strength becomes perfect in our weakness. He has a plan that He needs to work through us to help others. Usually when you hear God’s plan being referenced, you’ll hear God’s plan for YOUR life. Ironically enough, His plan for you is to help His plan for others.

You see Jesus calls us to an other-centered life. We have a tape of me singing “To Be Like Jesus” when I was three years old. It wasn’t until I was a teen that I realized something about that song. We are to be like Jesus – but Jesus died. A song that I love by Todd Agnew puts it this way:

“I'm not sure what that means to be like
You Jesus
Cause You said to live like You,
love like You but then
You died for me

Can I be like You Jesus?”

We need to die to ourselves. To kill off our own wants and sacrifice what we have for others. Jesus calls us to sacrifice.

Going back to my aunt’s friend Denise speaking to me. One of the reasons I was crying so hard was that only God knew what I had done that morning. Only God saw my self-seeking attitude. Only God saw me. Only God declared His love for me after He saw me.

Only God calls me to lay down everything that is holding me back from loving others; all of our fears, our worries, our prejudices, our anger, our greed. He wants you to leave it all with Him. He’s big enough; He can take it! He wants to partner with us, and if we cannot give Him everything, we’re not much of a partner.

Some things we may be dealing with for the rest of our lives, but God wants to journey through that with us. : Psalm 23: 

We will be in community with each other, and we will be serving others. It will be hard to do if we have not given God all that is holding us back. If we are following Jesus and want to partner with Him to see His work done, we need to die to ourselves.

 Questions:

1.     Have you ever felt like God was speaking to you through someone else?

2.     What do you think true community looks like?

3.     Why should we partner with God?

4.     (If comfortable) what are some things that you feel keep you from partnering with God?