Well, welcome again to another podcast of Struggling Well.
This is number 12, 600. 35.
I That might be a slight exaggeration, but not far off.
I don't exaggerate. I told you that a million times.
I know. Okay. yes. You know,
appearing nightly at the Economy Lodge. Okay, I'm done.
Sorry, Right. Hey, you know, you just got to go with the flow sometimes and we do that quite often. here, you know, Eugene Peterson is a name that probably many of you are familiar with. gifted pastor, theologian, author, recently went home to be with the Lord. It's not w within the last couple years. Anyway, his biography is well worth the read. but one of Peterson's quotes that I don't even remember where I first read it, heard it, that I have really come to appreciate is that there's no such thing as my maturity, but it's always our maturity. The emphasis that he had on the community of believers the body of Christ and what I hope to convey what we hope to convey in all of this is we need one another
and I believe with all my heart we need the church. It's the primary vehicle that we encounter one another and we grow with one another and we lean on one another. So many places in the New Testament we'll probably go to a couple different ones today that talk about the body of Christ. And Ephesians is one of those places that he urges us to walk in a manner in chapter 4 worthy of the calling to which we've been called. And as he goes on and he describes what that walk could look like, he also says that it is to the church that he's given various gifts. and the purpose is to equip the saints for the work of ministry for building up the body of Christ so that we become united in faith and in the knowledge of the son of God into maturity and so we want to talk a little bit about the need we have for each other.
I in the last couple of weeks we have definitely experienced the community the body of Christ and I think I made a joke about if all the people that wanted to bring us food we'd be like you know 600 lb But let me tell you this the important part of being a community and that is that scripture is clear about when one part of the body suffers all of the body suffers.
Right?
So what we see when we're the ones suffering is when the rest of the body comes alongside of you and that is each person each community has you know a replica resemblance of the body of Christ. it fills in the gaps. They fill in the gaps that you can't handle whether you know you are sick and you need food or you need somebody to sit with you or you know something has happened within your family or you got let go at your job or whatever it is. we need one another. We can't the body of Christ. I love the way we see that it's the actual I mean it looks like the actual body. It doesn't look like the actual body. The body is the metaphor for it with Christ as the head. I mean there is not a part of the body that if it's suffering doesn't affect somewhere else. If you have a bad back, it affects your whole body. if you get a cut on your hand, it affects your whole body. And the same should be true of the body of Christ. And so the importance of that is let me go to second Corinthians because I think that this is a beautiful passage to speaking about the importance of the body. it says, "Blessed be God and father of our Lordesus Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies and God of all comfort, who comforts us all in our afflictions, so that we may be able to comfort those who are in any affliction, with the comfort with which we ourselves are comforted by God. For as we share abundantly in Christ's sufferings, so through Christ, we share abundantly in comfort, too. If we're afflicted, it is for your comfort and salvation. And he goes on to talk about he doesn't want them to the people that he's writing to in Corinth, he doesn't want them to be unaware of what they've experienced and we've talked about that before that they had been burdened beyond their own strength and just kind of despairing of life because there's so many things that happened to them. Well, that's the place where the body of Christ comes along and I know that I have a small circle of very dear friends in my life. And when I'm in a place where I am down, I mean I always go under the radar and these women, they know when I go down and they know when I go under the radar and they come after me and not after me in a way to tell me what to do, but to tell me they see me where I am in my pain and they want to walk alongside with me.
Yeah. And I think again that's one example of fulfilling what Paul says in Galatians 6:2. Be bear one another's burdens and so fulfill the law of Christ. Well, the law of Christ was to love one another.
That's how he said in John, it's recorded that's how the world will know that we're his followers by the way we love each other. Well, one of the ways you can love is to help bear the burdens of another person.
And that really to me, Suzi, there are actions. Yes. But that involves pursuing, engaging, and listening.
Yeah.
And that means that I'm going to find time to listen to my friend, to listen to the other person who goes to my church or whoever it may be. to understand what it is they're going through. It doesn't say to solve the other person's burdens. It says to bear their burdens. Yeah.
And I think that's where you and I have talked about this.
I don't need somebody to fix me.
Many times what needs to change in my life is between the Lord and myself. But for somebody to bear that burden with me is involves listening to me and listening to what's going on in my life.
Is it in Mark? I don't have it right in front of me. Where the friends drop their friend through the roof to Jesus so he can be healed. And Jesus says to them, "Because of your faith, I if we could fictionalize the story for just a minute, I imagine this guy, you know, he can't walk. He can't do anything." And his friends, these people see him and they see the state he's in and more than anything, they want him to be healed. They know they can't do it. Excuse me. They know they can't do it. So they cut a hole in the roof and they lower him. through the roof. How astonishing. There's a group of people and all of a sudden somebody comes down through the roof on a pallet. They lower him to be healed by Jesus. That's the body of Christ saying, "I'm going to do anything to bring you to Jesus. Not to fix you like you said, but to bring you to him and then he will do with you what is according to his will."
Yeah. and one of the this goes back years ago when I was pastoring and an elder was bringing a devotional to our elders meeting and he used that story and he dramatized it with an index card and he gave each person an index card and he said write the names of four friends on the corners
because this guy had four friends that lowered him and he said do you have those four friends in your life? It was a great illustration to the point you're making we're making this morning about the body of Christ and the need for the body of Christ to come alongside. I'm going to just a tick and go. I think that's true for your pastor, too. Those of you who sitting listening and you aren't pastors, but you go to a church and you're pastor,
do you care for him or is he on some kind of a pedestal that you think he's arrived and he doesn't need the same kind of care you do? he doesn't need you necessarily to fix anything. He needs you to listen to what's going on in his life and then move in a way that moves him towards Jesus.
Or are you maybe Some of you are out there doing a critique of your pastor and you need to let him know. You feel like you need to let him know where he's failed and what he hasn't done. he needs you to be the body of Christ to him. He needs you to come alongside of him and encourage him. And if there's an area where you think he might be weak in, he probably knows he's weak there, too. But maybe what he needs to hear from you is, "I love you and I'm standing with you."
Yeah. And again, I'll go back to this thing. I'm willing to listen to you and what's going on in your life cuz you may not know I when I come alongside somebody, I don't necessarily know everything that's going on in their world. And so that go back to the second Corinthians passage when Paul shared with these people what was going on in his life. He says later on that chapter, we did this so that you might pray for us.
Again, Paul wasn't asking them to change the situation. He wasn't asking them to get him into a better place. He just simply wanted them to pray.
Which is interesting because one of the things we've experienced this year is we've had an outpouring of love from people in our community and by that I mean the body of Christ community and also outside community. But one of the interesting questions is people will say, "What can I do?
What can I bring you?" And of course, you know, there are practical things that people need when they're in a difficult place but we have said pretty consistently pray would you pray
right
and I have I believe that the prayers of righteous people avail much so that means when you say to me I'm praying I'm counting on you to bring my name before the father when I say I'm praying for you I'm doing that oftenimes you know it feels like oh I'm not going to remember I need to pray for so and so but Mo most of the time if somebody says hey would you pray for me I either stop right there and pray for them then which kind of implants it in my heart in my soul or I write it down so that I can pray later because to me and I think to you too Jimmy prayer is it's the most valuable thing that somebody can give us.
They can bring us a meal and we so appreciate that and do other practical things but to me prayer is this valuable thing that you give to me to say I am praying for you. if somebody asks me to pray for them, that is the most valuable thing I can do. So if you're out there and you have someone who is struggling in your and you know it and you've asked them what you can do practically, there might not be anything, but you can give them the commitment of I'm going to pray for you and with you and I'm going to help like you said, Jimmy, I'm going to help bear that burden with you. Take some of the weight off of it because I'm going to be interceding for you and that takes time and commitment and you know emotional connection.
Yeah. And those of you who know me know that I have struggled with understanding prayer. That doesn't remove the reality that I long for people to pray
and I want to be that person who can pray. I don't understand all the dynamics of prayer and I'm not sure that I really am supposed to. I do know this that God tells me to pray and One of the gifts I can give somebody, as you said, Suzi, is to pray for them. So, as you take stock of your life this week, would you think about the people in your life who are important to you and the relationships that you have with people and the fact that you need them to grow in your own maturity.
Yeah, we're so glad that you've been with us. like I say, almost every week, we really enjoyed doing this. So, we hope you have a week full of thoughtful concentration on prayer and commitment to those that God has put in front of you that are the your body, the body of Christ. So, thanks for being with us.