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There you go. We're we are pretty loaded up with technical ability and things that you can do. But what we want to talk about today, it seems whether it's in the news or it's in our city or in our neighbor hood, in our families, with our friends, there are a lot of people that are extremely wounded. So, in this world as believers, how do we walk with wounded people? I think typically most of us start out really strong. You hear a friend has a has been diagnosed with cancer or, you know, has gone through a divorce or a death and we all start out real strong. you know, we come around with meals and we're there to help with the kids. if there are kids involved, we're there to drive them wherever. but that doesn't always last. And when people are wounded, whether it be, like I said, something physical, spiritual, emotional, financial in any way, that woundedness doesn't just go away overnight. And so, one of the things that I think are important and I've experienced personally is when someone walks the walk with me, walks with me as the wounded person. And usually if there's a 100 people that rally around you when you're in that initial wounded state. I would say you're lucky if two or three are still walking with you throughout the rest of it.
Yeah, it's I think it points to the culture we live in of we really are an individual culture and we read even when it comes to reading the Bible, we read it as individuals. But the Bible is written to people in community with one another. years ago I was in Africa u with my father on a missions trip and we were traveling over a less than desirable road, bumpy, pot-filled road and a truck. It was hot and we were going into a town and all of a sudden the driver pulled off to the side of the road cuz he saw a man walking and he said, "I've been trying to catch up with this guy for a long time. Here he is. I'm going to stop and talk with him." Well, that's fine. I figured a brief conversation 30 minutes later he was still talking with this gentleman and when I thought about it in my culture as an American, I would have never done that to people who were with me. I would have said, "No, it's not important enough. I'll catch up with him later." But for him, community, so the idea you talked about of walking with him, walking with people, not just in the immediate crisis of life, but just in general,
Yeah.
was second nature to this man, to me. It would have been and it was excruciatingly painful.
Oh my goodness. And I think walking with one another, wounded or not, is comes in different stages. Like when I was a young girl, having more friends was the thing. As many friends as you could. As a young mom, I also wanted a lot of friends with a lot of kids for playdates. then as my kids began to peel off and become teenagers and go to college and my friends were experiencing different things, my friends circle kind of shrunk down. but being in the ministry and pas in the pastoral ministry for so many years, there were a lot of people and I've really enjoyed seeing people and asking them how they were. But as far as walking people walking with me or me walking with them, that number began to shrink. And at this stage in my life, it's interesting how much that has shrunk in comparison to when I was older. But it seems like now though, I am much more aware of the woundedness that people experience and just have a couple of things that I want to share with you about walking with the wounded and see if any of this or walking in community at all. when somebody is hurting, we have a tendency as believers to want to fix it and band-aid it. So, we oftenimes throw out scripture many times out of context to make somebody feel better. All things work together for good for those that love God and are called according to his purposes. Romans Excellent verse, but we pull it out of context in a way that says, "Well, everything that is bad in your life right now, it's going to go away. It's going to be like a fog. It's going to go away." And what we do is we begin forming this we like form this theology that we can kind of spill out on other people that we hope will help them. another thing that happens when we're walking with wounded people is we feel this pity for them as opposed to compassion and mercy. And there's that little voice inside of us that goes, Boy, I'm glad that's not me. But often times what happens, the reason why people begin to peel away is because they begin to see that this is a long-term process of walking with somebody, whether in normal community or with someone who's wounded. And as it drags on, what it does to the person, the people that are trying to walk with you, is man, this is something's wrong here. Did they sin? is there something they need to get rid of? of is there something they need to repent of? Kind of like Job's friends who sat around him and once they got over being quiet, which sitting shiva to me is a beautiful thing we need to still do. then they began to come up with ways to explain his woundedness.
Yeah. And so again, it's that idea of walking with people in community. I think you talked about Suzi, the wounded when somebody's wounded in some way, whether it's a physical wounding, u whether it's a heart wounding, whatever it is, are rally points, but rally points disappear. And one of my favorite New Testament books is the book of Hebrews. And in the middle of it, in the 10th chapter, he talks about this great relationship we have with God made possible by Christ and what Christ did. So Christ is the focal point. But then he says this to the community, let us draw near with a full heart, a true heart, full assurance. Let us hold fast to the conf confession of our hope. Let us consider how to stir one another to love and good works. It's all us.
It's not just me. It's us. And then the verse that kind of concludes that section is don't neglect meeting together as is the habit of some, but encouraging one another and all the more as you see the day drawing near. The power of community the power of encouragement. when we retired away from church Charlotte. people wrote notes. We had a basket full of notes. And I remember opening up some of those notes. And you know what I wanted to hear was people saying, "Hey, the sermon you delivered was the most powerful sermon I ever heard." And no, nobody did that. But there were things like this. When you walked through the door at my hospital room, and I don't even remember that.
Another person said, "When you came to the front door when my father died.", it's that walking with people That leaves an indelible mark, I believe, on people's hearts. And that's what the body of Christ is supposed to do is to walk with them in community. And I think we're losing that.
Can I make a little left turn here?
I guess you're going to
I am going to regardless like I typically do. I What is that? Go ahead and do something and ask for forgiveness later. I don't know. Anyway, what that makes me think of is since the pandemic, I think we have seen a decline. Not everywhere, but we've seen a decline in church community. there might be some of you that read your Bible and you know you study, you listen to podcasts hopefully that are good encouraging podcasts, but you still are not back at church or you can't decide which church to go to. and that's hard. I know I'm not saying that's easy. I think it's hard especially if you've been one place for a long time and then transition to a different church. But there has been something that has occurred where people are not as likely to be together to gather together as if it's an imposition now because we can just pull it up online. We can watch the pastor dour online.
Yeah. I mean I again I think technology when the pandemic struck I'm grateful that the technology allowed us to put things up on the web and so you could have online church and you could hear your pastor preaching or like you said whichever pastor you wanted to listen to. That's not church community. That's not community. I mean, I'll argue all day long that community happens face to face.
It happens when I look into somebody's eyes, when I see them, when I listen to them, when I walk with them through life. And I believe that we have fallen into the ease, if you will, or the convenience of I'll just sit on my couch at home, grab my cup of coffee, and pop it up on the TV screen. but when it comes to walking with people, it requires something of me. It requires me giving to another person in a way that I believe represents what God had intended for his people all along.
I think in Larry Kreb's book, Becoming a True Spiritual Community, he uses this illustration, I'm positive he does, where he talks about community being where we turn our chairs and face one another. And I love that image. the problem when we're not in fellowship with other people is we're not turning our chair to anyone. So our ideas, our struggles, etc. become very solitary and oftenimes isolate us when what God speaks about throughout scripture is being a community of people that honor him and glorify him and struggle together.
Yeah. And so a as you think about your life now, maybe there's not anybody in your life right at the moment. There are several in our lives who are wounded and for different reasons, for broken relationships, for bad medical diagnosis, for loss of jobs. we have I have we have faces that come into my mind when I say all those things. Maybe you don't right now, but it's not an excuse not to walk with people through the journey of this life here on this earth that God's placed us on. And we're doing it, as the author of Hebrews says, to encourage one another. And then all the more as you see the coming. It we all would say, "Come, Lord Jesus, come." But until he does, we can encourage one another when we walk with one another the way God designed us to in community. And we'd love for you to think about that today. Thanks for joining us. To learn more about the Struggling Well podcast, visit tandemspirituality. com.