From Loneliness to Belonging: Building Church Community

See, the beautiful thing church, here is that the church just got together. They put aside all their differences in this moment because they were focused on one thing, and that was Jesus. See, often, a lot of the problems we have around us is because we get our eyes off Jesus. We get our eyes off a point, a purpose. But once we keep get our eyes back on Jesus, beautiful things like this happen. So we don't know exactly how every moment worked out for them as a church began. But we do know that at the central focus of that, of them gathering together was devoting themselves to teaching, to fellowship, gathering together, to being there for each other, to the breaking of bread, and to prayer. [00:55:38] (66 seconds)  #FocusOnJesus

But Jesus goes and finds him. He's one of the first people he talks to. He goes and finds Peter, the one who hurt him, and he has a conversation with him. And it's this beautiful story where he asked him, do you love me three times? The same amount of times that he denied knowing Jesus to restore Peter, to let him know, I love you so dearly even though you hurt me. Even though you denied me. Even in those moments, Jesus loves us. And he drew and he went to him, restored him, and said, listen. I have something for you to do. Says feed my sheep. Now he's not talking literal sheep because Jesus loves talking in metaphor. He's talking about us. [00:53:23] (45 seconds)  #RestoredToServe

I'm gonna send you my spirit because Jesus was limited because he was both fully God, a 100%, 100% fully man, limited in capacity physical location because of that choice, goes back to heaven, sends a spirit which can be within each one of us to empower us, to lead us in all truth, to comfort us, to remind us of the teachings that Jesus taught and the things that Jesus did. And he told his disciples, hey. Wait a minute until you receive that. So they did. And then this crazy story where the the wind and shaking and they go out and they start speaking in languages of other people that are there that they didn't know before declaring, it says, the wonders of God. [00:52:16] (46 seconds)  #HolySpiritEmpowers

Loneliness is absolutely crushing. When you feel like there's no one else, because it really is one study shows it has a compounding effect. Because the lonelier you become, the more you withdraw from social situations, making it even harder to make the new connections needed. It's like reverse networking is one study. Instead of building valuable relationships, people actively avoid the very interactions that could help them. Let's pray. [00:40:36] (34 seconds)  #LonelinessCycle

I can tell you, I can sit here. I can think of this one time I was at probably one of the darkest moments in my life in a hospital, and my friend was there. And all he did was sit beside me and cry with me. That changed my life. I think of my friend Cam that I mentioned to you before. I was just, like, having the best time of my life with him. He brought so much joy to my life. And at the same time, he had been there in some of the darkest moments saying, Charles, you got this. We can get through this together. Friends are so important. Please don't think that you can do this without them. You need to build community. [01:01:01] (48 seconds)  #PresenceHeals

The truth is that I'm so glad we live in today, but sometimes we like to remove the hard things that we actually need to go through. Oh, this person hurt me. Okay. I know it hurts. It's not minimizing the pain, but the thing is you need to go and talk to them. You need to ask some questions because, like, nine times out of 10, it's a misunderstanding, a miscommunication. They said the wrong words. They meant something else. Sometimes that happens. But you see the church is full of people, so that means inevitably someone here is gonna hurt your feelings. [00:46:31] (39 seconds)  #TalkItThrough

But we're living in a time where friends and friendship, it is changing because we're in this moment in time where we're feeling more lonely than we probably have ever in history. And I talked a bit about this yesterday as we're in this series talking about loneliness. And last week, we talked about, like, why are we lonely? And today, I wanna talk about friendship and how important it is. But back in 2023, the surgeon general in The US, doctor Vivek Murthy, and I talked about this last week, he declared an epidemic of loneliness. [00:38:45] (41 seconds)  #LonelinessEpidemic

All these people, all these disciples, even this closest three or even the closest one, Peter, who seems to be like he was like, I'll die for you, Jesus. I'm there. And then the moment of of truth comes, the moment where the rubber has to hit the road, and Peter's like, nope. I'm out, along with everybody else. Sometimes we just think of the 12, but Jesus often would have hundreds of people following him at some times. But so we don't know exactly how many people were with him when he was arrested, but we do know there was a lot, and they all left. [00:44:27] (28 seconds)  #FaithUnderFire