Communion: The Holy Spirit, Koinonia, and Discipleship

``We learn better to get because discipleship is a team sport. You know why discipleship is a team sport? Because you can't be trusted. I'm sorry, but it's true. The heart above all else is deceitful. And you can lie more convincingly to yourself than anybody else in this world. You all know it. You've seen it. You've seen people who lie to you and you can see very clearly that they're lying. And somehow you can also see that they don't realize they're lying. They've convinced themselves. Yeah. And so that that's why discipleship is a team sport. We're meant to come together and to learn from one another. [00:47:10] (47 seconds)  #DiscipleshipTogether

The point of Christianity was never that you would pray. The point of Christianity was never that you would read your bible. Point of Christianity is never that you would come to church. All of those things are just a means to an end. They're not the point. They're not the purpose. The purpose is that all of these things would work together to steward in us a communion with God. Not just going through the motions, but a deep communion with God. The reason for that is part of the reason for that is when we come together, we find that we are called to be disciples. Right? Disciple means student. [00:45:46] (45 seconds)  #CommunionNotRituals

The kingdom of God is an invasive force. And so when we talk about God coming to give us eternal life, that's absolutely true. But you better make sure that you're using Jesus' definition for eternal life and not the things that we've kinda come to associate with. Because we think of eternal life as beginning when we die. Oh, no. Eternal has no beginning orient, so how can it begin when you die? As we talked about before, eternal life is much like a river. It has no beginning. The only beginning point for you is for when you step into it. That feels like a beginning. [00:37:54] (39 seconds)  #StepIntoEternalLife

But when I step into the river, I'm well aware that it didn't begin with me. It's not flowing from me. I'm stepping into eternal life. How did Jesus describe eternal life? Maybe that'll help us see what the point is. Right? Well, he he says it right here. He he says in his prayer in John 17 that he came that we might have eternal life. And then he says, and now this eternal life colon, next part comes to the definition. Right? That they might know you. The point is relationship with God and with others. [00:38:33] (44 seconds)  #KnowGodKnowLife

And as we come forward this morning, we celebrate this with the simple act that we recognize that God has the power to infuse a simple act and make it a sacred moment. Make it a time where we experience his presence perhaps like no other. We experience it in a transformational When we realize as we're kneeling around this altar with people we know and with strangers, that we're all one body, united by his blood, held together by Jesus Christ. Colossians says that it's in him and through him that all things are held together. That's your communion with the people you love in the church. That's your communion with the people you don't like in the church. That's your communion with the people at church down the road that you don't even think is church. Guess what it is? [01:06:29] (61 seconds)  #OneBodyCommunion

brother Bill, churches, this and that. Yeah. I don't like him because of this and that. And somebody would say, yeah. That doesn't sound godly to me. It sounds to me like you're passing judgments on him and you're spreading gossip around town and you really don't need to be doing that. Are you ready to repent of that today? Shouldn't it be happening? know why it happened then? Because those men had grown together and those women and other groups they were separated by gender so that you could get closer and closer and work on specific problems together. And they had agreed to covenant with each other. Otherwise, why would you show up? [00:53:04] (54 seconds)  #CovenantCommunity

How can you tell me that you love others if you don't have the love of God in you? You can't truly love others in a deep and impactful way until you have the love of Christ within And so we commune with God and with others. And we come together as the body of Christ. When we commune with God and we commune with others, we are the representation of who Jesus was as he walked there. Perfect communion with God and communion with others. When we do that as a group, we represent the body of Christ. Is Christ still with us? Yes. Is his body still with us? No. We are now his body. [00:42:50] (50 seconds)  #LoveReflectsChrist

And so sometimes we'll say, well, great truth. You don't know what they did to me. You don't know how they hurt me. It's true. I don't. And I may not know the depth of that pain because I may not have experienced anything near that deep and can't relate to that particular pain, but I know someone who can. And I know that on the night in which he was experiencing it more than anyone else anywhere, I know that it was on that evening that he shared what communion looked like in the physical. [01:04:15] (36 seconds)  #JesusUnderstands