Collision: At church I have been bringing messages on worship and just taking us on a journey of worship. We've looked at the glory of God that merits our worship, we've looked at our physical and spiritual response to worship and then last Sunday at baptism the outward expression of our being all in. For this final week I wanted to talk about community and how worship is designed to be done with others. I think I chose the word community first of all because it's one of our values and two because I think it's so darn important. I would guess that 25% of all my messages center around being in community with others.

The antithesis of community is isolation. Isolation is tricky because you can have lots of friends and still be isolated. You can be incredibly busy and/or successful and still be isolated. You can attend church, life group and a dozen other things the church does and still be isolated. You can appear all put together but really you're the most isolated of them all.

Isolation happens to people that are married and people that are single. It's also one of the greatest tools of our enemy and one of the greatest lies of our society. Isolation destroys, it lies. Isolation insulates us from being confronted with our sin and it prevents us from seeking help for our problems. Afterall if you're all alone who can possibly help them.

As stated isolation seems pretty nasty. Who would want that? But we do. We don't want to be challenged in our lives. We want to appear strong and put together and not needy. We want to hold the lie it so we isolate. What if living in community with others required us to sacrifice, to give up something, to stop a certain behavior that's paying us off? What if it meant we had to stop treating our wives like crap? Would we still frown on isolation.

Community is heavy, its hard but it leads to worship. And worship is what we were made for. Cue Chris Tomlin...You and I were made to worship.


Weight:

Here is a current picture of me. Aside from the color the shirts I'm wearing below and here are the exact same. You'll have to excuse the radiant like in the background. What can I say? His face shines upon me.