September 30 – Strength in Community (Ecclesiastes 4:9-12)

“A cord of three strands is not quickly broken.”
(Ecclesiastes 4:12)

IN WORD:
God doesn’t produce loners. He makes some people more sociable than others, but He has not called anyone to a lifetime of isolation. Why? Because the body of Christ is made up of many parts. They cannot operate independently any more than fingers can operate without hands or muscles can operate without nerves. An isolated soul is, in a very real sense, separated from the fellowship of Christ. He can experience the Spirit of God in some ways, but not in others. An essential means of God’s Spirit working in our lives comes only in community.
That should be obvious, but those of us who have grown up in an individualistic society have been trained to think of human beings as co-existing, not interrelating. We choose our relationships with a sense of independence, never realizing that we depend on the whole church in order to be complete in ourselves. Jesus may dwell in each believer for prayer and faith, but He does not dwell fully in any one believer for His works and ministry. That requires a body with numerous, diverse gifts. If we want to bear fruit in His name, we must bear fruit together. It’s the only way.

IN DEED:
The Christian church is horribly fragmented. Somehow we got the idea that separation was a casual matter. We change churches with relative ease. We move in and out of spiritual relationships with apparent apathy toward them. True believers develop overly exclusive theologies and divisive personalities and cliques. All the while, we forget a foundational biblical principle: In the body of Christ, as in many other venues, unity equals strength.
God gives us this principle of the three-strand cord because He wants us to be wrapped and bound together. He wants us to gather in His name. He wants a unified body of Christ, not many bodies of Christ. He wants individuals to find strength in tight, durable communities.

“As we draw nearer to Christ, we shall be drawn nearer to His people.” -G.T. Manley-