Fighting For Community
by Lindsey Hoyt
The Chore of Community
I have a letterboard hanging in my kitchen with this statement: “I was born to be wild - but only until 9 pm or so.” Honestly, that designated wild time ends much earlier! As an introvert, my social battery is running critically low by the time I leave my job. Most evenings, my ideal plans would include as little human interaction as possible. Not because I don’t enjoy people, but because I enjoy setting my own schedule and meeting my own needs. By the time Sunday morning or my weekly missional community gathering rolls around, participation often feels like a chore rather than a celebration of God’s grace.
Whether you’re an introvert or not, stewarding your energy resources well - knowing your limits and taking the time to recharge - is important. Running on fumes leaves us vulnerable to misbelief, burnout, and even sin. When we work beyond our capacity, we may be revealing a heart that is trying to prove our worth. Or a heart that doesn’t trust God to meet our needs. But the same can be true of the opposite extreme - a heart that overly desires “me time”. So often, my desire to be alone isn’t for healthy rest. It’s because I believe my time is better spent on myself than on others. I fail to believe that community is worth the effort.
In fact, this message is prolific in our culture. With just two scrolls on my Instagram feed, I’m bound to find multiple messages about self-care, the priority of my needs, my authentic self, and so on. What am I to make of these cultural temptations to self-indulgence? Should I ignore my body’s signals for rest completely? Or should I follow my internal desires wherever they lead, especially if that’s the couch at 8 pm? The gospel speaks a middle way between these two extremes. It offers wisdom to honor my own limitations by seeking soul-nourishing rest, and it calls me to entrust my needs to the loving hands of my good Father by seeking community when I don’t feel like it.
The result of trying to change my attitude toward community on my own will inevitably be resentment, failure, and shame. Only the gospel can produce lasting change. Only a change at the heart level will allow me to engage joyfully in community, to sacrifice my own needs on behalf of others, and to be recharged by the family of God. So, what does the gospel say about the value of community?
Community Is God’s Nature And He Designed Us To Reflect It
God created us to reflect his image, which is itself a community - Father, Son, and Spirit existing in perfect harmony with a united purpose. We may picture a lonely God deciding to build a world from nothing so that he could fulfill some grand purpose, but that is not the portrait of God the Bible gives us. Genesis 1:1 describes the Spirit of God hovering over dark emptiness before light even existed. Jesus was there, participating in creation, too (Colossians 1:15-17). When God created Adam, he had no void in himself that needed to be filled. However, Genesis tells us that humanity was incomplete because Adam was alone (Genesis 1:18). So God created Eve. A fitting partner that also reflected the image of God. An image of community. Two humans living in harmony with a united purpose - to cultivate the garden and to spread the image of God.
Sin Broke Community
The harmony of the garden did not last. Adam and Eve decided they knew their needs better than God. They disobeyed the only rule of the garden and ate from the tree God told them was dangerous. When Adam and Eve sinned, they had to be thrown out of the garden. They had broken the rule, but even worse, they had broken their relationship with God. To be in the garden was to be in community with God, and he cannot be in community with sin. The garden was a tangible representation of the perfection and holiness of God, and it could not be perfect and still be the home of Adam and Eve.
When Adam and Eve left the garden, everything changed. Their bodies would fail. They would fail each other. They would be completely separated from God. And so would every person born after them. Like Adam and Eve, we decide we know our own needs better than God. As a result, we experience division, hatred, envy, abandonment, apathy, and so many other broken relationships. We crave love. We want to know others and to be known. Because of sin, our relationships are doomed to be dissatisfying and even corrupt. God is the source of community, so without him, we are lost.
Jesus Redeemed Us To Community With God And Others
Praise God that he was not satisfied with leaving us alone (and lonely) with the consequences of our sin! In his great mercy, he still chose community:
“But God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. Since, therefore, we have now been justified by his blood, much more shall we be saved by him from the wrath of God. For if while we were enemies we were reconciled to God by the death of his Son, much more, now that we are reconciled, shall we be saved by his life. More than that, we also rejoice in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have now received reconciliation.” (Romans 5:8-11)
Because of Jesus, our community with God is restored. Jesus paid the consequences of our sin, replacing our brokenness with his wholeness. We were not redeemed from sin for a small, self-centered purpose. Like Adam, it is not good for us to be alone. We were redeemed to a massive, world-shaping, future-changing, gospel-centered purpose. The Garden of Eden will pale in comparison to the kingdom God is preparing for his people. He is working out a plan of restoration, and we are part of that plan.
Communion with God equips us for the other relationships in our lives. Since community reflects the image of God, we are missing the full scope of the story of the gospel without others:
We look like Jesus when we approach relationships with humility, serving each other and pointing to the glory of God (Philippians 2:5-11)
We cultivate relationships to help each other grow in areas of weakness and misbelief (1 Thessalonians 5:14)
We gather to carry each other’s burdens (Galatians 6:2)
We are stronger and more effective together (Ecclesiastes 4:9-12)
Confessing sin to each other and praying over each other is powerful (James 5:15-18)
Seeing Christian community brings people to Jesus (Acts 2:44-47)
Community Is Worth Fighting For
So, fellow introverts and those who aren’t - go to battle for community. You were created in the image of God, an image that is incomplete without others. When you were separated from God, he pursued you. Because he loved you, Jesus sacrificed everything that was rightfully his so that your biggest need could be met. So that you could return to community with God. Being in community with God changes everything. With the power of the Holy Spirit working in you and in the believers around you, hurts are healed, tired hearts are bolstered, doubting minds are encouraged, and habits of brokenness are recreated to look more like Jesus.
Enter into community with a heart at rest, knowing that your needs are not overlooked. Your Father sees you. He has chosen to know, love, and shape you tangibly through his image-bearers.