Creating a Secure CHURCH
PART 2 : Secure in Relationships
Chapter 4 : Imperfect People!
4.5 Breaking the Barriers of Isolation
So what have we got in all the cases we’ve considered so far in this chapter? We’ve got a lot of people who, in reality, are so often separated off from the main body because of their past or their present foibles. There are people who are isolated because things in their past impinge on their present and make them less than whole people. There are people with character defects who are unable to realise God’s love and relate to others. And there are the rest of us who give way to the temptation to hold them at arms length and leave them in the prison in which they find themselves.
Christians are made for ‘fellowship’ which is that Greek word koinonia which means communion or sharing in common, which is that closeness that you find when you suddenly encounter a Christian on the other side of the world. But in each of the cases we’ve considered, fellowship is missing because we hold the person at arms length, we allow something to act as a wall between us.
Yes, it’s usually as much in them as it is in us, but until we’re willing to lift the wall away by our total acceptance, they won’t be willing to allow it to be removed either. All the time while God is wanting to minister into their lives and bring change, we allow the enemy to thwart His will, and they remain unchanged – and we’re remaining unchanged!
The truth very often is that people remain the problem they are because we have not created the environment of love through which Jesus can reach to touch and change them. Whereas we simply saw them as the problem, we are actually part of it ourselves – and never realised it!
One of the results of isolation is that it makes us prone to wrong thinking about other people. The enemy sows thoughts that are lies in our minds and we allow them to settle there and grow. When we aren’t close to someone it is so easy to misunderstand them. It’s only when we meet with them, talk and share together that we come to understand and realise that they are nothing like we thought. It is so easy to fall into the temptation of judging people – when we don’t know them!
The verse at the start of this chapter is pertinent to this subject: Bear with each other. Some versions say forbearing one another, or enduring one another. In Eph 4:2 Paul said the same thing: bearing with one another in love, which has a sense of “Hang on in with one another, despite the temptation to give up on each other. Stick with one another.”
It doesn’t matter what they look like, what they sound like. It doesn’t matter what problems they appear to have, what their background is, how fast or slowly they change – they still have the same needs, to be loved and accepted, by Jesus in you.
