Sometimes we don’t understand ourselves until we interact with other people in real, and dizzying emotional intimacy. We need other people to give us perspective, especially perspective into our own lives. You know full well that by keeping suspiciously detached from people causes us to stray away from healthy and become mentally unfit. You’ve seen it happen to the old cat lady down the block– yes, the cat lady that hissed at you for walking past her home while waving hello to her.
My prayer is that our fellowship with you as believers will bring about a deeper understanding of every blessing which we have in our life in union with Christ. (Philemon 1:6 GNB)
There are two levels of “understanding” this verse in Philemon. The first is simple: interacting with other Christ followers will provide previously unseen insight into the work Christ in doing in your life and the lives of the people you are interacting with. That is simple– we see things that would not have been seen. The second level of understanding is that even the things that we knew and understood as works of Christ in our live will move from the superficial or shallow levels we experienced and knew them as and move toward a deeper, more rooted understanding.
This is important today because we live in a society that prides itself in being self-made and individualistic. Yes, those things get us far and allow us to do things, but we can do more and see more when other people are with us. Paul makes it no secret that he is praying to enrich his interactions with other believers so he can gain these two levels of understanding God.
This country is great, not because we are cowboys, or colonizers; but because we are collaborators, and conspirators working to seek the glory of Jesus in our communities. Join with me in fellowship today.
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