We must all come to understand and accept the truth that our walks with God are community projects.

We simply weren't constructed to live only for ourselves. We were placed on earth to be part of something bigger than the narrow borders of our own survival and our own little definition of happiness. The

The smart kid teases the dumb kid. The athlete makes fun of the kid with two left feet. Something is so wrong inside us that we can't even handle blessing properly.

Autonomous Christianity never works, because our spiritual life was designed by God to be a community project.

The DNA of sin is selfishness (see 1 Cor. 5:15). Sin turns all of us in on ourselves. It reduces our circle of hopes and concerns to things that touch and involve us. It makes us all focused on and driven by our wants, needs, and feelings. Sin can so fill our eyes with our needs that we become functionally blind to the needs of others. We can be so focused on our interest that we have little interest in the interest of others.

If you followed the Lord for a thousand years, you would still need the ministry of the body of Christ as much as you did the day you first believed.

To be part of God's redemptive rescue is not only a high calling but a moral obligation.

True biblical love doesn't just accept you, bless you with patience, and greet your failures with forgiveness. Along with all these things, it works to do everything it can to protect you from the eternal weaknesses of heart that make you susceptible to temptation.

Now, if these people are not the focus and object of ministry, then what is ministry?

If true humanity is bound up in community with God and godly community with others, I will never experience it when all my eyes ever see is my own need.

Love that cares, listens.

There is no love which does not become help.