Sharing within the Body

Have you ever been close enough to someone that their joy was also your joy? Where their pain was your pain? I remember sitting at a friend’s wedding recently. He literally jumped for joy when his bride walked through the doors. I remembered how I felt when I saw my wife walk down the aisle, and I felt his joy. I was not directly affected by them getting married, but their joy became mine as I watched. I’ve also experienced the opposite. I had another friend recently receive some devastating news. This news would not directly touch me, but my heart broke with his. I felt nauseous thinking about how bad my friend must be hurting. In a small way, his pain became mine. In both situations, I felt closer to these friends by sharing their joy and their pain.

I’ve been studying through the letters to the Corinthians recently, and it has been massively challenging and convicting for me. I’d love to share one little passage that has shaken me up a bit lately. It comes out of 1 Corinthians 12.

“… so that there may be no division in the body, but that the members may have the same care for one another. And if one member suffers, all the members suffer with it; if one member is honored, all the members rejoice with it.” – 1 Cor. 12:25-26 (NASB)

Paul has been teaching about the value of every member of the body, which is the church. It’s a simple idea, but my question is, how big is our idea of the church? Saturday night students? Fellowship Saturday night? Or even all believers in Northwest Arkansas? What would the implications of this passage be if we saw the church the way Scripture teaches that God does? When God views the church, He sees all people everywhere who will follow Him. According to Scripture, if we embrace our role in the church, when another part of the church suffers, we all suffer. When they are honored, we rejoice!

I’m scared that we are so concerned with what’s going on here in our little corner of the world that we miss out on being a part of something so much bigger. It’s a simple challenge. What if we started learning about what’s going on in the rest of the world. Where is the church exploding and doing great? Where is the church being persecuted and suffering? How can we make their honor our joy and their suffering our suffering? I think the first step is that we learn about what’s happening and we pray for the church. Who knows what God will do from there? Below are a couple of websites you can check out to see what’s going on in the church across the globe.

For His glory and our joy,
Nr

www.voiceofthemartyrs.com
www.win1040.com
www.compassdirect.org