Today, we're peeking into the often-overlooked book of Philemon, specifically focusing on the idea of community and fellowship among believers. The sharing of our faith, or koinonia, goes far beyond just evangelizing; it’s about the deep connections we form with one another as the body of Christ and, most importantly, how that impacts the Kingdom. In this episode we explore how the early church exemplified this community spirit and contrast it with the struggles we face in building genuine relationships today. I share my personal journey from being an introvert to thriving in community, only to face challenges that left me feeling isolated once again. But I’m here to encourage you: despite the difficulties, particularly the hurt of rejection, it’s crucial to reach out and seek that community, because we are stronger together. Let’s get into it!

Takeaways:

1. The concept of koinonia emphasizes community and fellowship among believers, which is often overlooked.
2. Building true community as seen in the early church is a significant challenge we face today.
3. Rejection is a common experience in seeking community, but it shouldn't deter us from reaching out.
4. Spiritual growth can come from rebuilding community after loss, and it requires stepping out of comfort zones.
5. Jenny Allen's book, "Find Your People," offers valuable insights into fostering deep relationships.
6. It's important to engage in listening prayer to discern God's intentions for our community connections.

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If you only have a couple minutes for scripture today, I got you.

Welcome to today's bite sized Bible cast.

So we are in a book I rarely open, and maybe it's different for you, but I would be willing to bet you rarely open Philemon.

We are in Philemon 16 and I'm reading out of the ESV and I pray that the sharing of your faith may become effective for the full knowledge of every good thing that is in us for the sake of Christ.

Now this verse is a perfect example that we have to dig deeper than just what our English translations say because at first glance you're thinking, okay, the sharing of our faith.

So evangelizing, right?

Bringing people to Christ, talking about our faith.

The word used for sharing is koinonia, which is community, like communal sharing.

The sharing of our faith being the community and the fellowship that we have with fellow believers.

Now that's absolutely not to say that sharing our faith with non believers is not important.

It's essential.

But I think we do it wrong a good part of the time.

But that's a conversation for another time.

But this places such a huge importance on community, on fellowship, and that is something that I firmly believe we are missing a lot of in the church here in America.

Don't think anyone would really disagree that building true community is really difficult.

Acts 2 is very clear about what the early church looked like and how much of a community it was.

It essentially was, was everyone living together and sharing what they had and taking care of each other's needs.

And no one wanted for anything because they all pooled their resources.

And honestly, I don't know how far that would have gotten Here in America we tend to frown upon situations like that.

But the Bible shows us many examples of how intensely communal the early church was and it's a stark contrast to how we live.

But there is something that we can do about it.

I am reading the book Find you'd People by Jenny Allen right now and it is fantastic.

It is completely challenging.

Pretty much everything about where I currently am at with relationships.

A little bit of background on me.

Most of my life I have been a complete and utter introvert.

You might not be able to tell that from my videos, I'm not sure.

I have always been a huge introvert, but when I started going through my divorce, I found this intense craving to be around people, to be in the midst of people, to love people, to be part of a group.

And I dove headfirst into community.

And I loved it.

I absolutely loved it.

It wasn't unusual for me to have two or three different sets of plans in a day.

I went from being a complete and utter introvert to.

To a complete and utter extrovert.

And I was thriving.

I was absolutely thriving.

I had multiple groups of friends and such deep relationships.

And then when I started dating my husband, most of that ended.

There are a couple different reasons for that.

I actually ended up losing quite a few friendships because a lot of people really did not want me to marry my husband and had extremely strong feelings about that.

And then the friendship was damaged when I didn't take their advice and avoid marrying him.

Just to be clear, marrying my husband is one of the absolute best decisions I ever made in my entire life.

And it is so clear how God brought us together and has knit us together and we have this deep, intense, beautiful relationship that points us back to Christ.

And so I think that there was just a lot of stuff happening spiritually behind the scenes.

The Enemy really did not want us to get married.

But.

But it all kind of boils down to I lost quite a few friendships when we got married.

And that really damaged my confidence and this beautiful, thriving community that I'd had this like multiple circles of friends and I was involved in a whole bunch of different groups.

And especially on the weeks that I didn't have my son, I was just out and doing things and being with people and participating and all of these things that ground to a complete halt.

And I went through a really intense period of.

I don't know that loneliness is, is the right word because I've always had my husband.

But it was a lot.

It was completely different from anything that I had experienced during that season.

I thought, wow, this is how my life is now.

I just am surrounded by people all the time.

And that changed.

And so my therapist encouraged me to pick up this book and I'm only about halfway through it and oh man.

I actually, I had started reading it on my birthday and I got to the part in the book where Jenny, the author, is explaining that she had this tight knit community, these women who would come over every week and they would share life and just do life together until all of a sudden it stopped.

And it was such a gut punch reading that that I'm like, you know what?

I'm not reading this on my birthday.

I'm gonna like pick up a cute like Christmassy, little like rom com kind of a novel and come back to this.

I kind of wish I would have stuck with it.

Has just made a really huge difference from where I was and where I am now.

And so I want to encourage you.

Community is really difficult.

I'm in the process of rebuilding community right now.

We're at a new church and we have been welcomed by this new church.

I've even got, you know, multiple sets of plans with multiple moms from the church in the upcoming weeks, as well as some other friends.

And it just.

I can feel this sense of blossoming because I am reaching out of my shell.

I am getting out of my comfort zone.

And a big mental shift that has happened for me.

Has been willing to accept the rejection and let it just roll off of my back.

There has been rejection has honestly been a very common theme throughout my entire life.

And I've come to the realization that this may just be a cross to bear and oftentimes a price that we have to pay to seek out genuine community on an ongoing basis.

Because we are in relationship with humans who are flawed.

Even when we are surrounded by believers and we have that common foundation, they're still humans and they're going to be flawed.

And a relationship can be damaged and someone can change.

And there are a lot of different factors that can go into a relationship that maybe once was very, very strong, completely falling apart.

Sometimes people just naturally grow apart.

So if you can relate to that, if you kind of have that sense of I feel like I'm always the one reaching out.

I feel like I am the one pursuing the relationship.

I feel like I am just so tired of extending and extending and extending.

I would love to encourage you to read this book as well.

I will put the title and the author down in the comments or in the description of the video because rejection absolutely sucks.

But it is necessary in order to build community.

And so I want to encourage you.

Community is going to look different.

This koinonia is going to look different at different periods of your life and given different circumstances.

There's a reason that it's hard.

The Enemy does not want us to have it because we are stronger when we are with other believers.

We are more effective for the kingdom when we are partnering together.

When we are partnering together as the body of Christ.

The enemy wants this to be difficult.

He wants this to be something that hurts too much to keep pursuing.

So what I want to encourage you to do today is try to work on shifting your, like, mental view of community.

And especially if rejection has been a common theme in your story like it has been in mine, I want to encourage you to hand that over to the Lord and ask him what he wants you to do.

With it.

And I also want to encourage you to reach out to someone today that.

I was waiting for it when I started reading this book.

I'm like, okay, I know there's going to be homework.

I know there's going to be, like, reach out to this people and this people and this people.

And yeah, it showed up.

And so you know what I did?

I reached out to a couple people and I had coffee with a couple people this week.

And things can take a turn for the positive just as quickly as they can take a turn for the negative.

So I want to encourage you today, especially if you are feeling beaten down by rejection, I want you to reach out today.

I want you to decide that rejection does not get to decide your place in community.

I want you to decide that.

Okay?

This is just part of the process.

Also, things can be awkward.

Especially when you're starting out and trying to get deeper with someone and find your place in a community.

There is awkwardness.

And for some reason, I had myself convinced that that was not normal, that everyone else was having a smooth time socializing and finding their place in all of this, and it was just me.

I was the only one having trouble.

That's a lie that the enemy wants us to believe.

And so I want to encourage you if you are feeling like it's easier for everyone else than it is for you if you are feeling like everyone else has their place and you just don't have yours, friend, that is a lie from the enemy and it's imperative to his mission that you believe that lie.

And it's really difficult to unbelieve things that have been living in our headspace and taking up our headspace and contributing to our view of reality for such a long time.

But it is so worth it to break out of that mold.

I am very much in a season of rebuilding community right now.

And honestly, I had to take a break from it for a while.

It is absolutely okay to need a break sometimes.

What we need to be doing is making sure that we are operating in God's timetable, that we are taking rest when he has that for us.

So today's action step, I want you to break out your journal.

Of course, you know me.

I'm always telling you to break out your journal.

Break out your journal and do some.

Some listening prayer.

The verse is Philemon1 6.

If you want to do some listening prayer on that verse specifically, but ask God what he wants for you right now in the area of community specifically, because that's one that's really difficult we're really lonely here in America.

It's a big, big problem.

But we also don't have to let that define our experience because God created us for community.

He created us for COIN and E for the sharing of our faith.

Emphasis on sharing well and faith because there is a richness of relationship that we can have with other humans, but that deepens exponentially when we are sharing faith, when we are pursuing the same goal, when we are operating as workers of the kingdom, and when we are working together to usher in the kingdom of God.

So take some time, do some listening prayer today and let me know how it goes for you.

I would love to hear what your hesitations are, what your fears are, what are the things that you face that are keeping you from believing that God could have community for you.

I'm happy to share more of my experience.

I like to be pretty open here on this channel and pretty vulnerable because even though that's deeply uncomfortable for me sometimes I see so much value in it.

And I've gotten a lot of, you know, comments and messages and things of people going, yeah, me too.

And thank you for sharing this.

So I'm going to keep sharing it.

So I would love to hear your experience.

I do upload all of these videos as podcast episodes.

My podcast is the True Grip podcast with Rachel Grid.

There's links to that over in my profile.

So feel free to go subscribe and check that out.

I would love if you left me a review.

Uh, Apple podcasts would be the best place for that.

So if you would take five minutes, even two minutes, it could be 30 seconds to go.

Leave me five stars on Apple Podcasts.

That would be be fantastic.

But as always, I am open to questions.

I am an absolute open book.

If you'd prefer a more private conversation, you can DM me or my email is Rachel at rachelgrit.

Com, but make sure you subscribe, follow, share this video with someone who needs to hear it, and I'll see you in the next one.

Bye.