A Fresh Start: Be with Others

This episode contains portions from the following programs:

"Grounded in Community"

"Erasing the Epidemic of Loneliness in Church"

"Plugging In"

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Dannah Gresh: Happy Weekend! I’m so glad you’re here. Wish I could see your face, and you mine! Hey, speaking of being glad . . . think with me for a moment. I want you to recall a time when you knew someone was super glad to be with you.

You know whose face literally lights up when you show up? Someone who does that for me is Theo Robert Gresh. That’s my newest grandchild—first grandson! Wow! When he’s sure my eyes have locked onto his, well his smile beams bright, and my whole being changes. Literally! Brain scientists say that our neural pathways literally light up when we experience that face-to-face gladness! Why? Well, we’re literally born looking for someone who is glad to be with us. We’re made for connection, for relationship with God and others. 

Let me say it this way: you were made for connection, to experience face-shining gladness with others . . . and even face-shining gladness with God.

We’re talking about the importance of community today on Revive Our Hearts Weekend. I’m Dannah Gresh. Thanks for joining me. 

No matter how introverted or extroverted you are, you need solid community—fellowship with other believers. Maybe you’re someone who is “amen-ing” and cheering in agreement with me because you’re a people person. Or maybe—like me—you’re more introverted and you’ll need to learn why these relationships matter to step out of your quiet spaces. Or, I know it’s possible you’ve been hurt by relationships—particularly those in the church. Nothing hurts more. I know because I’ve been there. 

People aren’t perfect, which means no relationships are perfect. But the reality is: God designed us to be in community and experience life and joy with others. And with the new year that’s just begun, I wonder if we need a fresh start, a fresh perspective on relationships. Let’s do a deep dive today and see if we can get all of us excited about Christian community! 

I’d like to start us off by sharing part of a message I gave at our Revive ’21 conference about being grounded in community. I talked about my discovery of how much Christian relationships change us and why it’s important to be there, to be available for the people around you, even when—no, especially when—it gets messy!

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Listen, we’re called to meet the needs of one another in a way that the rest of the world is not. The New Testament is full of one anothers. If you’ve heard Nancy teach, you’ve heard her teach an entire series on the one anothers of Scripture, right? Forgive one another, comfort one another, serve one another, pray for one another, bear one another’s burdens.

Let’s be honest about that. It’s highly inconvenient. It’s highly inconvenient to bear one another’s burdens; it’s messy, it’s frustrating. Let me remind you that the Christian life is a cross-bearing life.

As girls, we don’t want to be burdens to each other. We’re like, “I don’t want to inconvenience you.” Listen. Look right here. You are a burden. It is as it should be. You are a burden so that I can receive the blessing of carrying it with you.

When we have that false pride of not asking for help, that’s one of the reasons why we’re not having our tables open enough. What if we opened our table and said, “Hey, the toddlers have decorated the living room, so could you clean that up while I cook some popcorn?” That is bearing one another’s burdens together. That’s what we’re meant to do. The Christian life is a cross-bearing life.

Jesus said, “If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself, take up his cross, and follow me” (Matt. 16.24). This could make us look so different. If we allowed the Spirit to fill us so fully, the presence of Christ to work in us so completely that we became the bearers of one another’s burdens in a way that the rest of the world didn’t understand—wow! In a world that discards inconvenient, burdensome relationships to the point of being known for cancel culture, I want to tell you that when you’re in a difficult relationship with a sister in church, you do not cancel your sister. You cancel the debt because we forgive one another. 

The early church experienced community with glad hearts. What’s that mean? They were pleased, they were delighted. Yay! Does that mean everything was peachy keen and wonderful? No! Do you know these were believers who weeks earlier were hiding for their lives, who were terrified for their lives, under a terribly restrictive, oppressive persecuting government? This wasn’t easy, what they were doing, but they were glad. Christian fellowship can make sad days glad.

Sometimes just regular sad days. I really wish my job was always teaching, researching the Bible, writing teachings, and writing books. But it’s not. A lot of my job is proofing marketing copy—yay. Meeting deadlines—hoorah. Answering all the emails that Aubrey and Noli and Wade send me—yay. I don’t always have a lot of passion for those days. You have some of those things on your to-do list that you’re like, “Lord, get me through!”

I was having one of those particularly bad days where I was really kind of grumbling about the tasks at hand. Janet, who’s a part of my church, walked in. She invited Aubrey (not me) to go out for Mexican food. I intercepted the pass. “I’ll go!” I was just like, “I don’t want to work anymore!” But I can’t tell you enough how discouraged and distraught I was that day, really weighed down, like we are by the laundry, like we are by the bills that need paying, like we are by the vacuuming—that kind of weighed down.

But there, with chips and salsa, Janet and I started talking about Jesus. I want to tell you, my heart was dead when I sat down in that booth; and when I left, because we talked about Scripture, and we talked about what God was doing in our lives and what God needed to do in our lives, it was like . . . I don’t know, have you ever experienced that, where the Spirit just stirs in you?

I went back and I was like, “I get to edit marketing copy—yay!” It changed me. Christian fellowship changes us. 

As I was studying this whole glad thing, I just felt so drawn to the word “glad.” Do you ever feel like the Holy Spirit just takes a holy highlighter and He’s like, “This word.” Have you had that?

Gladness is not a condition of our circumstances. It’s like joy, a miraculous work of God in spite of what is going on around us.

Yesterday morning I still hadn’t figured out, “What does the Lord want me to understand about this whole gladness thing?” I got a text from my friend Collette, who’s a part of my church. This is what she texted me yesterday morning. “Hope the Lord revives your glad.” Does that even sound like a regular sentence? (laughter)

She attached a worship song for me to soak in, and it was a song based on Psalm 92:4. So I followed the trail, and I got into Psalm 92, and it starts, “For You, O Lord, have made me glad.” 

It was the presence of Jesus in Janet over that Mexican salsa and chips that made me glad, not Janet herself (although Janet’s amazing). When we go through burdensome times, hard times, painful times, it is the presence of Jesus that helps us hold onto our glad.

Have you been hurt or disappointed by someone in the church? It’s not us that makes each other glad. We are sick, we are sinners, we are needy. No matter who we are, we will disappoint. We will at times make one another sad. That’s when the rest of us bear the burden, and we pick that one up and we carry them. They are our cross for a time. When we do that, the Spirit stirs inside of us, and He makes us glad.

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Oh, Friend. I hope the Lord revives your glad. I hope He does it today! It’s something I’m passionate about, and I love that I got to share about it at our Revive ’21 conference. If you’d like to hear the message in its entirety on our website, ReviveOurHearts.com/weekend. 

Isn’t it funny how a simple conversation, like talking with Janet over chips and salsa, can impact a day, can change your whole mindset? 

Ah, but I can imagine, it’s possibly been a while since you’ve had a conversation like that. Maybe even don’t remember why it matters. Perhaps you’re about to give up on Christian community.

Michel Kendricks was a discipleship pastor who had become so discouraged by what was happening in his Christian community, he quit his job! He couldn't figure out why so many mentees in the Church didn’t seem to be growing in their faith. So, he set out on a journey to figure out why discipleship in Church was only working for some people. Michel began meeting with a few men on a regular basis to study this, which led him to an interesting discovery about our brains . . . and discipleship. Erin Davis talked about this with him on Grounded recently. Here’s Michel explaining right brain discipleship. 

Michel Kendricks: Right brain is really a process. It's kind of our emotional, social, relational brain. It's very fast. It's faster than even our conscious thought. So, our right brains come down to these decisions before we even know consciously why we're thinking these things, why we feel this way. 

And our left brain is more than our words, it's our conscious thought. It's problem solving. It's kind of what we think of as the brain really. 

And so, we really have two brains. And they're really meant to work together in harmony. But over the last maybe 500 years, we've started putting more and more of our discipleship into our left brain, and we've kind of been ignoring the right brain portion. 

And so, we're not really arguing for right brain discipleship, we're actually arguing for a full brain discipleship, but that mainly means adding the right brain skills to the good left-brain skills we've already doing. We need to keep doing those. 

And so, an example of this came from a question I asked Jim, after he explained the brain. I said, “What's an example of a right brain based practice that's important that maybe we haven't heard of because we don't know that's not important?” And Jim said, “The human brain is looking for one thing before any other thing. It's the first thing it looks for, even as we're born. It's looking for this and it's the first thing throughout our life that we look for when we go somewhere and we're doing something. And that thing is joy.” 

Joy is defined as when I feel in my body, when I can tell from your face in your eyes that you are glad to be with me. I feel special. I can tell from your face that I am special to you. And joy is very, very fast. I know within basically a twelfth of a second if you're happy to be with me or not. And joy in the brain works kind of like a gas tank where it's the thing that gives us energy to do all the other hard relational stuff that life throws at us. It's like a gas tank.

So, one of the first things we need to do, which is a right brain skill, is start to fill up our joy's tank. 

Erin Davis: Wow.

Michel: And that means we build joy with God. You know, I think Numbers 6 is a classic verse. It's a prayer that actually God gave to Moses and Aaron. That doesn't happen that often where God gives us the prayer to pray over the people. And the prayer that God gave Aaron is, “The Lord bless you, and the Lord keep you, and the Lord make His face shine upon you.” 

I read that Scripture and I thought that is the neurological definition of joy. It's when our faces are shining on each other. It's when we can feel God's face shining on us. And we're shining our faces back on God. And so, we could very much build joy with God, that's a very right brain skill, and we build joy with each other. 

It reminds me of the apostle John. He wrote to one of the churches, this is interesting, because he says, “I have much to write to you,” he's saying to this church, “but I don't want to use paper and ink. Instead, I want to visit you, and I want to talk with you face to face, so that our joy may be complete. 

And so, joy is very much face to face. It shows why it's so important for us as Christians to get together in person. You know, even online, we can't build joy the way we do in person because it's too fast. The bandwidth can't keep up with the non-relational. There's actually a twelve times per second signal between your eye and my eye when we're together that builds joy, and we lose that synchronization online. So being together face to face, just like the apostle John just said, is so important for us to build our joy together.

Our churches are really meant to be high joy environments, where we are glad to be together. Now, it's doesn't mean we're happy. Because we can be joyful when we're happy and we're smiling. We can also be joyful when we're sad. 

Erin: Yeah.

Michel: Like if something's going on with you. “I'm glad to be with you in this hard thing. That is sad. And it's joy at the same time because you're sad, but I'm happy to be with you.” 

We don't have to put like a plastic Christian face on, our plastic Christian fake smile on our face to be joyful. Instead, we're just glad to be good together and bonded in the good times and the hard times.

Erin: Man, I'm learning so much. We started this episode talking about loneliness. I'm hoping you can connect some dots here for us between just thinking about the brain and our discipleship. There are a lot of lonely people in our Church. Can you explain what's going on there? And what hope you would have for that person?

Michel: The solution to loneliness really is . . . One of the big solutions is that we have a low joy tank that needs to be filled up. In other words, we don't see very many faces that we can tell are happy to be with us. 

We can also be with people and still be lonely. We can even be a church and still be lonely, especially if we're surrounded by people whose faces, they're kind of their own thing. Like if you go to the supermarket and people are looking at their phone.

Erin: Absolutely. 

Michel: It's definitely this thing. It is like a joy killer in our society. 

Erin: Yeah. 

Michel: And it's also like if we're surrounded by people that are kind of pretending to be good. Churches can almost encourage us to stay disconnected. But a lot is really what bonds us is that we give people our faces momentarily and just let them know we're glad you're here. 

And so often there's a fear to share those deeper struggles. Sometimes, obviously, that fear is valid; there's some churches that aren't safe places to share that kind of thing. But our churches really need to be places where we can share our weakness, and it's treated and received with kindness and tenderness and joy again, meaning, in this horrible thing you just shared man, I am glad to be with you. We might even say I have no idea what to say, but I am so glad you told me. That is a very high joy statement.

Erin: I can think of the moments that I've experienced that. There is no loneliness. There may be sorrow, there may be grief, there probably is repentance. But you're not lonely when someone's willing to look you in the eye after you've shared the hard thing. This is all great. This sounds right. But is this biblically defensible? You've pointed us to some places in Scripture. But as a discipleship pastor you’ve started to wrestle with the impact of the brain, what places in Scripture opened up for you in new ways?

Michel: That's interesting, because I kind of went back and read the whole Bible again, after learning the importance of joy. I said, “This has to be all over the Scripture, because the God who created, the One who inspired the Bible, is the same God who wired our brains back together. So, these two should really cohere. And I saw it in spades. I saw joy all over the Bible. 

You know, I mentioned Numbers 6. But if you go through Psalms, they're everywhere. One of my favorite songs growing up when I first became a Christian was in Psalm 16, where David writes, “In Your presence is fullness of joy.” And I read that and I went, “Oh, joy and presence.” And actually, I used my seminary Hebrew for one of the only times. I cracked it open and looked at that word “presence,” in Your presence as far as the joy. It's actually the word for face. Because in the Hebrew mind, the face and in your presence are inextricably linked. Your presence is in your face that really says, in your face, God, there is fullness of joy. Again, it's God's face shining on us. 

And so, part of our work as disciples is learning to receive that glowing face of God. Because oftentimes, we think, Well, God's just disappointed in me, or He's mad at me. And just like with our children, sure they'll disappoint, they'll disappoint us, they'll break things, they'll do and say things that disappoint us. And yet there's joy. I am so in love with my kids, even though sometimes they drive me crazy. My love for them is unstoppable.

And so being able to receive that from God, it's all over Scripture. I encourage you to actually read through the Psalms, and pause whenever you see the word joy, and let that sink in.

Dannah: I hope you know that “glad to be with you” joy Michel Kendricks just explained.That’s really only possible when we are with others, face to face. It’s so important to be in churches, in each other’s homes, in the presence of people. 

I hope you’ll listen to the rest of that conversation Michel and Erin Davis had together. I’ll add a link in the transcript of this program! It’ll surely fire you up to get in community.

So, how do we do that? How do we get in community? Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth is here with some practical ways to find community and get involved in your church. 

Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth: Find a place where God wants you to be. Get plugged in. Unless God leads you out of there for biblical reasons (and we'll talk about that before the end of this series), stay there. Be there. Attend faithfully.

Now, assuming you're going to church, how do you go to church? Well, can I just say, don't go to just sit and spectate? Go to meet with God in the company of His people. Go expecting to hear from God. And realize that as you go, you're not only going to meet with God—because you can do that in your bedroom—but what you can't do in your bedroom is meet with God in the company of His people, in the company of His body.

Go to be a blessing. Go to church to serve, to give. Then I know somebody is thinking, But I don't know the people in my church, and no one reaches out to me. Church is so unfriendly. Well, it sounds kind of simple, but can I just say, "Walk up to somebody and say hello." Meet people! Greet people. Make the first move.

People think I'm outgoing, but I'm actually pretty introverted. It's hard for me to walk up to new people and introduce myself. I have to, well the Lord has to help me, but I know it's important so I do it. Introduce yourself, learn people's names. Over and over again in Paul's letters to the New Testament churches he says, "Greet one another." That could be considered a biblical command at least seven times in his letters.

Romans chapter 16, at the end of the book of Romans, Paul names people he wants to greet there. He says, "Greet Priscilla and Aquila. They have been co-workers in my ministry for Christ Jesus. Greet my dear friend Epaenetus. He was the very first person to become a Christian in the province of Asia. Give my greetings to Mary who has worked so hard for your benefit. And then there are Andronicus and Junia, my relatives, who were in prison with me. Say hello to Ampliatus whom I love as one of the Lord's own children, and Urbanus, our co-worker in Christ, and beloved Stachys" (paraphrased verses 3–9). On and on and on and he ends with this word. Verse 16: "Greet each other in Christian love" (paraphrased).

In that one passage alone Paul greets twenty-six people by name. He knew about those people. Many of them he didn't just say their name, but he said something about them that he knew and appreciated about their service for Christ.

That speaks to me the importance of relationships in the body of Christ. It says that people are important. They matter to God. Their names are important. They need to matter to us. You can be sure all those people—Andronicus, Ampliatus, Urbanus, Epaenetus . . . you can be sure that all those people had needs spiritually. They all had rough edges, just as we do. There weren't any super-saints in that church in Rome any more than there are in your church or in mine.

Even when writing to the Corinthian church, riddled as that church was with conflicts and carnality and doctrinal confusion, Paul says at the end of 2 Corinthians 13, "Greet one another with a holy kiss" (v. 12). Greet each other. He doesn't say in this church that has humongous problems, "Quit the church or go find another church." He challenges these believers to deal with one another and to deal with these issues in genuine love and humility.

So when you go to church, don't wait for people to approach you and be friendly. Take the initiative; reach out; be friendly to others. Show an interest in them; show an interest in their children. Look for people who are there alone if you're there by yourself and feeling alone. Look for other singles or women who are married to unbelievers that don't go to church with them, for widows.

Proverbs 18 says: "A man who has friends does show himself to be friendly" (paraphrased, v. 24).

Ask people questions: "How are you doing? Really, how are you doing? How can I pray for you?"

In my church there's a woman who comes up to me almost every Sunday, anytime I see her. Invariably she says to me, almost the first thing out of her mouth, "How can I pray for you?" And Cathy prays for me. She lives some distance away, so we don't see each other except on Sundays, but she prays for me. "How can I pray for you?" Pray for people, and pray with people and do it at church.

Be the body. Greet one another; encourage one another; pray for each other; show genuine interest. Can you imagine if everyone would do that or if just even a lot of people would do that in our churches? You say, "I wish they would." You do it! Even if you're the only one in your church who does, do it. Reach out. Get beneath the surface.

Even between weekend services, set a goal to connect with at least one person from your church once each week during the week. There's nothing . . . I don't mean to be dogmatic about that, but that's just a simple little goal—a phone call or a lunch together or getting together with your kids. Set a goal to connect with somebody from your church once during the week so that we're breaching between weekends. We're ministering to each other.

It's not enough for us to go and sit in a service one hour a week, important as that is. But we need more than that in order to cultivate community, to cultivate authentic relationships in the body of Christ in our local churches. So I want to give just a few simple suggestions here about getting plugged in to the life of the church—not just being there for services on the weekends, not just greeting one another when you are there, but some suggestions beyond that.

First, I would say it's important to get involved in some sort of small group where you can develop closer relationships than you can with 300 or 3,000 people at your church service on the weekend. Now your church may not be set up with small groups per se, but maybe there's a Sunday school class, or there's a Bible study, or there's a body life group, or there's a ministry group. It may be singing in the choir or on a praise team or teaching in the third grade Sunday school department where there are other teachers who would pray together. But get involved in some sort of smaller group where you can establish closer relationships.

It doesn't have to be that everyone in that group is in the same season of life. In fact, I think this is really valuable. One of the things that I think is not wise, in my opinion, about the way some churches are structured today is everything is oriented around the same age, the same season of life and the same interest.

We can learn and grow together. It's part of being a family. We have different ages and seasons of life.

You can go to a small church and not really plug into people's lives. But either way, you need to make sure that there's a smaller group network of relationships that you've established. You need that community. We need the obligation, the accountability, the relationship, the fellowship, the responsibility, the discipline, the structure for growth. We need that, and that can come from smaller group settings.

Dannah: Yes! We’ve just heard some great ways to cultivate community from Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth. So I wonder, what’s the next step you might take to seek people out? 

For me, God’s put it on my heart to spend more face-to-face time with my three daughters this year—Autumn, Lexi, and Aleigha. And you know what? We’re not going to study the Bible. (This is coming from a Bible-study-junkie, mind you! I LOVE studying the Word.) But what God’s calling me to this year is this: face-to-face time with my girls with one prompting sentence. A question, "How can I pray for you?" And then, I just wanna listen and love on them. I want my face to shine on them the way my grandson’s face shines on me. I have a prayer I want to pray at the end each and every time. I’m gonna pray it over you in a sec, so stick around. 

But first, let me challenge you to start this year off by making a difference with your presence in the lives of others, and watch what God will do as you say yes to experiencing community. 

Don’t forget, you can hear the full episodes of these pieces you heard today, all on the Revive Our Hearts app, or at ReviveOurHearts.com. And hey, while you’re there, I want to make you aware of all the free resources available to you on our website. From podcasts to videos, to blog posts, articles, event kits, and more, we want to provide you with material on a wide variety of topics so you can thrive in Christ in every season. When you support the ministry this month, you’re making it possible for us to continue to produce trustworthy, free biblical content in the year to come.

If you'd like to make a gift to theministry. You can do that by calling 1-800-569-5959, or go to ReviveOurHearts.com/weekend, and click on today’s episode. 

Thanks for listening today. I’m Dannah Gresh. We’ll see you next time for Revive Our Hearts Weekend. Now, let me pray Numbers 6:24–26 over you. I think you’ll see why I’m so excited about faces shining on each other. It’s a little bit like God!

The Lord bless you and keep you;

the Lord make his face shine on you and be gracious to you;

the Lord turn his face toward you and give you peace.

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