Not Perfect Like Jesus

"Why do I need community?" I asked myself. "Why do I need so badly to find a place where I can be filled by other people?" After all, Jesus went away on a mountain to pray when he needed to regroup (Luke 6:12). "Why can't I do that? I'm supposed to be like Jesus, right?"

As I stood there looking in the mirror, I suddenly had this thought, "But you're not Jesus. You're not perfect." And then I had this thought, "Jesus always had community. He was a member of the triune God and always had that communal fellowship and filling." Yes, believers in Jesus have the promised Holy Spirit, but that's not exactly fellowship. If God intended for us to do life on our own, he would have made us one man bandstands who could give to others without needing to receive. But that's not the way he made us.

God made people to be relational beings. I've written about the verses that keeps me motivated to stay in church many times, but here they are again. Hebrews 10:24-25 says, "And let us consider how we may spur one another on toward love and good deeds, not giving up meeting together, as some are in the habit of doing, but encouraging one another—and all the more as you see the Day approaching" (New International Version). I need people. We need people. We can't do it alone. Yes, we need to give (a conviction that often brings me guilt), but we also need to receive. We can't do one without the other.