Jumping back into Philippians. Let's hit chapter 2. Which you can find here. You can change it to whatever version you want.
Therefore if you have any encouragement from being united with Christ, if any comfort from his love, if any common sharing in the Spirit, if any tenderness and compassion, 2then make my joy complete by being like-minded, having the same love, being one in spirit and of one mind.
This portion of scripture, to me, talks about being in the church. A unified church. Being like-minded, having the same love, and being one in the spirit. We, as a whole, do a horrible job at this. We poke fun at other denominations. We spend so much time trying to find fault in people that we forget that we are all working towards the same goal. The common goal should be to reach people with the gospel. Regardless of race, age, or denomination. This is where things get muddy. From what I've gathered, people just want to feel like they belong and are accepted. Even if they say that they don't. They want to be sure that they are loved and cared about.
I was reading a devotion the other day that was talking about community outreach in the church. How it was our job to serve once we are saved. Lots of people don't like that. Serving. Or helping. Some people go over and above and drown themselves in ministry so they feel like they are doing something. Here's the problem. If you aren't reaching people for the sake of the gospel, what are you doing? You can do thousand of outreaches, thousand of community projects, but if you aren't ministering to the hearts of the people who are coming. What's the point? Other than spending money and being able to say you did something. It's almost a 'check your heart' situation.
When we skip down to verse 14 and 15 we see God telling us that we should do things without grumbling or complaining. Ugh, I have to drive how far? I have to get up at what time? I have to spend how many hours doing this? Yes, I get that sometimes it can be a little too much. It's the cause. What are you doing it for? Gods word tells us that we should do things for God and not for man. (Col 3:23 and Eph 6:7) Funny that I was talking to my best friend about this yesterday. How our attitudes are when we are serving. Are we feeling delight in serving or are we just complaining about it?
Yeah, serving and helping in the church is hard. It's hard to separate our time and God's time. We complain because we have to do a little extra or go out of our way to get things accomplished. But there is joy in serving! You get to do it with people who have the same goal in mind as you do. And if you don't, that's where the problem is. If you have two sides working against each other, what kind of message is that sending to a lost world?
My favorite thing about working retail was helping others. I worked in a local pet shop and people would call with questions . Or when they were looking for the right dog food they would ask us our opinion. I find it funny because people who were passionate about the brand they worked for would come to the store and give us talks about their brands. We had a rep for a specific dog food who would come in and spend a whole day explaining their food to us as a retail provider. Of course I took the time to talk to people about that brand. Why? Because someone cared enough about their product to come and talk to me about it. And that's what we should be doing as Christians. We should be so passionate about what we have that we want everyone to know about it. And yet, we don't. We just wanna do the little that we can to get by. We don't want to put effort or time in serving others.
I don't know. Maybe I'm way out of line here with all this but I really feel that it needs to be said. We need to start working together as a body of believers. As Christians, as church people. We need to get it together and work together. If I can live on a campus with 700 students who came from different backgrounds and get along, I don't understand why Christians in the real world can't.
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