When we receive Christ, we BELONG to the GLOBAL family of God. However, it’s very difficult to feel like you’re part of a family when it consists of billions of members. So what does God call us to do? He calls us to be involved in the LOCAL family of God…the local church. But it’s still easy to hide in an auditorium where we worship God and listen to His Word. To truly belong, we must connect with a small group of people where we can experience community. Acts 2:46 says, “They worshiped together regularly at the Temple each day, met in small groups in homes for communion, and shared their meals with great joy and thankfulness,”
The early church understood, if people are going to truly belong, they have to be in a small group environment where they can be known. Regardless of your personality type—whether you’re an extrovert or introvert—every one of us need community. Not only do we need community, we need it frequently.
Relationships are a place to belong. They are a place to be known and to experience community. But they are also a place to become. Ephesians 4:15-16 says:
Rather, speaking the truth in love, we are to grow up in every way into him who is the head, into Christ, from whom the whole body, joined and held together by every joint with which it is equipped, when each part is working properly, makes the body grow so that it builds itself up in love.
To “become” is about growing into who God intended us to be. Again, that happens best in the context of relationships. Relationships are a place to belong and a place to become.
In his book, Vital Friends, Tom Rath shares a story about a colleague named Rebecca. In a conversation with Rebecca, she described how relationships affect her diet and physical health. She noted that while dating a former competitive wrestler, her eating patterns quickly began to mirror his “extreme diet.” Being a wrestler all his life, he was used to loading up on pizza, cheesesteaks, and milkshakes—and then going two days in a row without eating to take off the weight.
Rebecca described how she would “eat the same junk he did” at mealtime, but then went back to her normal eating habits during his two-day starvation routine. Even though her boyfriend was able to maintain a normal weight on this not-so-healthy diet, Rebecca gained 15 pounds.
After listening to Rebecca’s story about how her relationship had shaped her diet, Tom decided to ask 104 colleagues to respond to a brief questionnaire about their own diet and their best friend’s diet. The results were amazing. Those who reported having a best friend with a “very healthy” diet were more than five times as likely to have a very healthy diet themselves, when compared to people who had best friends with an average diet.
When Tom asked a similar question about “your best friend’s level of physical activity,” the results were just as shocking. In fact, of the 104 people surveyed, among those who had a best friend who was not physically active, NOT ONE was very physically active themselves. A few months later Tom and his team asked a random sampling of 1,005 people the same questions about diet and exercise and found similar results.
Why do I bring this up? Because when you share a common goal with somebody, you have a greater likelihood of success. When your goal is to become more like Christ, the journey is more successful when you take it with others who share the same goal. Relationships make becoming possible. As one man said, “You are the average of the five people you spend the most time with.” Here’s what the apostle Paul said about “Becoming”:
“Don’t become so well-adjusted to your culture that you fit into it without even thinking. Instead, fix your attention on God. You’ll be changed from the inside out. Readily recognize what he wants from you, and quickly respond to it. Unlike the culture around you, always dragging you down to its level of immaturity, God bring the best out of you, develops well-formed maturity in you.” (Romans 12:2 MSG)
Andy Stanley and Bill Willits observed, “Our enemy’s most successful strategy is to isolate us so he can attack and destroy us. Sheep are never attacked in herds. Sheep are attacked when they become isolated from the rest of the flock.” If we want to BELONG and BECOME, it happens best when we engage in community with other Christ followers. Do you belong to the family of God? Do you belong to the local church? Do you belong to a small group community who share a common goal to be more like Jesus?
