After the message yesterday I walked up to Tim and said, “Awesome message! In fact, it was the best I’ve ever heard you preach.” I meant it.

If you weren’t able to be there, I strongly encourage you to either get a copy of the CD next Sunday or listen online. He taught on Jesus’ prayer for our unity from John 17. More specifically, how important it is that we (Christians) are truly plugged into a local fellowship.

Especially moving and convicting was this quote he shared from Pastor Thabiti Anyabwile:

The local church is essential and critical to the believer the way a pacemaker is to a person with a diseased heart. The local church is essential and critical the way a nursing mother is to an infant – you won’t grow and be nourished without it.  The local church is essential and critical the way a husband and wife’s loyalty and fidelity are essential and critical to a trusting loving marriage - you cannot love without it.  The local church is to be the central set of relationships, the belonging to our spiritual life.  To put it in the negative, if membership in a healthy local church is not central to your understanding of the Christian life, in your daily living, your worship, you are slowly, perhaps imperceptibly starving, shriveling and becoming loveless, even if you don’t feel it!

Wow! Talk about hitting the nail on the head! Tim did a really good job at unpacking that, explaining how God’s purposes for our lives are realized, most significantly, through our relational involvement in community.

Yes. Indeed.

In fact, it reminded me of the quote we’ve posted on our church website, summarizing why we place such a strong emphasis on the need to regularly connect with other believers outside our corporate gathering on Sundays:

God’s work of change has relationships both as the necessary means and a wonderful goal. Humble community is not the icing on the cake of Christianity. In a real way, it is the cake. These relationships of love are a means of personal growth, a mark of God’s people being purified, and a clear argument to the world for the truth of the gospel. (Timothy Lane & Paul Tripp, How People Change)

I really do hope you’ll take the time to listen to the message from yesterday. Tim, thanks for preaching! It was obvious that a lot of prayer and preparation had been invested. We were well fed – thank you!