Love Thy Neighbor: Working Together – Team!
Love Thy Neighbor: Working Together – TEAM!
Last week we kicked off our new sermon series for the season of Epiphany, the season of light. Jesus is the light of the world and there is no greater way to let your light shine than by “Loving your Neighbor.”
We learned last week that one of the ways God intends for us to let our light shine is by living differently. This week’s teaching is also countercultural. God has designed that we are best when we let our light shine together with others. Paul writes to the Corinthians in 1 Corinthians 12 that we should not be ignorant about spiritual gifts.
Spiritual gifts are those supernatural abilities that God gives us when he pours his Holy Spirit out to us and gives us the gift of faith. When we receive faith through the Holy Spirit we also receive a gift or gifts that enable us to ‘let our light shine’ and to ‘love our neighbor.’ The difference about God is that he didn’t design his church or his body to use these spiritual gifts in a vacuum, but to be used in conjunction with others for the good of God’s kingdom.
It works kind of like the story of plow horses. When I was first born, some of the farms around us still had draft horses. Draft horses were large breeds of horses that were used for agricultural work and the hauling of heavy freight. Most of us are familiar with the Clydesdale who are of Budweiser fame, but there are also Shires, Percherons, Belgians, Friesians, Dutch, Russian, and a number of other breeds that were developed for this kind of work.
A single draft horse can pull around 8,000 pounds, but two draft horses teamed together can pull around 24,000 pounds. Remarkably however, when those two draft horses are trained to work together they can pull a remarkable 32, 000 pounds. It is because they are trained to work and think as one. It’s called synergy, when the whole is greater than the sum of it’s parts.
That’s how God intended the church to be. He intended us to work together to love our neighbor. In fact, while each of us could and sometimes should work alone, when we team together for good, like we are doing this Saturday, at Feed My Starving Children, we can accomplish so much more for his glory. We are better together, we are better than the sum total of our individual parts. Join us Sunday as we learn that “together, everyone achieves more!”
-Pastor Ken