You can only make sense of yourself in community. Solitude with God is vital but you don’t ‘find yourself’ in solitude. You find yourself in community. You were made to live in community and what God has equipped you with by his Spirit will only emerge in community. A fitter and turner once told me how he was working in an engineering shop making the same complex metal contraption for days on end. For a long time he had no idea what they were or what they were for. But one day he got to see the machine of which this contraption was a part and then the contraption that he had been making made sense to him. Have you ever felt like a strange contraption, wondering where you fit? You will only ever discover that by being fitted into the great spiritual mechanism called the church. We are called to continue the ministry of Jesus in the world. But none of us, alone, can be all that Jesus wants to be in this world. Together, however, we can be. That is why Paul calls the local church community, ‘the body of Christ’. Each of us is a part of that body and it is only when we function as such that we will ever discover what God has put in us. There is no such thing as ministry apart from the body of Christ. The Spirit of Christ works through the body of Christ. Serve with the church anywhere you can and as you do this your gifts and calling will emerge.
Do what you can to build others up and be a blessing to your church community.
Read 1 Corinthians 12:12-31
