One Another

James 5:¹⁶ “Confess your sins to each other and pray for each other so that you may be healed. The earnest prayer of a righteous person has great power and produces wonderful results.”

Eccl.4:⁹ “Two people are better off than one, for they can help each other succeed. ¹⁰ If one person falls, the other can reach out and help. But someone who falls alone is in real trouble. ¹¹ Likewise, two people lying close together can keep each other warm. But how can one be warm alone? ¹² A person standing alone can be attacked and defeated, but two can stand back-to-back and conquer. Three are even better, for a triple-braided cord is not easily broken.” When we do life together we are stronger. The number one way of standing strong, not falling, and being consistent in fellowship with God is via community. Nobody is strong enough to be strong every time.

We need one another. Yes, we do! By the grace of God, I have been walking with Jesus for over two decades and I did not back slide once. There was never a time, by God’s grace, that I went back to the world. I did not leave anything in the world, so there is nothing to go back to. I died to the world when I came alive in Christ Jesus. One of the keys to a consistent walk with God is fellowship – with God and with God’s people. I always surround myself with Christians that are passionately walking with God. At the times when I was weak, it was my friends that held me up and prayed for me – fellowship! I have non-Christian friends too, in fact I deliberately make friends with non-Christians and then win them over for Jesus.

For some people, it is arrogance that keeps them out of fellowship with God’s people and eventually with God. Some are too full of themselves, they think that they know more than everyone else. While some are just plain selfish. The problem with a lot of people is they are too internally focused. It has to be all about them. A newly married man admitted to me that he is a very selfish person. He said even his mother knows this about him. I told him that he cannot continue like that because it will cost him his marriage. Even if he gets married ten times, I assured him that each marriage will crumble until he sorts out that selfishness.

When two selfish people get married, it is trouble. When the marriage is between a selfish person and a selfless person, the marriage will survive but just for a period. After a while, even the selfless person would feel cheated. In our relationships, we must think about the other person more than we think about ourselves. That is how relationships and marriages will work, that is how they will endure.

Prayer: Father, please give me a patient heart, a kind heart, a merciful heart, a forgiving heart, a selfless heart, a heart that prioritizes others above self, in Jesus name. Amen!