A Paper I just wrote

So I am not a good paper writer but this is a paper i wrote on a book i recently read but it has some good stuff in it. Take time and read it. NOW!

In Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s book, Life Together, the majority of the text is focused on how, as Christians redeemed through grace, we can serve our Lord together as a church, but he focuses one chapter of this book on how, in personal alone time, a Christian brother can uplift and serve as a part of the bigger community of the church. There are people in the Christian fellowship who seek out community because they want it to be a distraction from the loneliness in their lives and there are also people who seek to avoid community because they feel that the community is not doing enough for them, so in turn they reject it. Both of those trains of thought can be extremely dangerous and with out the help of this book the bible clearly illustrates this point, in the command “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” It boldly states that we have neighbors and we need to love them. It first states the fact that we don’t just approach community as something we gain from but rather something we can give to. Secondly it says that you are meant to lift your neighbors’ needs above your own. The bible leaves not room for selfish ambition in seeking community or avoiding it and that is why I love how Bonhoeffer expresses how to approach community even when you are alone.

“Let him who cannot be alone be aware of community. Let him who is not in community beware of being alone.” This is a wonderful statement on how the life of a Christian should be played out! He is showing that if you go to the extreme of being alone or in community you can ensnare yourself in a dangerous trap. So in order for me to have quality alone time with the Lord I should also have that quality time with the Lord and other believers. It’s all about finding that balance of how much time to spend in each one. Many times there are things that I learn in the silence and stillness of being alone with God that I would not have learned in my time of community with believers. He goes on to describe three things that a person should try and accomplish in their alone time with the Lord.

The first being meditation, more specifically scripture meditation. The main point of this is to get alone and focus on a brief text of scripture, in order to allow the spirit to teach us the depths of this scripture. He goes on to say that even “the word “father,” or “love,” “mercy,” “cross,” “sanctification,” “resurrection,”” are in themselves big enough to spend a good amount of time thinking on. For example the word “father” can bring up so many thoughts about God and passages of scripture that you could make endless bible studies about “father”. Not that I won’t spend time in just spending time reading the bible as a whole, but there is great wisdom in taking a small text of scripture and studying it like crazy. Sometimes it might even take a little bit of time before your mind is clear enough to let the spirit speak to you and that’s ok. In the time of thinking and letting the Lord speak to you, you will find that if you seek the lord he will give you wisdom and he will show his will.

Secondly he approaches the topic of prayer in our daily alone time. Praying along with the scripture, personally I like the Psalms, brings us into a place where we are accepting the fact that the Lord is sovereign and good and will lead us, no matter what the situation, into his loving mercy. In our time of prayer we should also spend time praying for ourselves. Praying for our wants, needs, aspirations, temptations, and whatever else is pertinent to our personal walks with the Lord, the stuff that you wouldn’t necessarily pray in a large group of people. Jesus wants us to be open and honest with him in this time. He wants us to tell him what’s going on in our lives. Some times we try and pray very specifically and when other thoughts come into our minds we push them aside and don’t give them a second thought. Bonhoeffer states that we should just incorporate those thoughts into our prayer and you will get back to your original prayer in time, cause maybe those thoughts are from the Lord and he wants you to pray for them.

The third topic he brings out is intercession. “Every Christian has his own circle who have requested him to make intercession for them or for whom he knows he has been called upon especially to pray.” It means that we all have a circle of influence or a group of people that we spend our everyday lives with. Those are the people that we should be in prayer for day in and day out, even if we don’t like those people. I personally love the fact that he points out that through intercession there should be no anger or tension between any brother in the church, because if you are praying for that brother God will transform your heart and you will no longer see that person as an enemy, but as a fellow sinner who Christ also became sin for. It brings back into the focus of not judging each other and simply understanding that we all fail at times and the main response to anything should be prayer, even the little things.

All three of these things put together can make a rewarding personal time with God and it will profoundly enrich our time spent in fellowship with other believers. Through it community can become something so much deeper than a social club. Community can become a place where Christians, who spend time alone with a merciful savior, can come together as a group of redeemed sinners and worship a true living God and then go out, together, and spread the good news the we have received, which should be the goal of every Christian community.

peace,

matt