Redefining Independence - Stephen

     

Shattered broken dreams just up the road

You’d turn around if you knew what I know

That the battle’s lost when you fight alone

A brother needs a friend to walk along

 

The enemy does his best work in the dark

In that hidden room deep inside your heart

But if the door stays locked you won’t find victory

Out into the light comes accountability

 

Jesus knocking He’s waiting to begin

To shine His love on secret things within

Oh the choice you’d make if you knew what I know

Freedom waits for you just up the road

(“Just Up the Road” by Channing Eleton)

 

Now I know I’m not God. God is much wiser than I ever will or claim to be. But sometimes I wish God had created a place. Let me explain.

 

This place would be a place of community. A community of people not necessarily alike in skin color, culture, or sports fandom but in something greater. Something bigger than themselves. Something that could bind and knit their hearts together even if by all appearances they had nothing else in common. 

 

I imagine this community would also be a place where we could be free to share our burdens, our worries, and our fears. Not like some type of anonymous group meeting but more like a family get-together. Where one is greeted with a warm embrace as opposed to a smiling façade. A place where others are seeking renewal for one another as opposed to information or, worse, ammunition. It would be so easy for this group to share these things followed up by “DIY solutions” but this group would all be under the impression that God could work things out better than they ever could. 

 

I imagine this place to be where one could also be free to share their temptations and failures. The things we used to set aside to only share with the best of friends as kids and only after a promise of secrecy was agreed upon with a handshake of spittle. Those skeletons we keep in the closet, those thoughts we lay at night thinking upon, and maybe even those things of which we have found the shame and guilt to be unbearable. It would be so easy for this group to hear these things among themselves with a judgmental ear but for some reason these people would care enough to pray for these things too.

 

Finally, I imagine this place to be where people could grow spiritually together, encourage each other in their walk with God, and just worship His name. You know all of the things that many say are important but tend to get pushed aside by the busyness of this life. This group would help each other prioritize their lives and turn the phrase “peer pressure” into something good and eternal. 

 

And I know if this place, this gathering of believers of sorts, were to exist that nothing would keep people from that place. For although our mouths scream independence the aching inside all of us longs for a place where we are all in dependence upon one another.

 

As a man it is so easy for me to define my own masculinity by the individualistic standards of our society. Being referred to as the “Lone Wolf”, “Lone Ranger”, “Lone Survivor,” or any other “lone” descriptive seems to do something to my personal ego. Yet although that is the mask we all wear in public for some reason men continue to seek replacement for the close friendships society tells us we no longer need because we’re men. 

 

So this group of women, children, and men would gather on a regular basis to show a society that prides itself on so-called “independence” that we are in dependence upon one another and upon God Himself. Upon God in prayer and one another in encouragement and accountability. 

 

When one would forsake either or both of these, they’d know they are setting themselves up to be the next headline of a Christian’s moral failure. That headline, by the grace of God, may not be at the top of a news article but will always be in the hearts of those they love. Whether one is more damaging than the other is debatable at best.

 

Don’t you wish such a place existed in our independent world? 

 

“Is any among you afflicted? let him pray. 

Is any merry? let him sing psalms.

Is any sick among you? let him call for the elders of the church;

 and let them pray over him, anointing him with oil in the name of the Lord:

Confess your faults one to another, and pray one for another….”

James 5:13-14, 16a

 

“And the Lord added to the church daily such as should be saved.”

Acts 2:47