You can't break the power of depression, isolation, anxiety, if you're a loner, if you're a Lone Ranger.
The Lone Ranger Christian days are over, and I believe God's calling us to community.
And community is where we find identity. Community is where we find inclusion.
God's cure for loneliness, depression, anxiety is something that everybody struggles with, and God does have a cure.
And in 1 Peter 4, we have this one passage that, in my opinion, as a counselor, a pastor, and a leader,
really sums up some key points in how to break the power of depression, anxiety, and loneliness in our lives.
And it's 1 Peter 4, 7 through 11.
But the end of all things is at hand, therefore be serious and watchful in your prayers.
I gave an episode back on the power of prayer and how prayer is so important in breaking depression,
breaking loneliness, breaking anxiety in our life.
Even what the experts in science and psychology are saying about the power of prayer.
And above all things, have fervent love for one another, for love will cover a multitude of sins.
So in the last episode, I talked about the power of love and the power of solid relationships
and why we need a fervent love for other people in our lives.
You know, here's the thing. Sin separates us. Sin separates us from people. Sin separates us from God.
Now listen to what I'm going to say next. Sin separates you from yourself.
So sin and that law of separation has to be bridged in order to break the power of depression
and break the power of loneliness and break the power of anxiety in our lives.
And so having a fervent love, and I talked about the importance of going after relationships.
So wherever you are, whatever your circumstances, there are people around you.
People that need love. People that need your forgiveness.
They need your inclusiveness by showing them the kingdom of God through your love for them.
That's so vital and dynamic.
But then next the verse says, be hospitable to one another without grumbling.
So I would say thirdly, we open up our environment to other people.
The reason I say that is because you may be in a tiny apartment.
You may be, my goodness, you might even be in a prison cell.
You might be in a neighborhood.
Wherever you are, he's not saying open up just anything that you're living in that's your shelter per se.
He's saying be hospitable.
And what that means is can you be open in your location to other people?
Letting them into your life. Letting them in.
And in my life, in a home with my wife, we constantly have people over to our house.
We're constantly allowing people to come into our house.
Currently we have little lab puppies that we've raised up.
They're about to go to their owners soon.
But lots of friends and colleagues have wanted to see the puppies.
So almost every day someone's coming over to our house to see our puppies.
So we open up our home.
We open up our life to others.
We give them the opportunity to see how we live.
Opening up our lives to others breaks unhealthy cycles of isolation and loneliness.
So for many people, they kind of run to their home or run to their room or to their apartment, wherever they're living,
and just isolate themselves there.
Open up your home to others so that they can come in and enrich you.
So what is it to be belonging?
I mean, we all long for belonging.
And belonging is defined as the feeling of security and support when there is a sense of acceptance, inclusion, and identity for a certain group.
It is when an individual can bring their authentic self to others, including friendship, family, and work.
So that's inclusion that comes through belonging.
All of us are longing for belonging.
In our lives, we're looking for those that love us, understand us, accept us the way we are.
And that's pretty hard.
If you're not going to allow yourself to have other people in your life.
So I want to challenge you, you can't break the power of depression, isolation,
anxiety, if you're a loner, if you're a lone ranger, the lone ranger Christian
days are over, and I believe God's calling us to community, and community is
where we find identity, community is where we find inclusion, community is
where we find belonging, and all of us are made for that.
You're wired for relationships, God wired you for connection, he created Adam in
the garden, and he did not leave him alone, he brought Eve to Adam, and then
through Adam and Eve, they started a family, from the family came a village,
from a village became a city, from a city became a nation, so everything about
this earth, everything is about connectivity, it's about belonging, and
what we tend to do is we start to belong to a certain kind of group, and it's in
that grouping that we find some of our deepest meaning, but also sometimes when
we create a group, it can become a clique, it becomes a clique, and you might as
well call it a gang, it almost becomes a gang, where we start then to go back into
this separation mode, and so I think when he says be hospitable to one another
without grumbling, remember he's writing to a church, he's writing to a church in
Asia Minor, Peter is, and he is wanting us to understand that we, even as a church,
have to open up ourselves to each other, open up our homes and our lives to each
other, because even within a church we become cliquey, even within a church we
tend to separate from each other, and so God gives you a group of people that you
identify with, I think that's the best place to start, is just right there with
that group, developing a relationship with those people, but then I think
there's something to be said about the power of inclusion when we open up our
homes, we open up our lives to people that are really different than us, that
don't necessarily fit in the carved out little exclusivistic club that we set up,
that we would be open to others and allow them into our group, and so some of
the richest times in my life has been where I've been sitting around a fire pit
or I've been having dinner with people that I really kind of don't necessarily
relate to, but I ask good questions, I ask good questions, I try to pull out of their
heart who they are so that I can get to know them, and I'll admit I'm a weird guy
in the sense that I'm very curious, I really enjoy meeting new people, I enjoy
hearing their story, and so I think being hospitable means asking good questions,
it means including people into your atmosphere, into your world, it breaks the
power of clicky thinking, it breaks the power of being a gang or being a tribe
that's just exclusive to only our people.
Loving one another as Christ loved us breaks the power of isolation by also opening up
our lives to others and letting them see how we live, and I think some of the
greatest lessons that I ever learned when I was single was being around married
couples that I thought were super cool, and them inviting me into their home for
dinner, and as a single guy watching a couple relate to each other in their
kitchen, relate to each other in their atmosphere, because it was very natural,
it wasn't contrived, it wasn't fake, but it was very natural, and I learned way
more than any classroom training or any book that I could read, was just watching
the interaction of people, and same for you, if you have a home, if
you're married, if you have a roommate, whatever your circumstances are, to kind
of invite people in, don't be a clique, don't set yourself in a place of being
separate, rather learn to belong and let other people into that group, and in our
church, with the Road Church, we have community groups, and that's a powerful
way to be hospitable, is to invite people into these different house groups that
we have. You may be in a situation where there's groupings, and in that groupings
It's with other believers, it's other Jesus people
that you're relating to.
Keep growing that.
In other words, don't become so cliquish
that nobody else can come in,
but invite people in and love them there,
and there's power in that.
And so, I guess what I'm saying in this episode
is the power of community,
how important community is to break the power of isolation,
to break the power of loneliness,
which often leads into depression, anxiety.
So I challenge you, if you're in a group, invite others.
Don't become closed off, but invite others into that group.
Constantly be open and honest
about just how important community is,
and give other people who have no community
the opportunity to enter into your community.
So God bless you, I hope that's helpful.