Community Living | Averie Armbrust | AIM Short-Term Passport Missionary
The Lord had been putting a lot on my heart lately about living in community. Community can be one of the most challenging parts about missional living. Community never goes away though, it just changes and adjusts. When you’re living with 16 other people in one humble abode, you’re bound to learn a little something or two about how to live in community.
“For just as the body is one and has many members, and all the members of the body, though many, are one body, so it is with Christ“
1 Corinthians 12:12
We are all apart of one big body, the body of Christ. Each one of us has a part to do to make the body moving and flowing. Sometimes it’s hard to live in community when you have your own way of doing things and getting tasks done. But the most important thing to remember is everyone else feels this way too. To live in community means sometimes giving up the ways you complete tasks or even getting uncomfortable in the way you live. If everyone doesn’t do their part to make the body flow as a whole, then the task is never going to get done. When you’re around the same people basically 24/7 tensions and irritableness will arise. Sometimes i’ve just wanted to get in a car and drive away just so I could breath and calm myself down. But when this isn’t an option, I have to turn to some other way to get alone. The best thing to do when community gets a little tough is to turn to the Lord for advice and peace of mind.
“Do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility count others more significant than yourselves. Let each of you look not only to his interests, but also to the interests of others“
Philippians 2:3-4
When living in community, you need to take account into everyones interests and opinions, not just yours. The Lord calls us to put others before ourselves. Sometimes this call can be hard to fulfill when we’ve grown up hearing society tell us that the only person that can look out for ourself is us. But God says that the opposite is in fact what He wants us to do. In community we need to not only look to our own interests, but the interests of others as well. This is what community is all about: putting others before yourself.
Living in community can be hard. But it can also be one of the most rewarding things in the world. To be surrounded by an abundance of joy, love, and support is such an indescribable feeling. With every hard time in community comes growth. I promise you that with every difficult or frustrating time there will be 10 more joy filled and loving times that will completely overshadow those hard times. I encourage you to take every struggle to the Lord, pray over it, and give it up to Him. Just remember the golden rule and you will see fruit from it.
“So whatever you with that others would do to you, do also to them, for this is the Law and the Prophets“
Matthew 7:12