How Your Life Affects Mine

It started five weeks ago,  an unignorable ache in husband's jaw after a routine dentist visit.  The dentist repeatedly assured him this ache was normal after a new crown.  Still, he knew in his gut that something was wrong.

Days passed as the throbbing steadily grew to where husband could feel each steady heartbeat pulse in his cheek.  After two weeks, he went to a specialist who easily identified the true problem. When filling another small cavity that same day, the dentist had drilled directly into a nerve, killing the tooth.  

One tiny nerve, invisible to the naked eye, was powerful enough to affect the entire body.  What's more, one tiny nerve didn't just affect my husband.  It drained our entire family, with the children not being able to play with daddy as they were wont to do and this wife having to pick up the slack when husband was too sick to help out around the house.

It never ceases to amaze me how something so small can have such a big impact.  An invisible grain of pollen settles inside my nose, and I have a full blown allergy attack that puts me to bed.  A rose thorn pierces a pin-sized hole in my child's finger, and the pain is enough to make her intolerably grumpy for the next few days.  Even something as simple as a half hour less sleep at night is enough to throw the body out of whack the next day.

The human body is a fine tuned machine and a fragile one at that.  The fact that it functions at all is a miracle.  One cog loses a spoke, and it is weakened, to affect one body that affects another body that affects an entire family...an entire world.

Paul makes a similar comment about the importance of all body parts functioning together, only he speaks not of the physical body but the corporate body of the church.  

Paul states, "For even as the body is one and yet has many members, and all the members of the body, though they are many, are one body, so also is Christ...For the body is not one member, but many.... But now God has placed the members, each one of them, in the body, just as He desired. If they were all one member, where would the body be? But now there are many members, but one body. And the eye cannot say to the hand, 'I have no need of you'; or again the head to the feet, 'I have no need of you.' On the contrary, it is much truer that the members of the body which seem to be weaker are necessary; and those members of the body which we deem less honorable, on these we bestow more abundant honor, and our less presentable members become much more presentable, whereas our more presentable members have no need of it..... And if one member suffers, all the members suffer with it; if one member is honored, all the members rejoice with it"  (1 Cor. 12:12, 14, 18-23, 26).

Just as I tend to forget how each part of my body must be in perfect working order for the rest of my body to work as it should, I also forget the same about the body of Christ.

When someone is absent from worship service, when someone in the body is suffering with family issues, when someone in the body is physically ill--I have the tendency to think it doesn't affect me, personally.  Don't get me wrong.  I sympathize with their situations.  I pray for them.  I might even cry in sincere grief over the pain they're going through.  Yet, still, for the most part, I don't really realize the impact they have on me and me on them.  I look at it as their problem, as my problem. 

But according to Paul, I am dead wrong.


Each of these persons is a member of the body of Christ, just as I am.  Each person in the body is needed to work as it should to fulfill its kingdom purpose.  As Paul makes clear in the verses above, I can no more say "I have no need of you" to another believer in Christ than I can say to my feet, "I don't need you today."

Yet, I am guilty of thinking just that, of writing off immature believers, of unreliable believers...of thinking it's just easier to do the work without them.

What's worse, I forget that "if one member suffers, all the members suffer with it" (v. 26).

No wonder Christians are not having the impact in the world that they should.  We don't envision the body of Christ as we do our own physical bodies--composed of frail, individual parts; dependent on each body part to function at its greatest potential; impacting the rest of the body even when one part suffers, is righteous, sins, fails, or succeeds.

As a result, we're going out on the battle field blind with one arm in a sling and one leg amputated beneath the knee...and that's if we make it off the sidelines at all because we have too many body parts missing or because one body part is burnt out, exhausted because it is trying to do the job of two or more body parts.

I don't know the complete solution to make the church body function as the body Christ intends us to be.  But I do know it begins with each of us reaching out to those around us in the body.

We must seek out those who have fallen away.
We must minister to those who are in need.
We must disciple those who lack maturity in the faith.
And we must not allow our egos to convince us that we are more important than another part of the body. 



Image: Poor husband ready for his first root canal.

When You Are Discouraged

It is this evening when my mind thinks on the apostle John when he was exiled on the Isle of Patmos. On this Sabbath, my heart has not resembled his, in the spirit, to receive such a marvelous revelation from God of Christ's kingdom. How long had he been in exile, alone among thieves and murderers? How often had he been hungry? Sick? And yet, he was in the spirit.

I sit ashamed, after not even a whole calendar week, six days, my soul having already sunk to a state so opposite his heaven-bent one.

Since Tuesday, all three of my children have been sick, a 24 hour lag time between the start of each child's fever. By Thursday night, my oldest was back bouncing and consuming his weight in food, what looked to be a simple 48 hour virus. Even with my youngest son, it appeared the illness was following the same pattern.

On Friday, in the midst of this trial, I was still ok, still thanking God for fevers dropping, for only one child needing a lap at one time. Our family missed Wednesday night corporate worship, Thursday morning prayer walking. It was disappointment, but my soul was still focused upward instead of inward.

Then, I allowed myself to hope we would make it to Sunday worship today, something I realized last night wasn't going to happen. My daughter just wasn't able to shake her fever and youngest son continued to complain of his throat hurting.

That's when it happened, when I failed to take my thoughts captive and give thanks for His higher plans overriding my plans. In that instance when disappointment overwhelmed, discouragement crept beneath my door, curled at my feet, and struck my heart, rendering this ungrateful one powerless, useless.

It's easy to grow discouraged...especially when an overwhelming circumstance writes CANCELLED in bold atop an entire week's schedule. But whether that discouragement comes in the form of an illness, the weather, a bad economy, or another person, we Christians must know we are not alone in facing opposition.

We must remember that "Your adversary, the devil, prowls around like a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour" (1 Peter 5:8). We must recall that this same Satan strolls up to the Father's throne, asking "to sift you as wheat" (Lk. 22:31).

We must know that others before us have felt discouragement as well. Like us, they had to be reminded where their focus should be.

In the prophet Ezra's time, in excess of 42,000 Israelites returned from captivity in Babylon to their beloved Jerusalem. Their first big order of business? Rebuilding the temple: "In the second year of their coming to the house of God at Jerusalem in the second month," they began to rebuild the temple. (Ez. 3:8). After finishing the foundation, though, the opposition started.

Ezra writes, "Then the people of the land discouraged the people of Judah, and frightened them from building and hired counselors against them to frustrate their counsel all the days of Cyrus king of Persia, even until the reign of Darius king of Persia" (Ez. 4:4-5).

The King James version translates the word "discouraged" as "weakened": "Then the people of the land weakened the hands of the people of Judah" (Ez. 4:4).

Fear. Bad counsel. Local Samaritans wanting to help build and then likely acting out in anger when rejected. And eventually tattletale counselors who lied to King Artaxerxes so that the king ordered their work to stop....something history doesn't show the Israelites contesting in the slightest.

The discouragement, the weakening worked: "Then the work on the house of God in Jerusalem ceased, and it was stopped until the second year of the reign of Darius king of Persia (Ez. 4:24).

Subtract the dates, and that's fourteen, maybe fifteen, years of looking at a foundation each time they passed the site where the temple should be. Fourteen years of letting discouragement reign their lives versus trusting in God to see His plans fulfilled!

Only when God sent two prophets--Haggai and Zechariah--to start "supporting" the people did they come out of their shell of fear and discouragement, this time choosing to look up and trust in God even when the discouraging, tattletale counselors started trying to thwart the building project again (Ez. 5:2).

The prophets didn't do or say anything magical, mysterious. No fire coming down from heaven and consuming an altar. No manna left on the morning doorstep. Instead, they simply reminded the people of who God is:

"Then Haggai, the LORD’s messenger, gave this message of the LORD to the people: 'I am with you,” declares the LORD'" (Hag. 1:13).

"' Be strong, all you people of the land,’ declares the LORD, ‘and work. For I am with you,’ declares the LORD Almighty" (Hag. 2:4).

I. AM.

These once discouraged people simply had to remember The I Am was watching over them.

Fourteen years earlier, Ezra had called these I AM-strengthened people , "discouraged " (Ez. 4:4). The King James version called them "weakened."

The word raphah translated as "weakened" or "discouraged" here in Ezra is the same Hebrew word translated in the Psalms as "still" in the infamous verse, "Be still, and know that I am God" (Ps. 46:10).

Consider the verse's application when inserting Ezra's other two translations of raphah:

Be discouraged and know that I am God.
Be weakened and know that I am God.
Be still and know that I am God.

When I am disheartened with the world, when I sink down to my knees and recognize how feeble, how weak I truly am--it is then that I have two choices. I can focus on me and roll around like a pig in my disappointments. Or I can be still, let that moment, those feelings of insufficiency, point me to the power and person of I Am.


Resource: Blue Letter Bible.