The Key To Kingdom Influence In A Community by Dr. Myles Munroe: MP3 Download & Sermon Notes

The Safest Place for a Human Is a Community

The safest place for a human is a community. Man was created by God to be born, to grow, to develop, and to be nurtured — and to live and exist in a community. You were never created by God to be born and nurtured by yourself.

Community was designed by God to be the incubator for the human spirit. Your spirit requires community. God himself is a community — Father, Son, and Holy Spirit: three who are one. There is a community of the godhead. And he made us after his image, designed to be just like him: a community.

Why Community Is Valuable

• Community produces the individual. You are who you are because the community influenced you.
• Community protects the individual — even from themselves.
• Community develops the individual.
• Community cultivates the individual. Who teaches the child to talk? The family. Who teaches right from wrong? The family. Who gives education? A school, an educational system — a community.
• Community preserves the individual. Society protects you from robbery, murder, and the breaking of laws.
• Community contaminates the individual. Where do people learn to break the law? From lawbreakers. Where do people learn evil activities? From people who do evil activities. Communities can produce contamination.
• Community disciplines the individual. That is why vigilante justice is illegal. If someone hurts you, you take them to the community — to a court, with a jury drawn from the community. Community applies discipline.

Why We Need Community

Dorothy Day said: "We have all known the long loneliness, and we have learned that the only solution is love — and that love comes with community."

Nothing is more dangerous to a community than a lonely citizen. A lonely citizen can impose destruction first on the community — and then on themselves. People commit suicide because they feel lonely. Have you noticed that everyone who commits suicide does it alone? The love that the lonely heart needs comes from a community.

God's passion from the beginning was to establish a community on earth that reflects the culture of heaven. If there is one word to define the culture of heaven, it would be love. God is love. What does the lonely heart need? Love.

Numbers 27:15-17: Moses said to the Lord, "May the Lord, the God of the spirits of all mankind, appoint a man over this community — one who will lead them out and bring them in, so that the Lord's people will not be like sheep without a shepherd." God says: I need to raise up leaders who will develop a community spirit so that no one feels uncovered.

A community is a group of people — a society, a population, a neighborhood, a district, a village — unified and distinguished by a commitment and submission to a common set of laws. They have the same moral standards, the same values, the same ideals, the same norms, the same spiritual authority. They are unified by corporate responsibility and accountability.

Community means: I belong to you. You belong to me. I owe you love. You owe me love. I am accountable to you. You are responsible for me.

When You Violate Community, You Become a Cancer

When you violate the agreed-upon standards of a community, you become a cancer. Cancer spreads. And if you do not cut it out, it wins.

This is why God was so serious about his laws — he wanted to build a community of people, and he knew that if anyone violated those laws, they placed the entire community in danger. God was not primarily interested in killing the violator — he wanted to communicate the seriousness of what even one act of sin does to a community.

God Saw Only One Defect in His Creation

Genesis 2:18: God says, "It is not good for man to be alone." God had made a perfect man, placed him in a perfect garden — and then looked at his project and said, "Something is wrong here. This cannot work." Because you are supposed to be in community.

You can be alone in a crowd. Loneliness is magnified in a crowd — when everybody around you is happy and deep inside you are weeping. That is when it is most intensified, because they do not know what is going on. A person can have a good meeting with you and then walk away and take their own life.

The greatest source of self-destruction is pride. God says pride comes before destruction. You know what kills people? Pride. You are hurting, but you do not want anyone to know. Pride made sure you did not cry out for help. Pride made sure you did not call somebody and say, "I need groceries. I need someone to help me get gas in my car." Your pride is so big you cannot break out of your little prison to ask for help.

There is a community around you. Community means your life is my life. The Bible says if one of us weeps, all of us should weep. The Bible says if one of us rejoices, everybody rejoices. How can we rejoice with you if you do not tell us what you are rejoicing over?

Don't you dare take your life. It was not given to you to take. It is not your property. God breathed into you. Ask for help.

Become a Pursuing Lover

A pursuing lover is a lover who does not take the first answer as the truth. When someone says, "I'm fine," a pursuing lover keeps pursuing until they hear the truth. When someone says, "I'm blessed," you keep going — because people will commit suicide after you talk to them, because you did not pursue all the way to the truth.

God did not wait for us to come to him. He invaded our planet. He did not wait for you to ask for salvation. He died whether you liked it or not. He pursued us.

There are people sitting around you right now looking nice — lights off at home, no food in the fridge, children being put out of school this week, unable to pay tuition — and they are singing next to you. Go beyond "Hi." Tell them: "Look, tell me what is really going on. Don't lie to me."

Confession One to Another — and Effective Prayer

James 5:16: Confess your sins to each other and pray for each other so that you may be healed. The prayer of a righteous man is powerful and effective.

We always quote the second part and miss the first. What prayer is effective? The prayer that follows your confession to that person. He says, "Tell them what you need healing of." If you have financial problems, you are not at ease — you have a financial disease. Bring it to someone.

You tell the person what you need. They tell you what they need. God says, "Now the healing has begun."

Most of our prayers are not effective because we do not know what to pray for. God does not answer general prayers. "Lord, bless Jenny" — bless her with what? How much? Where? Tell someone specifically what is wrong.

Brokenness is a result of isolation, not a lack of money. And the thing that keeps you broke is your pride.

When you isolate yourself, cut yourself off from people, you set yourself up for self-destruction — and you make us helpless because we cannot reach you.

If you cut your finger off, your body still lives. But the finger dies. Whatever you detach from the body dies — the body does not. If a paramedic knows the finger exists, they can reattach it and the blood flows back in. Reattach yourself to the community. There is blood in the community. We give you life.

Poverty is only possible where there is no community. If everybody knows you are going through something, somebody can help. Everybody is not broke at the same time. Not all the money left the planet — it just shifts somewhere else. And if you open up, it can shift to where you are.

God's Vision — A Community of Heaven on Earth

God's vision was simple: to extend his heavenly kingdom to earth. His vision was to colonize earth with the culture of heaven — where people care for each other. Jesus told the disciples, again and again: "Love one another as I have loved you. Forgive one another as I have forgiven you."

God's vision was to establish a community of heaven on earth. His heart was to have a group of people who look like him, act like him, love like him, and protect like him.

The word care means to anticipate someone's needs and meet them before they arise. God says, "I want to calculate what you are going to need tomorrow and give it to you today." Then he turns around and says: "Now you care for one another." We must anticipate. Christ did not die after you sinned. He was slain in God's mind before the earth was even made. That is what caring looks like — thinking generationally, preparing for what is coming before it arrives.