Several years ago, I signed up for a Bible study at church and was randomly assigned to a group of women. We spent a year together, meeting once a week. The following year, the women who oversaw group assignments heard we had good chemistry and decided to keep us together instead of mixing us among other groups.
Recently, I looked around our little circle of chairs and realized something. The stories in the Bible give us examples of ordinary people living ordinary lives as they interact with God. Sometimes they follow him, sometimes they don’t. As students of the Bible, we have the luxury of seeing the beginning, middle, and end of these journeys, and it can be our temptation to put these regular people on pedestals—even the scoundrels (looking at you, Jacob).
But as I walk alongside the women the Lord has placed in my community, I get to watch their stories play out in real time with no spoilers about how they will end. I get to see what it looks like to trust the Lord in the face of real human living on a weekly basis. Our beloved seventy-eight-year-old leader has recently been diagnosed with a “rare and aggressive” form of cancer. Another group member recently lost a parent. A third was in a terrible car wreck in the fall and barely escaped with her life. The challenges of blended families, chronic health issues, marital struggles, difficulties that children with special needs face, parents in memory care facilities, high school seniors leaving the nest, and many other ordinary but hard circumstances come up every single week. The list goes on and on.
Of course, it’s not all bad. There are many joys we have the opportunity to experience together, and our joy is compounded when we share it with others. In short, the women in my group are no different from the regular people in the Bible, but because of our proximity to one another in time and space, their lives are a dynamic testimony to the goodness of God in our modern era. And I get to play a part in their story by praying for them and listening to their weekly updates, even as they do the same for me.
Hebrews 10:23–25 says, “Let us hold fast the confession of our hope without wavering, for he who promised is faithful. And let us consider how to stir up one another to love and good works, not neglecting to meet together, as is the habit of some, but encouraging one another, and all the more as you see the Day drawing near” (ESV). Over time, my friends and I have experienced four ways we can learn from one another in fellowship, thereby seeing God’s work in real time testimonies.
Cling
First, we must hold fast to our confession of who Jesus is as God’s Son and what he has done for us in the gospel out of a heart of love. That being said, nearly everyone goes through seasons of doubt. When we find ourselves fighting for the faith that was once so easily inhabited, we need people alongside us who stand ready to to grab us by the proverbial nape of the spiritual neck and point us back to God’s faithfulness and to the truth of his Word (1 Thessalonians 5:11). When they struggle, it’s our job to do the same, calling out the enemy’s lies and fiery darts for what they are and asking the Lord for help, strength, and wisdom on their behalf as they walk through real life with God, just as the men and women of the Bible did.
Consider
Love and good works are not usually the human knee-jerk reactions to difficult circumstances. Once the Holy Spirit has taken up residence in our hearts, he prompts us to think in that direction and softens us toward the “sandpaper” people we deal with everyday. One of God’s great gifts to us along the road is each other. We abdicate our role in our spiritual siblings’ lives when we don’t think through (a.k.a. ‘consider’) ways they live out of their God-given calling toward love and good works in whatever challenges they face. The act of considering takes time, effort, and mental energy. But it’s what we are called to as a family of believers. It may be something small like, “Would it be a good idea to text your grown daughter a good morning?” or something bigger like, “Do you think it might be time for you and your husband to get some counseling? We’ve been and I have a counselor I can recommend.” The Holy Spirit can use us in each other’s lives as we consider how to stir each other up to love and good works we may not have thought of on our own.
Commune
If the pandemic taught us nothing else, it certainly left us with an appreciation for the significance of being together in the flesh. There’s something about Christians being together that is tremendously spiritually encouraging. Right now, we pray to God, which is in some ways like sending him a text because we know he hears it, but we cannot see him face to face. It will not always be that way. Someday, we will be with him and see him as he is (1 Corinthians 13:12). In the meantime, the Bible says, “Where two or more are gathered in my name, there am I in the midst of them” (Matthew 18:20 KJV). We can encourage each other, communicate our prioritizing of the family of God, and experience an extra boost of the Holy Spirit’s presence when we make it a priority to be together in person.
Cheer
Our leader sometimes says (partly) in jest, “In light of the pain and suffering of this life, if you didn’t have the Lord, you’d be off a bridge somewhere!” Life on this earth is hard. But thanks be to God, we know this is not all there is. This is not even a blip of all there is. 2 Corinthians 4:17–18 says, “For this light momentary affliction is preparing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison, as we look not to the things that are seen but to the things that are unseen. For the things that are seen are transient, but the things that are unseen are eternal” (ESV). It’s a bit like the “pain” of taking an exam in school, which may last a couple of hours, but knowing that summer break is just on the other side. As soon as you turn in that exam, you will jump into months of trips to the beach, sleeping in, picnics, swimming, and sunshine. That exam won’t even cross your mind again once you’re with your roadtripping Life
Life on planet earth can feel like the “exam” phase, studying and preparing and focusing on the task at hand. But with each passing day, we’re a little closer to the “summer sunshine” of heaven, with Jesus himself eager to welcome us (John 14:3), joined by all of those saints who have gone before us and lived real lives with faith in God, millennia before we lived ours. Until then, as we come together in community, we are called to cheer each other with the good news of what awaits just on the other side. And that’s a spoiler alert worth sharing.
Photo credit: Emilee Carpenter
Candace and her husband Jim enjoy raising their five children in Tennessee. She has written a children's book calledJosephine and the Quarantineabout how God cares for us in times of loneliness through puppies. Candace also writes a weekly column for theDaily Memphianand for publications likeThe Gospel CoalitionandRisen Motherhood. She dreams of having her own writing cottage in Oxford someday (England is the dream, but Mississippi's not bad either). You can find Candace on Instagram @candaceecholswrites or on her website atcandaceechols.com.
