What REAL teamwork looks like......

​Hey, team!!!

Now, THIS is an inspiring quote: Teamwork is the secret that makes common people achieve uncommon results.

Exhilarating & beautiful when we know that everyone has each other's back! But we could never do it in our own strength. The Lord equips each w/a unique & mysterious Spiritual Gift profile, enabling us to collectively do His work. (1 Cor. 12:4-31) A Spiritual Gift will well up & cause even new believers to say, "WOW! Didn't know I had it in me! Who knew???"

The monotheistic (Deut. 6:4), yet triune God, who revealed Himself as “Us” way back in Genesis 1:26, is a mystery. The Church is also a mysterious US THING. However, whereas the Spirit could unexpectedly empower any of us w/new Gifts, the Divine Offices of each Trinity Member are distinct & unchanging. Jesus never aspires to do the Holy Spirit's Work. The Father never seeks to acquire activities bestowed on the Holy Spirit. The Spirit never feels "jealous" or inferior as "The 3d Person of the Trinity".....etc. In similar fashion, real Kingdom work is bathed in a spirit of Phil. 2:1-11 cooperation.

In the same way, personality cults won't form where all function in their anointing.....nor will the clergy be saddled w/so much. Yeah. Personality cults & exhausted clergy....That's why so many leaders fall......Important to remember that preaching & teaching are merely 2 of the many Gifts listed in Scripture. The others are sadly often deemed inferior or altogether unnecessary, limiting growth. The Life of the Church ain't coffee & donuts in the fellowship hall, but serious engagement done in community......like a ball game. The outcome is a mystery as well as where the ball will be at any moment. All are expected to be team players & work for the benefit of the whole.


While engaging in community, we discover our Gifts through others. We just show up & have our being in Christ. Then, out of our being comes doing. Honestly, in Christ's Divine perspective, we have no clue how beautiful we are, individually, but especially collectively. (Rev. 19:7-8)     Perhaps the popular song below parallels in a small way how Jesus must feel about His bride. 

​Our team does a weekly Bible study w/R, (whose amazing story can be found in the 5/16 & 7/4 blogs). Awesome to see his hunger to know Jesus more deeply! W/no prompting from us, he's already dialoguing about Him w/people from his own culture....one of them, via WhatsApp in his homeland, the "a" country! Amazing. Unimportant that he doesn't understand the Trinity or the Hypostatic Union....do you? Do I? Yet, we proceed w/joy, faith & worship! He's like the woman at the well in John 4:1-42, who, upon receiving forgiveness, went all around her village, proclaiming His Glory!......or Mark 5:1-20, where Jesus delivered a man from demons & then commissioned him for ministry! Neither of these folks would've had time to plunge into the depths of theology, but SOOOO WHAT? They had personal encounters w/Jesus, just like R!
Jesus is forever taking us on new adventures. Your's truly recently started communicating w/a woman who has a beautiful heart for humanity although she's probably not a believer......& she surely doesn’t realize that Jesus has chosen her to join our team! She grew up in dead liberal Protestantism, but we pray that, somehow, the Spirit will ignite true faith out of her smoldering wick (Isaiah 42:3, Matt. 12:20), if there ever was one. Only He knows the direction of this compelling story which you're about to read....

.....Her agency is highly suspicious of Christians because they’ve witnessed too much “hit and run” evangelism....& too many awkward agendas in the past. Of course, there’s some truth to their objections…...so I emphasized to her that those in our circle begin w/a strictly humanitarian approach & wait for them to “unpack” us at their own pace. She was mildly wowed when I told her about the “nosy little rascal” in the 2/9/2023 blog.  But 3 days later, she had her own experience when a woman from the "a country" asked for a Bible! Following up again for the 2d time by phone about a wk. later, she “just so happened” to be leaving that very woman’s apartment! She waited….of course! 10 mins. later, I arrived w/the "contraband" discreetly concealed in a plastic bag, as many from her country live in the same bldg.

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I was in Asia for almost 2 months, hence my silence. And on the way back, I stopped in my fiancée's country & returned w/her!.....When vacationing, I'm always open to the possibilities that the Spirit might tell me to suddenly change plans. Now, I'm REAALLLLLY cautious about saying, "God told me....", but I'm pretty sure that God told me to begin looking for refugees from the "a country" in one of the cities I visited. Through 2 degrees of separation, I indeed found a community of people from the "a country" after sensing they were likely there. Within a very short time, a spontaneous team began to form from an unlikely assortment of people & much happened during the next 9 days! Hopefully, I'll have time to blog about "Teamwork Part 2" soon! 

For teamwork, Spiritual Gifts, great country and western songs and the nations....
.........Just another witness to His Glory! 

www.6degreesandshrinking.com
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