community

so today i had a really good day :) 4pm church service today and the speaker was so funny yet really taught in a good way too. the topic was on JOY and how many things may be able to make you happy but if you don't feel joyful, those same material things will not make you happy. he talked about ipad a lot haha so if you have an ipad and you like it and it can make you happy! but then when you don't have anymore joy even an ipad won't make you happy, it can't make it better. but if you have joy, many things can make you happy but having nothing, you can still be happy :) if that makes sense... so ultimately material objects may bring you temporary happiness but without JOY in the LORD, it's pointless because ultimately knowing Him and having faith in Him gives us joy :). Also thought it was kind of cool how ENJOY actually means 'to GIVE joy' similarly to how encourage is 'to give encouragement'.

anyways afterwards we went to minh and karen's house for fellowship and we were talking a lot about community. and i think i've personally struggled with community a lot... because i was new to ntcbc, everyone already knew each other from when they were younger growing up in the church or other people were just more outgoing so i felt out of the loop; going to loo, i didn't know many brothers and sisters more personally at ccf so i never got invited to a lot of things so i felt kind of left out a lot too; and then with a lot of friendships i felt like i cared more about other people than they cared about me and it was rough because many people say that a good relationship is double-sided and just ALL over the place i felt like i was disconnected and nobody cared... but then i realized i just expected most people to come to me... that if they cared they would come talk to me because that's showing love.. but i forgot that i myself wasn't putting that much effort in as well. and with some friends i felt really upset that they weren't putting as much effort into the friendship and always being too busy for me and a lot of the times i felt like just giving up on them completely and forgetting about it... but today karen shared her thoughts on community and being committed to a church (specifically but it also applied to any group or even person). it really strengthened my thoughts on community esp since i felt also really out of the loop with josiah because i was in waterloo most of the term. but anyways karen talked about how she also wanted to leave the church because after she had come back from university she felt like she wasn't "part" of the community anymore and it was very hard because you just feel left out. but she felt like she had grown up in this church and she had to go back as her responsibility to help the church grow after it raised her up as well. i guess this is a more specific case but what i got out of it is that if everyone just left when they felt there were issues with something or they didn't enjoy something in the church, then sooner or later that church would just deteriorate and no one would help build them up. I guess more simply, if there's a problem, don't just run from it but try to fix it? this was in the context that it's not a major issue like majorly bad doctrine or if you felt God was actually calling you to another church.. but someone brought up how this is part of carrying the CROSS, to commit yourself to one Church, to go serve there and to build each other up, and to put effort into it even when times seem tough for you because we are doing this for Him and for His GLORY. I do not do justice to the "speech" she made haha but it just made it so much clearer that you can't just expect people to come to you all the time. and it's not because people don't care about you but people are imperfect beings and they can't always be there like God is. it also encouraged me to face these issues i have with community and try to put in more effort and to not simply give up on people :) okay long post but it was a really good night of sharing and hearing how God has been working in other people and learning a lot too!