Actions in Truth = LOVE!

Its amazing the support that comes when the option for life flees.

In the early stages our Dr. had warned us, "your daughter will likely act much different with attention." She has and does. Hence our concern for how she would handle the ABSOLUTE BLESSING that Friday June 3rd was. Hundreds of people coming to show their support physically by going to City Park in Tremont, eating food, playing music, selling baked goods, playing on bouncers, having a hillbilly olympics (Only in Tremont by the way), and going to a swim party to cap it off.

So, we spent the week praying with and over Jada and Oliver in the hopes that they would be gracious and thankful for everything that was done for us. Michelle Monk was the quasi-mastermind behind the whole event. Which is to say she was more or less helped organize it. It was fueled by students. Can you believe it! High school students ... you know ... teens. They often get accused of being apathetic, lazy, (insert the adjective). That could not be FURTHER from the truth last week. We found that they were passionate, hard working, and deeply caring.

In an earlier post I spoke of at least three things which have sustained us in this journey: Christ, community, and confession. It is Tim Chester and Steve Timmis in their book Total Church who say, "we are called to a dual fidelity, Gospel and Community." Community, in the truest sense is fleshed out for us in Acts 2 where the author tells us that the community was "together and had all things in common and shared as any had need." Jessica and I believe firmly that the depth of love we have experienced is first God's design in nearness, secondly its a byproduct of faith in Jesus, and thirdly - its one of the characteristics of Tremont as a community. However, none of it happens without the first element that Chester and Timmis propose - Gospel.

It is the good news of Jesus: His life on earth carried out in perfection, His death on the cross as an act of perfect obedience, and His resurrection to deliver the Holy Spirit. Truly, when Christ said, "greater love has no man than this - that he lay down his life for his friends" He MEANT it at the deepest level. So it is with Jessica and I. Many have said, "we love you and are praying continually for you." I John 3:18 says, "Little children, let us not love in word or talk but in deed and truth." We have experienced the Gospel worked out in Community not simply because Tremont is a great town to live in (though we don't deny it) BUT because there are MANY in Tremont who take seriously this notion that God - through the Gospel compels us to live in Community... and things like the Party in the Park are a natural outflow of Gospel intake.

Now, to the reader who reads this and thinks community at this level is of a bygone era: have you considered what life would look like if we lived like this always? Consider, for a moment, just Northfield Christian Fellowship - the church where I serve as youth pastor - is it not possible that the entire body be sold out to the transforming power of the Gospel? If they be sold out to that, what then becomes of their lives? Well, they are shared. Shared in the deepest sense - warts and all. Knowing that it is not how I appear to you - to be controlled in fear or people pleasing, but that in God my righteousness is found. How free would you be to love recklessly (not without discernment or wild abandon, but with actions and in truth), to share authentically, and to walk faithfully?

Our (The Rumbold Family) view of God's love has been irreparably influenced by the Gospel in action through community. Would you not desire the same? Why is Christianity not lived like this from day to day? post your thoughts below - is this blog helping you to understand Gospel and Community? My prayer is that it is a service to your understanding of Jesus Christ!