пастор Назаров Дмитрий Андреевич - 18 СЕНТЯБРЯ 2016 БЛАГОСЛОВЕНИЕ ОБЩИННОЙ ЖИЗНИ. - текст песни, слова, перевод, видео

Today I want to talk about the blessing that is right in front of us and perhaps because of this proximity we somehow do not pay due attention to it. I want to talk about the blessing of the community life of the church. We need to notice, recognize this life. Each of us lives our own life, each family in the church also lives its own life, and the whole community lives too. When we gather, when we glorify God, when we meditate on His word together, His Spirit is at work and we can experience and taste His love, which is poured into our hearts so that we can love each other. God teaches us that the life of the community is His love, which we accept and “broadcast” further, passing it on to each other. And God’s plan is for this to “flow” further from the community, as the Psalmist says: How good and how pleasant it is for brothers to live together! It is like precious oil on the head, running down onto the beard, even Aaron's beard, running down onto the edges of his garment; like the dew of Hermon descending on the mountains of Zion, for there the Lord commanded blessing and life forever. Ps. 132:1-3. When I was preparing the protocols for the inspection by the Ministry of Justice, I noticed that they, the inspectors, consider certain “events carried out” to be the life of our community. And suddenly I thought that we sometimes believe that family life is also some kind of “events”, what we do together, where we go, what we buy, etc. But looking at the protocols, I began to understand that although they describe some events, they do not reflect the true life of the community. No matter how hard we try, they cannot reflect, for example, that in our community we try (and this is exactly how we feel) to treat all children, all teenagers as if they were our relatives, our own children. This feeling of spiritual kinship, the integrity of the community, its interconnectedness and interdependence of each on everyone cannot be described or explained; it can only be experienced as something special and unique, as a gift from God. And for us this has become the norm, we live this way and think this way, but when “outsiders” are interested in what connects us, it’s like a reminder from God that our community relationships are a value and a great blessing! Can a person live without community? Maybe he can live by eating, for example, only sprouted grains of wheat, but this is not a very complete diet! In this world, people unite because of necessity or expediency in order or when it is easier to survive together. But the church is a completely different community! We don't survive together, we live together. There is no expediency in our unification; often in church people gather so different and, by all human standards, unsuitable for each other that it can be described as “rock paper scissors,” but somehow, if they seek God’s face together, He unites them so that they can abide and live together in His love. And this is precisely what is incomprehensible to the people of this world. Let's look at how the first community, the community of Israel, was born. There was a moment when the closest descendants of Abraham entered into marriages with their close relatives and, according to all the laws of genetics, this should have led to the degeneration of the offspring. But God is greater than the laws of genetics, and He made it so that this offspring not only did not degenerate, but now, after several thousand years, has the highest intellectual level on the planet! In the same way, we, uniting in a community not according to, but contrary to the laws of unification accepted in the world around us, can be very successful in our joint creativity and living if we learn not to try to act “according to the elements of the world”, not to try to combine “like with similar,” but on the contrary, we will be able to believe in God, who unites the impossible with the incredible! I think that this spiritual law also applies to the community, which says: He who comes to God must believe that He exists and rewards those who seek Him. Heb. 11:6. If we could just “agree” and be together as a community, then why faith? But this also leads us from the community to the family, where we also often try to “agree”, although we are called to believe! Faith builds relationships “through God,” and when we “agree,” God remains “outside” our agreements. And it is possible to discover this path of building relationships not out of need or necessity, not by “mutual agreement” in the community of the church, but then, having seen and believed that it “works”, we can carry it into all spheres of life, carry this image community life, this is an attitude in themselves and people can see the difference when, coming into contact with us, they understand that we do not “use” them, but love them and this, according to God’s plan, should arouse good interest and the right questions! Friends, our community is meant to raise questions, and I think we are already doing that. But at the same time, we ourselves may not feel or understand “our happiness,” because we are still “getting used to it,” we are paying the price, not running away, but rushing towards each other in these communal relationships, and now?