The gift of sharing.
“All the believers were together and had everything in common. They sold property and possessions to give to anyone who had need.”
- ACTS 2:44-45
I wonder which is more of a struggle for you: sharing or being shared with?
My guess, is that you read the title of this blog and assumed I’d be focusing on how we can be better at sharing with others, which admittedly was the original direction for this piece. Alas, God had different plans. See, as I thought about which area I struggled with more, I came to the realisation that instilled in my brain is the very faulty idea that, while sharing with others is good, being shared with is bad, which makes absolutely no sense because both are needed for sharing to work. I don’t think this is just a ‘me problem’, I think it’s a British epidemic (too soon?). One needs only look towards the ‘going it alone’ and stiff upper lip obsession of our society to find where this thinking comes from.
Being surrounded by this individualistic attitude makes it all too easy to avoid asking for help and, when we do ask for help, to resent the whole sharing process. At the root of this attitude is the perception that being shared with (and asking of help) is a weakness on our part and an inconvenience on the part of the ‘sharer’. This perspective can deprive us of truly seeing how abundantly and generously God blesses through sharing. The truth of the matter is this: being shared with is good! Sharing is a blessing to both the person being shared with and to the person sharing. Asking for help is not a sign of weakness but a sign of belonging.
“Just as a body, though one, has many parts, but all its many parts form one body, so it is with Christ. For we were all baptized by one Spirit so as to form one body—whether Jews or Gentiles, slave or free—and we were all given the one Spirit to drink. Even so the body is not made up of one part but of many…
…God has placed the parts in the body, every one of them, just as he wanted them to be.”
- 1 CORINTHIANS 12:12-14 & 19
As a church family we are one body (1 Corinthians 12:12-26). God, not circumstance, has placed us together. He has decided exactly who would be in this church family, along with their skills, possessions, wealth, and experiences. We have been designed to be as a body by God, in order to bless and encourage one another – to help where others lack and to be helped where we lack. So, when we as a church family share with each other, we are being the body God intended us to be and we express the love, fellowship, and Christlikeness that God has called us to. So, let’s prayerfully prepare our hearts for all aspects of sharing!