Part 2.

Healing is a byproduct of community. When God’s people love one another, pray for one another, and bear one another’s burdens – healing happens.

· God delights in using people to meet the needs of people.

· God wanted to heal humanity, share His love, and speak truth to us so He sent a Person! Not a text, or an email, or a book – a Person.

· Think of all the people the Father touched through the first body of Christ. His plan hasn’t changed for the ‘current’ body of Christ.

1 Peter 4:10- As each one has received a gift, minister it to one another as good stewards of the manifold grace of God.

· God used the first body of Christ to touch people, now He desires to use the ‘current’ body of Christ to touch people.

· Churches must get to a point where we are not just offering Christ but offering ourselves. We cannot just meet people’s spiritual needs but relational needs. We cannot just offer truth but truth in love.

Great churches are those who have married the great commission to the great command! The great commission is what we do (make disciples), but the great command is how we do it (love God love people). Both are needed.

· We don’t have to go to Africa to find hurting people.

Churches need to come out of the “You only need God message”.

· Matt 26:38. Even in the garden, Jesus asked the disciples to pray with Him. His Father was with Him but there was a part of Jesus that wanted a close friend to bear His burden with Him.

E. An inner city church in Atlanta partnered with police because of teenage crime rising. The police assigned troubled teens to families within that church for mentoring and relationship. 90% of those teens assigned to a family were never arrested again.

· It was revealed that a lack of deep unmet relational needs and belonging was a key contributor to those teens wayward behavior. The solution was family, relationship, community.

· Again, sometimes it takes great love from people before someone can find great healing from God.