Grooming
Over the past year or so, the Lord has given me a burden for His people to find real community. I think we use that word so much that we don't realize the importance of it or the power of community when it is truly lived out. I believe that the church in America will only be as strong as their small groups. Small, intimate communities that challenge you to live holy and come up higher because in that group you become more than just the face we all see on Sunday morning. The real you stands up, finally, and the real issues can be dealt with in a loving and safe place.
As great as Sunday mornings are, they don’t require much of us. They don’t expose us. We can still wear our Sunday morning face and pretend. That’s why, most of us prefer the big groups to the small ones. Small groups, or communities reveal the areas where you have yet to become holy even as you become aware of the areas where the people in your group have yet to become holy. Community brings you close, and in being close, you will be seen and you will be known. That’s scary but necessary!
In the book, Lioness Arising, Lisa Bevere talks about an issue called grooming. To groom means to clean, prepare, tidy up, comb, prime, coach and tutor. In terms of the lioness, they groom each other's head and neck, areas that a lioness would find difficult to reach on her own. With their rough-textured tongues, the lionesses clean off blood and dirt while combing their companions fur free of ticks and parasites.
Not only is community about kindness and gentleness, but sometimes it's rough. Sometimes we need grooming (more times than we think) and it's not always pleasant, but it's necessary, and it can only happen when you allow people to get close; it can only happen in community. The purpose is to help us get healed and clean from the things we can't seem to break free from on our own, areas we can’t reach on our own. If we submit to grooming, the ticks and parasites in our lives that are sucking the life out of us, can be found and destroyed.
Imagine how powerful our Sunday mornings can become if we all find community?!
We start the process of intimacy with one another: sharing, caring, trusting, etc.
Grooming takes place.
We arrive on Sundays cleaner, softer, stronger, healing or healed.
Imagine the worship when small groups of cleaner, softer, stronger and healing believers come together in a large group to seek God?!
Imagine the anointing the speaker can minister under when small groups of cleaner, softer, stronger and healing believers come together in a large group to hear and be fed?
Community cultivates an atmosphere where signs and wonders break out freely, and when / if we realize the strength of community, we will be unstoppable, as God intends for His children to be!