Working Together

Recently I was watching Tiktoks of a guy who thinks well outside the box. One series of his videos involved him finding a way to print and display a life-size cardboard cutout of himself in a gas station (Kum & Go) near him. Well, the nature of social media caused this simple adventure to blow up. Shortly after he set it out, he was getting comments and tags about people visiting this cutout and even lines forming to get selfies taken with it. In fact, it grew so much that Kum & Go as a nation-wide chain got news of it and decided to name a sandwich after this guy and giving a portion of each sale to charity (see @kylescheele for the whole story).
And I share that story because part of me really relates to that adventure. I love getting ideas and then seeing how I can put them into action. Most of mine aren’t as dynamic or creative as this one, mostly because I lack the resources and gumption to do something like that. However, if an idea can help serve others and has more of a ministry-related purpose, I try to find ways to get them done.
Recently, though, I’ve tried to be open to God’s leading on a larger scale. I often tried being rational and logical in my processing of these ideas that I had but the problem is, I’ve found, God isn’t always rational when it comes to loving us or having us love others. So I took a big plunge into an adventure recently that hopefully will serve our community and others well. If you want to ask me about it sometime, I’d love to share that story with you. But where I feel like I’ve failed in some of those adventures is my connection with others and allowing others to walk beside me in them.
Like many guys in our culture, I tend to do things on my own. I’ve made the excuse that it’s easier to just do it myself than to burden others with helping me. And, in the short term, that’s possibly true. However that’s not the way God intended for us, as followers of Jesus, to live. Ephesians 4.16 says, “Under [Christ’s] control all the different parts of the body fit together, and the whole body is held together by every joint with which it is provided. So when each separate part works as it should, the whole body grows and builds itself up through love.” (GNT) God made us each different so that different tasks could be completed more thoroughly and his love be spread more universally. I pray, then, that we can find more and more ways to work together, that we put aside our selfishness in doing it on our own, and allow others to help us accomplish his will more fully in our community. God bless.