The Enemy will do everything he can to isolate you. He either tries to get you so hurt and offended that you say, "I feel misunderstood. I don't want anybody to control my life. I want to do my own thing." Or he tries to isolate you with shame over some issue in your life. Whenever you find yourself hiding from people or trying to push them away, an alarm bell should go off inside you that says, "The Enemy is trying to isolate me!" Next you should have the same response every time that alarm bell goes off: "I'm going to go talk to someone. I refuse to be isolated, because isolation is a killer." Nothing destroys the power of shame or offense like choosing to move toward community.
I've been on a journey of community for the last twenty years. In my early twenties, I was isolated and independent. I didn't want to be vulnerable with my personal struggles, and I didn't like anybody telling me what to do. So the Lord stuck me in community and made me learn how to do it for eighteen years.
I won't lie; it was hard. It was messy, sticky, draining, slow, and frustrating. But at the end of the day, what I realised is that community just flat-out works. Throughout those eighteen years, I watched a lot of peers in ministry who didn't want to make the hard choice to do community. They didn't want to submit their lives to other people. Today, they're not doing what they are supposed to be doing, because they refused to access the grace they needed to be successful from community.
As much as you have been hurt, frustrated, or annoyed by community, you must make a deliberate choice to stay in it. We do get hurt in community. But we also get healed in community. Community is where we grow. We cannot live without it.
- from Rooted by Banning Liebscher
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