Recently I was talking with someone and they said, “My friends are my family.”  Doesn’t that sound nice?  On the surface it makes sense.  Our friends are the people we see more frequently.  Our friends are probably the people we are more likely to ask for help.  Our friends don’t have a history of awkward experiences from the high’s and low’s of life, so it makes sense why we would drift toward friends as family.  

God’s Word teaches us when we come to faith in Christ we become family in the best possible sense.  Our friends are often people who look like us, think like us, laugh when we laugh, cry when we cry, so many times we are attracted to friendship with other people because they are mirroring our interests and our qualities.  

But the church is made up of people who are different from us.  It’s what makes the local church beautiful.  The church is made up of men and women, young and old, rich and poor, educated and uneducated, and not always but sometimes we will also find different ethnicities and different cultures.  What a gift we have in the local church!

Check out how Luke describes this family-like support in the newly established church in Jerusalem:

All the believers were together and had everything in common. They sold property and possessions to give to anyone who had need. Every day they continued to meet together in the temple courts. They broke bread in their homes and ate together with glad and sincere hearts, praising God and enjoying the favor of all the people. And the Lord added to their number daily those who were being saved. – Acts 2:44-46

Remember, “all the believers” in this context consisted of more than 3000 people.  They weren’t all living in one house or sharing a single bank account. But they clearly did their best to remove the barriers that divided them into individual household units. They were generous with their money, their possessions, their space, and their time. And they were in and out of each other’s homes and lives.

Can you imagine what that would look like today? Being involved in our friend’s lives is probably something that happens naturally.  We probably work in similar fields as our friends.  We probably have similar interests as our friends.  But God’s Word calls us to invest in our church family who have different interests and different backgrounds, so that we might be strengthened in our faith in Him.  Here are some simple ways this could take place:

• Look to meet 2-3 people on a Sunday morning.
• Write down their name to help you remember.
• Ask someone about their weekend.
• Prayerfully consider how you might encourage someone in a meaningful way.
• Pray for someone on Sunday morning.  
• Ask someone out to share a meal. 
• Invite someone to your group.  
• Exchange contact information with someone.
• Meet someone new during the “meet and greet.”

Living like this is counter-cultural, so the first step is probably going to be getting out of our own way. After all, many of us might not even relate to our biological family or friends this way. At times, it will feel hard, inconvenient, and uncomfortable. You’ll open yourself up to rejection, you’ll get hurt, you’ll need to ask for forgiveness. All of these are signs that you’re doing it right. And, through the transition, you’ll also find life, love, security, and freedom to be your authentic self.