Being Challenge: An 11-Day Plan to Be Like JesusSample

Day 3: Keystone Habit 1: We Commit to Community

In history, the word "community" was defined as geographical. People were born in the same town they died. You grew up, got baptized, married, and even baptized your kids at the same church.

More recently, the word community has been redefined; it's less about being from somewhere and more about being like someone. Studies show that we become like those with whom we hang out. Here are some examples: 

• If you have one friend who is significantly overweight, you are 57% more likely to be overweight. 
• Three in five Americans pay more attention to how their friends spend their money than how they save their own money. 
• A study from Harvard over 30 years discovered that 95% of our success or failure in life is determined by the people we habitually associate with. 

When Jesus committed to community, He modeled the importance of being in relationships because that helps determine your habits, and your habits help define who you are. There may be no more important predictor of "future you" than to look at the community of "current you."

If you become like the people in your closest community and want to be more like Jesus, you need to consider whether your community is leading you to be more Christlike or less.

As you embark on this journey to practice and implement the five keystone habits of Jesus, you must have a community that helps you. It's tough to instill all of the other habits of Jesus in your life if your community is constantly working against you. It'll be like trying to go up a moving escalator that's on its way down.

You may eventually get to the top, but you'll be exhausted when you get there. What's better is when you can hop on the moving escalator going up. 

It can work against you, or it can help propel you.

When you commit to a community, you will find different jobs, talents, and gifts. They will see things from different angles. But as varied talents and treasures mix, something even better comes out. Combining copper and tin produced bronze, which shaped an entire era of our world's history. When we mix and commit to one another, more beautiful things can result from those relationships.

In our Bible reading today, pay close attention to the role that the paralyzed man's friends played in approaching Jesus. He came to get healed but walked away with the gift of forgiveness of sins. Whose faith did Jesus notice?

Challenge for the Day: Yesterday, you named your current community. Today's challenge is taking it a step further and identifying 1-3 people on your list that you feel could help you become more like Jesus. Reach out to at least one of them and ask them to join you on the rest of your Being Challenge journey.