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You don’t have to follow Jesus very long to find out being a Christian is messy. There are unanswered prayers, unresolved regrets, painful decisions, conflict with others. We can try and be perfect, but we all fall short. We are all messy people. We all have sin, brokenness, unmet expectations, and yet God has placed us all into His church together, to be in community with God, and with others.

One author said “It's clear that no relationship ever delivers what you dreamt it could. Your fantasy collides with reality, and reality bites!” Many of us know this quote to be all to true. But as Christians we are thrust into messy relationships with others all around us. Through this our insecurities come out, we flee from vulnerabilities, and our natural response is to stay away from the mess. Yet God calls us to press into His messy church. Jesus says what the greatest commandments are in the book of Matthew:

Jesus replied, “‘You must love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your soul, and all your mind.’ This is the first and greatest commandment. A second is equally important: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ The entire law and all the demands of the prophets are based on these two commandments.” (Matthew 22:36-40)

Jesus calls us, even though we ourselves have our own sin, insecurities, doubt, pain, to love Him with all we are. But God also calls us in our same messy lives to love others all around us in spite of their own mess, and more importantly join in the mess together.

In the next 10 days we are going to look at how to press into the mess. How we grow our relationship with God and with others. How to gain a biblical perspective of what relational health looks like. The easy thing to do would be to think how much “others” need this. But we want to encourage everyone to ask God as you read your bible and journal, how can I grow and change. God will be speaking to you as you read the bible, pray, and have a humble heart to where God may challenge you.

As we read Romans 12:9-21 today, write down who in your life is hard for you to love? Why?