What is the value of your local community?

 What is the value of your local community?

An article on Scope tells us, "Communities play a pivotal role in promoting participation by serving as the foundation upon which social and civic engagement can flourish. They act as incubators for shared interests and values, providing a platform for individuals to come together, collaborate, and collectively address local issues." (reference Scope - The Importance of Social and Community Participation)

When you involve yourself in the fabric of your local community, you gain many benefits such as:

• friends!
• like-minded people who care about the same things that you do,
• teamwork,
• learning new skills and sharing your skills,
• mentoring others, 
• engaging in meaningful conversations 
• and achieving goals together.

Many other benefits come about because people in the community work together such as buildings, gardens, sporting events, festivals, raising funds to help those in need within the community, and building positive environments so those living in your local area have the opportunity to heal, to find a place where they belong.

How does your local community foster inclusion and opportunity for people to come together in like-minded activities?

Something as simple as a garden club where a group meets and visits each other's gardens, shares plants, and helps each other design new garden beds.

Maybe a group of men have decided to establish a "Mens shed" in the local town to promote  "bringing men together enabling them to lead a positive lifestyle while strengthening communities." (reference: https://mensshed.org/about-amsa/).

Other groups may be an amateur theatre company allowing people to present their on-stage flair or a festival committee that organises an annual community celebration.

Perhaps local markets that promote local produce and niche home-based businesses or a group of like-minded business people who get together to share ideas and encourage one another to build sustainable businesses in the local region.

Your local area may even have a group of like-minded individuals who work together to advocate on the community's behalf to the local council for improvements in your town.

How can you be positively involved and be part of the social fabric of your community?

The Value of Praying Together

This is a 'what do you value' question.  Do you value opportunities to pray with fellow Christians?

We talk about prayer, and we say how important prayer is, or should be, in our lives.  But, and yes there is a BUT, how often do we engage in prayer with others? 

Chatting with a friend a couple of weeks ago, a comment was said, 'We should pray'.  How I valued my friend's wise discernment that, yes, after our wonderful time catching up, we were able to pray together as fellow Christians.

Prayer is not easy for many people. Most of us keep prayer as requests to the Lord, superficial, and often we have a list of petitions.  But real, honest prayer means being honest, vulnerable, and genuine. 

The value of praying together (some Scripture.  I encourage you to search for more scripture passages):

• Therefore encourage one another and build each other up, just as in fact you are doing. 1 Thessalonians 5:11
• How good and pleasant it is when God’s people live together in unity! Psalm 133:1
•  They all joined together constantly in prayer, along with the women and Mary the mother of Jesus, and with his brothers. Acts 1:14
• They devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and to fellowship, to the breaking of bread and to prayer. Acts 2:42
• So Peter was kept in prison, but the church was earnestly praying to God for him. Acts 12:5 (read whole passage)
• I urge you, brothers and sisters, by our Lord Jesus Christ and by the love of the Spirit, to join me in my struggle by praying to God for me. Romans 15:30.

The value of praying together brings us closer to one another, we can encourage when life is good and when life crashes over us, like storm waves.  We can fellowship together.

“Fellowship is a relationship of inner unity among believers that expresses itself in outer co-participation with Christ and one another in accomplishing God’s will on earth.” Read more about The importance of Fellowship here.

We can study God's word together, and bring before the Lord, those who are undergoing difficult circumstances because of their faith or have health or other issues. We can intercede for our community and the society in which we live.

But most importantly, we can pray together to acknowledge and praise the Lord for his never-ending kindness and love towards us.  We can bring him honor, we can confess those areas in our lives which we struggle with, confess our sins, and seek forgiveness from God.

We build up each other (it's called edification) and strengthen our connection together as a family in the Lord.

Yes, we may be feeling vulnerable, but we can also learn from one another and lean on each other.

The value of prayer should never be underestimated.  The love that our Saviour, Jesus Christ, has for us, should never be diminished.  We need to value one another and value the privilege of the opportunity to pray together.