Grace in the Empty Spaces: Transformed by the One Another Passages
By Mark McPeak and Emily White Youree
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About this ebook
Mark McPeak
Mark McPeak is Vice President of Brentwood Communications near Nashville, Tennessee. His career has been a providential blend of ministry and the marketplace. His undergraduate studies were in Bible and Missions and his graduate degree is in business. His business expertise is in marketing, market research, and business strategy. While serving at the adult and discipleship minister at The Donelson Fellowship, Mark first taught the one-another passages. He further witnessed the transforming nature of these Scriptures while serving for 6 years as a senior leader at Free Will Baptist International Missions. Mark lives in Mt. Juliet, Tennessee with his wife and children.
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Grace in the Empty Spaces - Mark McPeak
INTRODUCTION
Church is meant to be one of those real-life places that both reveal and shape us. As with our families, the Lord intentionally puts us into a church as our spiritual family. He connects us with other people, and we experience life together. We live together with purpose—to reveal who God is by the way we interact with and love each other. Our interaction in the church is meant to be so powerful that it’s magnetic.
Ouch!
The reputation and reality is that churches are often relational messes. Individuals may look at the way church members interact with each other and with outsiders and wonder why anyone would ever attend church. Like so many families, churches can become places of conflict, dysfunction, and pain. People disappoint and let each other down. They may be immature, inconsiderate, selfish, or just downright mean. How many have rejected Christ or never really considered the gospel message because of negative relationships in the Church?
But, this is not the way God intended it. He meant for church to be a wonderful, accepting, and encouraging place where hurts are healed and people become reflections of Jesus Christ. He still intends for His Church, the Body of Christ, to be such a place. This study is about God shaping you into the kind of person who can make His Church (your church) that wonderful place.
THE CHALLENGE OF CHRIST-LIKENESS
If churches are ever going to be wonderful, accepting, and nurturing places, they must be filled with people who reflect those qualities. And, that is precisely God’s design. He wants to take our weaknesses and our tendencies to mess up relationships and totally transform us.
Paul, the apostle and church planter, emphasizes this transformation throughout his writings. Think about this concept as you read this selection of verses:
Families and churches are places of hurt because people, by nature, tend to hurt each other. Without Christ in our lives, we are inclined to be selfish and hurtful. Being a follower of Christ should involve a dramatic change, a transformation—as Paul describes. In these verses, he is not talking about coming to know Jesus as your Savior. These verses are written to people who are already Christians. They are describing the process of change taking place in the life of a Christ-follower. If you have a relationship with Jesus Christ and have been redeemed by what He did for you on the cross, His plan for you is to transform and make you like Him in every way.
JESUS—THE ULTIMATE PSYCHOLOGIST
No one understands human behavior and the human psyche like Jesus. He alone has the power to change us. He created us (Colossians 1:15–17) and knows everything about our needs. And, let’s be honest, He also knows how we tend to hurt each other. There are often empty spaces between us—times when we don’t know why someone said or did something. Our sinful nature is inclined to fill these spaces with suspicion, anger, or other negative assumptions. So much bitterness and hurt are the result. But, God has a different plan for these spaces. His grace transforms us and helps us fill these empty spaces between us with good. So, when Jesus gives instructions about human happiness, we would be wise to listen and follow His teachings.
In His first public message, Jesus provided deep insight into the motivations and practices that will make people blessed and happy (Matthew 5). These ideas, from what is commonly referred to as the Sermon on the Mount, represent the character qualities the transformation process is to produce in the Christ-follower. And, these are the basis for all of the one-another teachings we will be studying together.
When we refer to the one-another passages
in this study, we are being literal. In many Bible translations, the verses we’ll be studying are actually translated using the phrases one-another.
In some translations however, the text may read each other
or use the word others.
When we think about how we, as followers of Christ, are to relate to each other, no passages are more instructive than these one-another verses.
Loving people love others compassionately.
Humble people submit to others meekly.
Spiritual people pray for others passionately.
Unselfish people serve other generously.
REAL CHANGE
Living out the one-another passages in the New Testament is much less about what we do than about who we are. It’s possible to reduce these instructions to rules of conduct
for the Christian. But, doing so misses the point. To look at these verses as rules is to make them transactional; we can