“There is no journey toward God that does not bring us to each other.”

A thought by Erwin Raphael McManus from his book, The Last Arrow: Save Nothing for the Next Life (p. 147). The Crown Publishing Group. Kindle Edition. (Click on the title to go to Amazon.com to buy the book.)

Of course, you know that Jesus, the Son of God didn’t even go it alone.  He had twelve friends/followers who were with him all the time. 

Erwin says, “You might begin the journey alone, but the place where God is taking you is a land called Together. If you have ever felt that you are living beneath your potential or that the greatness God has placed within you is yet to be realized, then I would tell you that the most common cause of living beneath our capacity is that we have chosen to walk alone rather than to walk together. You will never sustain greatness or fulfill your God-given calling if you see people as an obstacle to your destiny rather than as essential to fulfilling God’s purpose in your life.”

He continues, “It’s odd how we prioritize the things that matter to us. We choose a career or job; we choose a city or place to live. We make so many things important to us, but in all the things we factor in as we craft our futures, we make the people in our lives a commodity of, at best, secondary importance. We would take a job and give up our people rather than choose a tribe and give up the job. We don’t say it like this, but many of us have been mentored by a culture that makes money more important than relationships. You can always meet new people; you can always make new friends; you can always find a new church. In our way of thinking, these are expendable, replaceable aspects of our lives. When it comes to relationships, many of us have chosen to be mercenaries.”

Erwin goes on, “The truth is, there are relationships that will keep you from the life God created you to live. There are people whom you need to extricate from your life because they pull you back to the person you were rather than forward to the person you must become. Yet this must never blind us to the deeper truth. We were not created to do life alone, and if we want people to be for us, then there need to be people whom we are for.”

Ruben Welch wrote a book called, We Really Do Need Each Other.  God created us that way and he modeled it for us through his Son. 

So, what is it you are trying to do all alone?