The God Guarantee: By Jack AlexanderSample

One to Another

Galatians 5:13-26

In verse 14, Paul writes, “The entire law is fulfilled in keeping this one command: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’” It may seem, at first, as if Paul forgot the other great commandment Jesus gave—to love God with our whole hearts, souls, and minds. But there are no mistakes in the Bible, and on reflection, the better conclusion is that Paul knows our love for God is played out through our generosity toward others.

Imagine there is a lock over the place in your heart that holds your sense of purpose and fulfillment. You must open the lock to uncover the fullness of what God wants you to experience in life.

Fortunately, God has also given you a key. Yet there’s a trick: your key doesn’t fit your lock. No one’s key fits their own lock. Because God has designed us to live together in community, he has given us keys that only fit the locks of other people. Your heart can be unlocked only by someone else as you serve them, love them, encourage them, pray for them, and live generously toward them.

This is what community, fully realized, looks like.

This aspect of Jesus’s miracle of provision is much deeper, and much richer, than most of us realize. His promise to fill our lives with abundance depends on not only our relationship with him but also our relationships with the people he puts in our orbit.

Over and over in Scripture we’re called to live generously in community with one another. This isn’t a suggestion or a nice idea. It’s the simplest description of what God wants from us. Yet we seem to fight it every way we can. We pay lip service to loving one another even as we demand control over our own actions, possessions, and schedules. In Life Together, Dietrich Bonhoeffer writes, “The person who loves their dream of community will destroy community, but the person who loves those around them will create community.”

As you make progress in the life of abundance, look to draw provision from the community God has given you. And look to help build that community so that you can help contribute to the abundance that others may enjoy.

Ask God to show you how you can be an answer to someone else’s prayer for provision.