We need to need each other.

I'm in the midst of a project to help a member of our church with a particular need. It is a need that wouldn't exist had this person not made some radical choices for the purpose of advancing the cause of Christ. I'm glad to say that the project is going well. I had just talked to someone who was helping to meet this need when I heard this statement by David Platt, in an audio version of his book Radical, "We are not Lone Rangers trying to accomplish the purpose of God." He explains that everyone who knows the Lord needs to be committed to, and serving with, a body of believers, a local church.
Very high on the agenda by which most of us live is the concept of independence. We regard it as problematic, even shameful, for us to need to someone else's help in order to get along. Our culture is full of sayings and cliche's like: "Pull your own weight," "Be beholden to no one." or "I pay my own way." According to 1 Corinthians 12, however, no Christian can be the person she ought to be unless she is integrally involved in an assembly of believers. Even more mind-shaking is the truth this chapter puts forth that without our involvement, the church--The Body of Christ--will not be able to function as effectively as it would if we were plugged in.
We need to need one another within the body.
Another friend of mine, one who has invested his life in missionary service, once commented about what a strange way to live this was. His income and ability to do the work to which God had called him was totally dependent, in a human sense, on the continued financial investment of others in his ministry. All of us in the body of Christ need to abandon the fiction of independence that we too often maintain. Our commitment to the cause of Christ ought to be such that it places us not only in dependence on the Lord, but on one another. Since the church is His Body, the two are really the same.

We need to need each other.