Breaking away from the crowd

     We don't want to but sometimes we need to break away from the crowd.  Part of the process of breaking away from the crowd is easy and part is very difficult.  We, like most people, long to belong to the crowd.  We are a people who have an intact need to be with other people.  There is a sense of need for community deep inside of us.  We may have all the outward signs of wanting to be a hermit but deep inside God created us for community.  Community is both positive and negative both in history as well as our current time.  Community with God's people is supposed to be positive and yet sometimes is the exact opposite.  Community with the world is supposed to be negative to the Christian and yet is sometimes the exact opposite.  What do we run to and what do we run from is the real question. 
     We have been told through our teens that it's not always wise to follow the crowd...especially the "wrong" crowd.  Just what is the right or wrong crowd?  What may seem like a good crowd to me may well be a bad crowd to others. The truth we need to address isn't so much what makes up a good crowd or a bad crow but rather what we bring to the crowd we participate with.  Just what is it that I give to the crowd and take away from the crowd?  The purest in me wants to trumpet the positive and wonderful that I bring to the crowd.  However, I don't always bring the positive and sometimes bring too much of the negative.  Growing up in a small mid-western farming community I lived 12 miles outside the nearest town and my closest neighbor (my uncle) lived 2 miles away.  We had the pleasure of not being part of the crowd.  You see, when you aren't born and raised in a small town (ours was 300 people, 7 churches and 1 bar) you never belong.  Even today I don't feel any sense of belonging to that crowd.  I'm sure that some of you reading this can make the connection.  Sometimes we don't have any control over whether we are included in a crowd or not.  Sometimes we don't have any control over whether we are allowed to bring our talents and gifts to the group.
     Crowds of all kinds are manipulated by the world around them as well.  We who belong to a group have either a spoken or unspoken agenda that frames the very structure of our group.  You don't belong and you do.  You can maybe earn entrance but you will never be a full part of the group.  We may use you in the group but that doesn't mean we have to accept you.  What is it that God wants us to be/do as a group of believers?  I don't think he had any of this in mind when he was put out of the crowd on the cross.  Even the crowd (two others) with whom he was crucified were divided as to whether Jesus belonged or not.  They had it backwards even as we do today.  It's not that we choose to belong with Jesus; it's that Jesus has made a way for us to belong with him.  We need to be part of His crowd in order to be part of the community of believers.  The Bible tells us in Acts that the early believers had all things in common and worked for the good of the believers.  Why?  Because that was what Jesus taught them.
     Jesus has taught us to break away from the worlds crowds and to cling to the crowd of believers who will one day be the crowd who are brought together in heaven.  In order to be more fully part of the crowd of believers we need to understand why we belong to the groups that we do.  We, by nature, feel the need to be accepted by others according to the worlds standard.  Jesus says he will fill that need when we become part of his crowd simply by providing grace.  It's important that we understand we are to be in the world but not of the world.  Because we are a peculiar people and a holy people chosen by God, we have not only a great hope but also a great burden to bring others to the Savior who alone ushers his group into the presence of God.  The more we immerse ourselves in what the Christian is to be, the stronger the group.  Paul goes on to say that as individual parts of the body that no one in a group is anymore important than another person.  Our gifts are linked together in order to benefit the body of Christ. 
     Break away from the crowd of the world.  Break into the crowd of heaven.