Ecclesiastes 4:4-12 - Speaker: Jon Kopp - This week, we will discuss the rhythm “grow in community.” Our rhythms at Gospel Grace are the ordinary, but essential practices that we as a church devote ourselves to on the path of following Jesus. When we talk about community at Gospel Grace, we are referring to something much more significant than being around people who are like us or who we like. Community isn’t just living in the same place as a group of people or being with people of common backgrounds, interests, languages, or life stages. Community is how we describe the unity with God and others that humans were made for as a result of bearing the image of God. Though that design has been broken by sin, God is at work through the gospel to restore relationships with Him and others. Although God saves men and women as individuals, He saves them into a new community–a family! And, if God has made them into a family, we should live like one in authentic love and sacrificial good works toward each other and the world around them — not to earn His love, but in response to His love. "Beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. [12] No one has ever seen God; if we love one another, God abides in us and his love is perfected in us." (1 John 4:11-12)