Don't Do It Alone

It is Mother’s Day. I do not think we can pretend that it is not Mother’s Day. We cannot ignore it. And like Pastor Cindy said, it has kind of become hard to honor one group of people without it feeling like you are dishonoring another group of people.

I want us to put our thoughts on this idea that both can happen at the same time. We can honor one group and not dishonor another group. That is completely possible. That is the way Jesus intended it to be.

So, I know that on a day like today, the room can feel maybe tender. Emotions can feel tender. But listen, we can celebrate moms. Moms are awesome, right? We can celebrate them, and we can provide support to women in the room who are not moms, who wanted to be moms, or who are on the journey to motherhood and it is maybe harder than they thought. We can do both of those.

We can mourn with people in the room whose mom is no longer here. We can do that too. We can do all of those things because of Jesus.

And so today, the message is not just for moms. I promise it is for everyone, because Jesus is for everyone. We are not going to take a day and forget why we are here. We gathered because of Jesus. But we can do both, right? We are capable of doing both. So that is what we are going to do today.

The title of my message today is: Don’t do it alone.

Rooted in Community

Did you know that Mother’s Day is actually rooted in community and service? That is where Mother’s Day came from. It was rooted in an idea about community and service and women showing up for each other and holding each other up. That is really where Mother’s Day came from. That is the origin of it.

But when you hear that, that is not just moms. Is that not how we are all supposed to be with each other all the time? Serving one another, helping one another, and being in community with each other. That is what we are supposed to be doing as Christ followers.

And so this morning, that is what we are going to talk about. It is Mother’s Day, here is the root of it, and we are going to talk about it from a place where it applies to every single one of us, because it does apply to every single one of us.

There is something really beautiful about the body of Christ, the people in this room, and even people outside of this room. There is something really beautiful when the body of Christ comes together and supports one another in very practical ways.

I think it is fitting that, for me, the first time I really can remember experiencing the body of Christ coming up underneath me was when I became a mom. That is when I remember it. That is when I can honestly say I had seen it before, I had experienced it before, but that is the tangible moment for me where I remember it, and I still experience it.

For those of you that do not know, Grace, our precious Grace, is adopted. She came to us on a Thursday, fast and furious, and unexpectedly. We got a phone call at 8:00 on a Thursday from someone telling us her birth mom was in labor and we needed to get there as fast as we possibly could.

If you have lived in Albuquerque any amount of time, you know leaving Albuquerque at 8:00 p.m. on a plane is not really a thing. The airport basically shuts down. You cannot get out of here. And we knew that.

So David and I, our brains are going a hundred miles an hour, and we have called our families, we have called our friends, we have texted people. Let me tell you what happened in that.

In that moment, David and I are going, “What are we? What is happening?” and all these people sprung into action for us. We had family members finding flights for us. We had family members looking for rental cars. We had a precious young adult come to our house at 10:00 p.m. so that we could talk to her about how to take care of things, because we had animals. We could not just leave. We had to have someone come and house-sit and be in our home. She came to our house at 10:00 at night so that we could explain to her what was going on.

Then the next morning, I do not think we slept. I think we slept maybe thirty minutes. We woke up and my mom came to pick us up at 4:00 a.m. to get to the airport. Then we get there, and there are people we do not even know hugging us in the airport and doing all these incredible things, because walking through an airport with an empty baby carrier car seat thing is confusing. People are like, “Oh, you forgot something.” They are very confused, so you have to explain yourself to these people.

I remember the lady at the counter. She hopped over the counter, stepped over, and hugged us in a moment where we needed it. I know that was God providing someone along the journey for us. The security people were incredible. It is endless, the amount of people that helped us in that journey.

For me, still today, I can remember almost every detail of what people did for us in those times. They were times where we did not know what to do. We did not know up from down. But people in the body of Christ stepped up and stepped in to help us.

You Were Not Meant to Be Alone

It is where I started to understand what God meant in Genesis, all the way back in the beginning. In Genesis 2:18, He says:

“It is not good for man to be alone.”

Now, of course, in context, what He is talking about there is Adam needing a partner in Eve. That is what He is talking about, and we do not discount that. We do not take that away.

But I do believe God was communicating something bigger also. It is that man and woman should not be alone. That does not only mean in marriage. That means in everyday life. We are not supposed to do it alone.

Think about this idea. I love this. When I heard this, it sprang something up on the inside of me. God’s very existence, the Trinity, communicates community: Father, Son, Holy Spirit. Community is woven into the very nature of God, which means it is in our design as His image bearers. He represents our need for people just in His existence.

So if God is not doing it alone, really, why are we trying to do it on our own?

I think about, and it is Mother’s Day, so things are going to come up about being a mom, but when you have a toddler and they are learning how to do everything, what do they want to do? “I do it myself. I’ll do it myself.”

That is fine for the toddler. That is okay as we are learning how this Christ-following works. But as mature Christians, we have to grow out of “I am going to do it myself” and start saying, “I do not want to do it myself. I cannot do it myself.”

Because I think that is the honest part. I cannot do it myself. I really cannot. I need people.

Now, I know there are plenty of you in the room, and it is easy to say, “I understand connection and relationships are not easy.” They are not. I understand that. I am an introvert. I have shared that with you. I struggle with being with people a lot, saying that as nicely as I can. I am not going to do well being with people that are not my people, my family, twenty-four seven. I am not going to do great if you ring my doorbell out of nowhere. Grace knows. Doorbell rings, we are quiet. Taught her that as a toddler. “Shh. Nobody’s home.”

So listen, I am not saying having community and having relationships means that you have to be an extrovert and that you have to become someone who wants to be with people all the time. That is not what I am saying.

But I am also not saying that we do not walk with this illusion nowadays that we are more connected than we actually are. Having hundreds of followers on your little device there does not mean you have people around you who, when you call, will be there. They probably will not be.

And so we have this illusion of what connection really is. I think God shows us the way to His kind of relationship and connection and how it is supposed to operate.

So that is where we are going to spend the bulk of our time this morning. If my title is “Don’t do it alone,” you might be saying, “Okay, cool. What does that mean? How do I do that? What does that look like?”

Well, not doing it alone is not just a title or something we say. It is actually a way we live. It is a lifestyle. It is applied every single day of our lives.

Let People In

The first thing you have to do, number one, is let people in. I know that is hard.

Proverbs 18:1 says:

“A person who isolates himself seeks his own desire; he rages against all wise judgment.”

Did you hear that? A person who isolates himself seeks his own desire. This is saying that if you are isolating yourself, if you are pulling yourself away from people, you are actually being selfish. That is what you are actually doing.

Isolation is actually just saying, “Well, this is how I prefer it, so we are just going to do it this way.” Or, “I do not like…” For me, it is a struggle to be with people all the time. My preference is to be at home. Honestly, if I had no reason to ever leave the house again, I would be just fine. I would be really happy. I would be totally at peace. But that is what keeps me at peace. That is selfish. That is not the right way to be.

Isolation is about our own desires. It is about our own wants, and we have to start admitting that to ourselves. When we isolate, it is not because of other people. When we isolate, it is something going on on the inside of us that needs to be dealt with.

I do not think it is wrong to say that loneliness, this idea of loneliness, has of course been around forever. It is not new for people to feel lonely. But in a post-COVID, technology-heavy, social-media-driven world, could we admit that maybe loneliness is actually at an all-time high? We have made isolation okay because of COVID, and we have let fear creep in because of something that we are afraid of. So we are just like, “No, I am doing it to protect everyone else.” No, you are doing it to protect yourself. That is the reality of it.

Then the other side of that is this illusion that we are connected. “It is fine. I have got my phone.” We have this illusion because of the thing we carry with us all the time, and it is a struggle for us because it is creating this idea of, “No, I have got people.” No, you do not. Or they are just people you scroll by. That is not real connection.

So I was curious. I thought, okay, what is science saying about loneliness? They study these things. Here are just a couple things.

Lack of connection actually increases the risk of premature death in a way that is similar to smoking fifteen cigarettes a day. Poor social relationships and social isolation can increase your risk of heart disease by 29 percent. They can increase your risk of stroke by 32 percent. For older adults who are lonely and secluded and isolated, it actually increases the risk of dementia by 50 percent.

So what this says to me is that science is now starting to catch up to what Scripture has told us all along: man should not be alone.

I do not know why we need science to tell us that it is true, but scripturally, God has told us that from the beginning. So we have to let people in. We have to.

I will admit, I think it is harder. I am a millennial, which I do not like because I think it generalizes a group of people in a way that is not fair. But I will say this: David and I get to be the cool millennial age where we have experienced technology advancement because when we were kids, it was not there.

I had to call Christine on a landline. It was not on the wall, not that far back. It was cordless. And you would leave a message on the answering machine that the whole family was going to hear. That is embarrassing.

I was in late elementary or early middle school when the internet started coming around. I remember when I had to do my first research using the internet as a source, and I was like, “What does that mean?” Before that, you had to go to the library, and you know what is in the library? People and books.

I was also at the age where I could still ride my bike on our street down to my neighbor friend’s house, and we would stay out until dark, and it was sad when we had to come in. We did not have phones. That is bizarre that people would let us do that. Now it is like, “Do you have your phone? Do you have your watch? Do you have all the things so I can track you and know where you are at all times?”

That is what I remember.

Let me be clear: I am not craving the good old days. I think that is wonderful. I am so happy I have those memories. I think there are great things we can glean from the way it was and bring forward to how it is now. But listen, I am so happy we can text. You mean I do not have to talk to people on the phone? Praise God. If you cannot say it in a text, I do not want to know. I am good with that. I am grateful for the internet. I am grateful for AI. I know that scares some of you. I am grateful for all of it.

But all those advancements, what the world is going to tell us is that they are a replacement for everything else. They are not. We take the good, and we make sure that it lines up with what God is telling us is the right thing to be doing with our time and with our energy.

If that is the case, if we have all of these things and it is getting more complicated, what that means for us as Christ followers is that we are going to have to be much more intentional about letting people in. We are going to have to be, and we are going to need God’s wisdom for who to let in and how to let them in.

But letting someone in does not necessarily mean they have access to your whole life. They have access to whichever parts you believe are helpful to that person. You do not have to say, “Hey, here is my whole life story, and good luck with that.” That is not what we are saying.

But God designed us for relationship. Well, if you want relationship, you are going to have to let people in.

Go back to the story I was telling you in the beginning with Grace. What was the first thing we did? We started calling people. I think it was maybe three minutes before both of us were on the phone calling our parents and saying, “Here is what is going on. We need your help.” We invited people in.

Then we were gone for sixteen days, I think. Every day in those sixteen days, we would text our family with what we called “daily Grace updates.” We texted our family. We texted the people. Then they would take what we texted and send it to other people. We had an army of people praying for us, and I am not kidding you, an army of people praying for us through that journey.

We did not have contact with all of that. We did not know all of that. But we knew that if we sent it to these people who we let in, they would know the next right people to let in, and the next right people to let in. As a result, we had all these people coming up underneath us praying for the journey.

It was not an easy journey. It was hard, and it was longer than we had hoped. It was a lot of those things. But all those people that prayed for us, it did not just stop there. When we got home, we did not just stay in our home. We had them meet our daughter in person and thank them for helping us bring her home.

So we took technology and then brought it into real life and made sure that people knew how grateful we were for what they did. We made them both work for us.

Proverbs 11:14 says:

“Where no counsel is, the people fall: but in the multitude of counsellors there is safety.”

We had our multitude, and so we had counsel.

The part about an adoption journey that people do not tell you is that you have to learn a whole new language. There are all kinds of terms and all kinds of things. We had to have lawyers for the first time, at least for me, multiple lawyers for the first time ever in my life. I did not know the lingo. I did not know the legal things. I did not know any of it. We were learning things, but we were learning things because we had people next to us counseling us on what those things meant.

We were not figuring it out on our own.

We were vulnerable. That was an extremely vulnerable time in our lives. But we had to be honest, and we had to be open with people so that we could have the help we needed.

A lot of times we feel frustrated with the lack of support we have. Sometimes you have to pull back and ask, “Have I let people in? Have I let people in to actually be able to support me, to actually be able to speak into my situation?”

Because there are people all around you who want to. I promise you there are. But we do not know as much as you think we know. People do not know. Not everybody sits on their phones all day long and reads all your stories. That is just reality.

So do not walk through life assuming people know. Walk through life with a vulnerability and an honesty, because when you do that, counsel and wisdom will come in.

Show Up for Others

That is point number one. Now let’s flip it. If we have to let people in, then the other side of that is we have to show up for others.

Not doing life alone is a two-way street. It really is. Did you know that you actually have counsel and wisdom to give to other people? You do. Every single one of you in this room has something you could give to someone else.

2 Corinthians 1:3-4 says:

“God comforts us in all our troubles, so that we can comfort others. When they are troubled, we will be able to give them the same comfort God has given us.”

God provides each and every one of us comfort. He cares about you, so do not miss that part. Every season you walk through, God cares, and He cares deeply. He provides exactly what you need in the moment. He provides it for you, but He does not provide it just for you to hang on to and hold super tight. He says it is so that we can comfort others with the same comfort He gave to us.

So why do we wait? This is the question I really have. I understand it can be hard, but when you are in a struggle, why do you wait until you are on the other side of the struggle before you give what God is giving to you to anybody else? Why do we wait until after?

In those moments, I genuinely believe this: whatever it is that we are walking through, whether it is good or bad, God can take that and use it to help someone else. He absolutely can. But most of the time, we are so consumed with ourselves that we are not even looking at that.

I really think our lives were meant to be lived out in a way that helps the people all around us. I believe He uses our giftings, our talents, our experiences, all of it. Every single piece of it can be used by God to help someone else. But you have to be available to that.

So I was trying to think this through. Before David and I were in any kind of pastoral role, we started out as youth leaders and then we stepped into youth pastoring. I promise you, I believe that the experience I had in those ten years can still help the Next Gen team today. It can still help. Times are different, but God’s principles are the same. I can help them if I am willing to.

I have had health struggles. I am on a parenting journey. I am still in it, but I have had experiences that can help someone else. Finding a school for Grace was not easy for us. We have a whole note in our phone of every single school and what they offer and how they offer it. That is experience we can give to someone else who is struggling. That was not just for us. It can be for someone else.

My organization, my daily routines, all of those things that we do can be a support to someone else if you are looking for it.

But a lot of times, and this is a cultural norm now, we despise the experiences we have had. We are mad at them. Sometimes we are mad at God for them. Some of us despise our daily life. We do not like our life. We would rather stay isolated. We are good. We are happy there. This generation, this next one coming up, they like being the victim. They want to hang on to it. They like it. That is not where God puts us.

What we should be doing is stopping in our tracks, no matter how difficult, no matter how hard, no matter what it is, and saying, “Hey Jesus, help me use this for someone else.” It is that easy. “Here I am, God. Send me. Send me out there.”

Do you know how much that will help you, but also help someone else?

It is so important. Right in the middle of it is the best time to be listening for some way you could help someone else, because I promise you it will be a beautiful cycle of you giving and receiving.

Romans 12:4-5 says:

“For just as each of us has one body with many members, and these members do not all have the same function, so in Christ we, though many, form one body, and each member belongs to all the others.”

Paul is talking to us about the fact that the body only works when every part is doing its job. No matter how big or how small, every single part. There is a word in there that is a key word. It is the word belongs. Each member belongs to all the others. That is not a suggestion. That is the design.

That is the design of the body, that we need each other. We belong to each other. It is not a halfway thing. It is how it is designed to work. And when we do not give our part, the body does not function. The body does not function as it should.

So when you withhold yourself, when you think, “Oh, nobody will notice. Nobody will notice. It is fine,” you are not fulfilling the part you have to play. Just your presence fulfills a role in the body. Just your very presence in a room fulfills that. We have to stop discounting it.

We really do. We have to stop thinking that the things we have to offer will not help anyone, because I promise you they will. God put those giftings in you. God put those things inside of you for His glory, for His purpose. But the world does not want you to do that. The world does not want you to give. They want you to think it is small. It is nothing. The enemy wants you to think that. It is not.

No matter how big, no matter how small, no matter how impressive it may seem, what God has put inside of you is meant to help someone else.

Yesterday, a group of people got together and helped a woman in our church repair things in her home. That is the body of Christ.

Not long ago, we were made aware of a young man who needed some help. It was a situation that required us to move kind of quickly, but there were a lot of things that we did not know. So we had to start reaching out to people who did know.

We needed law enforcement help to understand some things. Check, we had that person. We needed someone who knew some things in the county and how things are divided. That meant we had to text one person in the body to get to the other person who is a part of the body. Check. It took some work, but within the body there was that, and then from that it went to someone else.

Then we needed people who work in a system to help kids who need support, who need help, and we knew how to provide that. Check, we had that person.

Every single person in that situation fulfilled a role that helped a young man know that people cared about him, number one, and helped that family. So now that family is beginning to heal.

That is the body of Christ. Everybody was just doing their job, their literal everyday job. It is the thing they do outside these walls that helps someone inside these walls. That is the body of Christ at work.

So do not discount what you do. It matters. It matters greatly. Standing up on this platform is not the thing that makes the difference. It is the things you do in those seats, whatever God has placed inside of you, that will make a difference in this city.

It is hearing the needs. It is hearing the hurt and saying, “Okay, Lord, I can help there. I can help there. I will help there.” We cannot keep pushing it back and pushing it aside.

Trust God With Both

So we have said you cannot let everyone in all the way, and we all know we cannot help everybody. So how do we do it? What is the third step? We trust God with both.

It sounds simple, but I know it is not.

We have said that connection is hard. I will not discount or pretend that the world is always kind. The people you encounter, the things you deal with, it is not always kind. People will not show up like you hoped. People will let you down. It is going to happen, and I am sorry that it is going to happen, but it has happened to all of us in this room.

But that does not mean now we just opt out. That is what a lot of people do. They just say, “It is hard,” or, “This happened to me, so I am out. I am not going to do it.” That is what the enemy wants you to do.

The enemy wants you isolated. He wants you choosing yourself over other people. He wants you convinced that you have nothing to offer. But he also wants to convince you that no one out there has anything to help you. That is what the enemy truly wants.

So I think we have to really dig our heels in and say, “I am not going to give the enemy that. I am not going to let him take me out.” Because it is not actually people. It is the enemy’s little whispers in your ear when you are at home by yourself and isolated. That is what is going to take you out. You have to take the step and get out and do it.

So letting people in and showing up for people are not two different assignments. They are connected. They are cyclical. They are always happening simultaneously.

You always have someone who needs you. You are always simultaneously someone who needs people and someone who can help someone else. You are both of those things at all times. You need people, and they need you. It never stops. It just goes like this all day long in a circle.

If we are doing it with the help of the Holy Spirit, then we can help more people and we can be helped. It is not a burden. It is actually a beautiful picture of how God designed it to be, the heavenly picture of the body of Christ being there for one another.

We have to trust God with the process.

Pastor Cindy read this verse in a different translation to us during offering, Proverbs 3:5-6:

“Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding; in all your ways submit to Him, and He will make your paths straight.”

We use this verse all the time, and we should, because it is foundational. We need to trust God. But it applies to everything. It applies to your finances. It applies to your family. It applies to the career you are looking for. Have you applied it to your relationships?

Trust God with your relationships. Trust Him with who gets access to you. Trust Him with who He is asking you to show up for.

It is pretty simple to say, “I know I am supposed to do that, but how?” Well, ask God. Actually invite Him in and say, “Who am I supposed to do that with?” When we trust God with both, when we actually submit it to Him, like, “Okay God, I need Your help with this,” He starts opening your eyes and showing you who to let in and who to help.

It starts to show up at many levels. I think sometimes we think showing up for people has to be in a big way. It really does not. Showing up for people can be very small.

Simple Ways to Show Up

It can be a stranger.

If you are a mom, then you definitely have been in Target or Walmart or some store and seen the mom whose kid is melting down in the toy aisle, probably, or in the checkout line because they are mean with all the candy. You have seen that mom.

Most people silently judge them in their brain. They silently say things like, “I am so glad that is not me,” or they have thoughts about what kind of parent she is.

Can I tell you something? That mom is already judging herself. She is. She is mortified by what is happening in that store in that moment. So instead of casting judgment up here, what if you just said three words: “You’re doing great.”

Hey, mama, you are doing great.

You have just made that woman’s day, I promise. And if you want to, you could add one other little sentence that lets her in to you: “I’ve been there.”

Because the truth is, you probably have been there. But you have just let in a stranger and shown them the love of God with three simple words. It is really not that hard.

Every day when Grace leaves for school, David takes her to school. I stand outside the car, we wave, blow kisses, the whole thing. But I always tell Grace, “Do your best. Do your best today.” Her best looks different every day. One day it is way up here, one day it is down here. But you know what I say at the end of the day? “Did you do your best?” “Yes, Mommy. I did my best.” I am good.

Why can we not extend that to the stranger? We assume a lot, but they may be giving their absolute best that day. That is good enough for us to show the love of Christ however we can.

It can show up in a simple prayer. It does not even require words to a person.

David and I live in an area where, on our way home, we pass several larger groups of unhoused people. I have often thought, “Okay, this is a tough drive,” because Grace has questions and things like that. I pass that almost every day.

Instead of passing judgment, or instead of being afraid, I have started saying a simple prayer every single time. I say this:

“Lord, I don’t know how to help them, but You do. Put people in their path today. Give them a path forward. Remind me that You love them as much as You love me. They are Your kids too. Break my heart for what breaks Yours. Help them, Father. Amen.”

I genuinely feel the tension we all feel. I cannot fix that problem. I cannot. We know it is a problem, but I can do what I can, which is pray, because my prayers are probably joined with someone else’s prayers. It is showing support. It is saying, “God, break my heart.”

I have had to ask God to do that. Break my heart for what breaks Yours, because it hurts You to see people hurt. So help me feel that compassion for them, because that is someone’s son or daughter, and they are hurting.

Do you see how that simple prayer extends? It is showing up for other people. It is a beautiful thing.

And the last one is this: it is a neighbor.

This past Thursday we had National Day of Prayer, and it was an incredible night. If you were not here, I am sorry you were not here. You should have come. We had pastors come from all over, and one of them was Jesse Harden. Many of you know him. He stepped up to the platform, and his assignment was to pray over the city.

He did something that really got my brain going. He asked us to pray for one neighbor in our neighborhood. He asked us to pray for our neighborhood. He even said, “Can you out loud say the name of one of your neighbors?”

As I was processing through, I was like, “Hey, we know like four names of our neighbors, and even more than that in our neighborhood.” Good. But I started thinking, “Am I showing the love of Christ to my neighbor?” Because if I cared for them, if I checked in on them…

One of our neighbors, we do check in on him. If we have not heard from him in a while, we are like, “Uh-oh, what is going on?” We want to know because we do care.

But what if we all did that? People do not do that. People do not know their neighbors anymore. People do not know their neighborhood anymore, not in the way we used to. And it got me thinking, “Okay God, when did we start discounting where we live as an assignment?”

To check in on the neighbor. To say, “Are you doing okay, neighbor?” To share the love of God with our neighbor.

Could you imagine if we all started doing that, because we all live in different places, how fast the gospel could spread?

Don’t Opt Out

We have to start living in a way that we simultaneously let people in and show up for them. We have to start living that way because God designed us that way.

So, church family, it is Mother’s Day, and we are going to pray for moms here in just a minute. But let people in today. I bet a lot of you are going to be with family, are going to be near people. Be present, because you might just be able to show someone the love of Christ in a way that they really need it. But it will mean you have to pay attention. It will mean you have to make a choice to connect today to the heart of the people you are around.

We cannot just keep going through the motions. We have to start being intentional, because we want people to know the love of God through us.

It is not just about always giving. It is about receiving. It is about giving. It is receiving. It is cyclical. So today, do not leave one at the door and only look for what can help you. Why do you not take what you received today and then walk out those doors and give it, and then wake up tomorrow morning and let God give you something new and then walk out and give it?

Make it a part of everything that you do. Do not let yourself opt out. I see so many people opt out of relationship with each other because it is hard. I am not discounting that. I know it is hard. But we have to open ourselves up. We have to, because God has something for us and we have to be open for it. Then He wants us to go out and give it.

Church family, keep in mind that you were never designed to do this life alone. You never were.

And I want to add just a key piece, which is that God is always with you. Even when you feel alone, God is always with you. He has never left you. He will never forsake you. He is always present.

So this way of life is possible because you are never alone. Never, ever alone.

Father, we come before You and we thank You for being ever-present, ever-present in our daily lives, ever-present in what we do and what we say, Father God. And today I ask that You help us, that You help us let people in, and that You help us show up for the people in our life that need You. Father, do not let us waste our opportunities, our giftings, our experiences. Use us, Father God. We are here. Send us. Send us to be help to people in this world. Father, we thank You for it. It is in Jesus’ name we pray. Amen.