You Belong: Three Ways to Find Your Tribe

We Need to Belong

God gave us the desire to belong to something or someone or a plural of someones. He’s a God of relationship, and we were made in His image.

Even at fifty-two there is a little girl in me who wants to belong. I’m also acutely aware of others who want to belong. Maybe it’s that longing in me that can pinpoint it in someone else. Sometimes I’m good at including that person. Sometimes, not so much. I’ve been on both sides of the inclusion line–just saying.

The fact is we all have experienced rejection. We’ve been the last kid to get picked for the team. We’ve tried to participate in a conversation with people we didn’t know and experienced their cold shoulders.

We know loneliness.

We’ve stood in a room full of people knowing we didn’t belong. It’s an awful feeling. It’s awkward until you make some sort of connection with someone in the room.

Even church can be that way, can’t it? But it shouldn’t be.

[bctt tweet=”Knowing to whom we belong is paramount to our identity, and this affects how we live.” username=”wordsbyandylee”]

Finding our Tribe

I love how Sascha Jones described this need in her article in the Huffington Post:

We all want to experience a sense of community. To have a group of like-minded people, speaking the same language, who are on the same page supporting each other as a collective. Sharing ideas, interests and working in harmony — be it professional, personal or other. Who we are creates who we meet — on a deeper level, your “personal reality begins inside of you” — when we are aware of what is going on inside of ourselves and are connected to our core self, what happens to us on the outside reflects this. The people we meet, the people we work with — they all gravitate to what it is that we project. If you want a happy tribe, be happy man.

Did you catch that? Whatever is going on inside us will make it’s way to our outside. If we’re secure, joyful, and we love life, it’s gonna radiate. Those qualities are magnetic. None of us do this perfectly 100% of our days. We will have our restless, struggling seasons. This is why our first member of our tribe has to be Jesus.

 

Three Ways to Find Your Tribe

1. Spend time with Jesus. I’m convinced that until we are secure in God’s love, we will be insecure in this world.
2. Be a blessing to others. Don’t wait for people to reach out to you. Love on them.
3. Join a Bible study or small group.

We belong to God. We belong to Christ. And we belong to the body of Christ. How does that change the way we live, think, and love? Let’s study these seven scriptures on belonging to help us better understand who and whose we are.

 

Sneak Peek of Printable with Prompts

 

Monday: Romans 1:5-: Through Him and on behalf of His name, we received grace and apostleship to call all those among the Gentiles to the obedience that comes from faith. And you also are among those who are called to belong to Jesus Christ. To all in Rome who are loved by God and called to be saints: Grace and peace to you from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.…

• What does it mean to you to be called by Jesus to belong to Him?

Tuesday: Romans 7:4: So, my brothers and sisters, you also died to the law through the body of Christ, that you might belong to another, to him who was raised from the dead, in order that we might bear fruit for God.

• When I read this verse, I realize that my faith is not just for me. I now belong to the body of Christ. How does that affect the way we live out our faith?

Wednesday: John 15:19: If you belonged to the world, it would love you as its own. As it is, you do not belong to the world, but I have chosen you out of the world. That is why the world hates you.

• Jesus has chosen us out of this world. Write down ways the world demonstrates its hatred for us. How do we respond?

Don’t Forget the Printable

Thursday: 1 Thess. 5:5: You are all children of the light and children of the day. We do not belong to the night or to the darkness.

• Close your eyes. Can you picture yourself as a child of light? What will you do today as a child of light?

Friday: 1 John 3: 18,19: Dear children, let us not love with words or speech but with actions and in truth. This is how we know that we belong to the truth and how we set our hearts at rest in his presence

• How do we know we belong the truth? How will you love actively today?

Saturday: Romans 14:8: If we live, we live for the Lord; and if we die, we die for the Lord. So, whether we live or die, we belong to the Lord.

• Write a short Psalm of praise or love letter to Jesus.

Sunday: Romans 12:5: . . . so in Christ we, though many, form one body, and each member belongs to all the others.

• Do you belong to a body of believers? What role do you play in it? (Read the following verses.)

Get the Printable!

I pray you know how very important you are to Jesus. I pray you know that you have a role to play in this family. You belong. He picked you out and called you to be on His team. We belong. We are His. Let’s go bless others and invite them to belong to this amazing group of misfits loved by God.

 

Different Ways to Use this Plan

1. Print off this post to have the reading list. (The print icon is with the sharing buttons at the top of the post.)
2. Join me Monday -Friday at 8:20 AM ET on Facebook for my Daily Broadcast to unpack the “bite” with a bunch of other believers who love to dig into the Word of God. Or you can watch it later on my You Tube channel.
3. Click here to download a free Printable of the reading plan with the scriptures typed out and extra questions and prompts to deepen your time with God each day.
4. Or you can simply take a screen shot of the Bite of Bread meme.

 

Did you know that . . .

” . . . you also are among those who are called to belong to Jesus Christ.” ? (Romans 1:6).

The call is an invitation.

Have you sent your RSVP?

Taken His hand?

Sat down at the table with Him?

He knows what rejection feels like. (Here’s my teaching on His rejection.)

Yet Jesus walked in great confidence of who He was and Whose He was.

Do we?

1. Oh my friends, I hope we do, and I hope after studying these verses, we’ll have a better idea of how this security in Jesus changes things . . . changes us.

You belong.

 

Living Fully Belonging,

Andy

 

PS. Check out these other great bloggers/authors.

Ginger Harrington

Holly Gerth

Allysa J. Howard