How To Neighbor (feat. David Bowden & Dillon Chase) - Life.Church

Learning How to Neighbor

Overview

We once lived as the worst of neighbors, shut inside houses built with hatred and sin, owing a debt we could never repay. God moved toward us first—bringing us into His family and teaching us to love like He loves. Because Jesus crossed every barrier to reach us, we now cross barriers for others: embracing orphans, comforting the lonely, reconciling divided races, and empowering the poor. Neighbor-love is not moral performance; it is gratitude in action.

Main Points

1. Remember where we started

• We were “disgruntled neighbors of the Almighty,” barricaded behind “bricks of enmity” and “selfish deeds.”
• Our sin made us spiritual orphans, drowning in a mortgage we could never pay.
• God’s mercy turned former offenders into beloved sons and daughters.

2. God modeled true neighboring

“Love one another.”

• The Father welcomed us, so now we welcome others.
• Every act of love flows from what the Savior already accomplished; we respond, never earn.

3. Four expressions of gospel neighboring

• Adopt the orphans: we who “first lived without a family” now bring the fatherless home.
• Love the lonely: the One who is Love “became loneliness for us” when He was forsaken on the cross.
• Reconcile the races: once “children of Adam… children of wrath,” our sin-stained skin was healed; now we dismantle hostility between peoples.
• Empower the poor: we were “homeless without roof, wall, or door,” thinking earth’s comforts were enough while hell awaited—so we share resources and dignity.

4. A living testimony of neighbor-love

• Story: The speaker grew up amid heroin abuse, broken bottles, repeated abandonments, and homelessness by age 17. Churches offered polite greetings but no embrace.
• Story: One man finally “took me into his home,” demonstrated daily love for God, his wife, and his neighbor, and introduced the speaker to Jesus.
• Result: Ten years of marriage, three children, and a reconciled life show the power of practiced neighboring across ethnic and social lines.

5. The church’s present call

• “The lonely ones need your open arms; let the church awake for the coming dawn.”
• Everyone is our neighbor because everyone has stood where we once stood—outside God’s neighborhood of grace.

Key Truths

• We love because God first loved and welcomed us.
• Gospel neighboring addresses spiritual, relational, and material brokenness.
• Orphans, the lonely, divided races, and the poor are priority recipients of Christ-shaped love.
• Personal hospitality can rewrite someone’s entire story.
• Neighbor-love is a grateful response, not a performance for approval.

Response

• Reflect on your own story of being welcomed by God.
• Open your home or table to someone who feels orphaned or alone.
• Seek reconciliation with a person of a different ethnicity or background.
• Share resources intentionally with those lacking basic security.
• Pray for eyes to see every person as a neighbor in need of grace.

Closing

God’s people carry forward what Jesus already did, moving into the broken cul-de-sacs of the world with open doors and outstretched arms. May orphans be embraced, the lonely loved, races restored, and the poor empowered—because “all this and more was first done by our Savior, the God-man known as Jesus, who taught us how to neighbor.”