Tough chapter. A balance between being challenged but not allowing ourselves to become overwhelmed.
"Do not assume you are good soil"... God doesn't want us to become complacent. We should be ever seeking knowledge, an increasing faith, and a deeper love and desire to become like Christ... Often as we are drawn nearer to Christ, we recognize how and where we have fallen short of Him.
"Thorns are anything that distracts us from God"... In Luke 18, Jesus told one follower to sell everything he had and to come and follow Jesus. What is distracting us? What has become our higher priority than Christ alone? What decisions do we make daily that reveal our answer to that question? I can't speak to the future, but I know today I'm not called to sell everything to follow Jesus. I know I am called to be a light in my workplace, to be a patient and loving wife and mother (x4!). I know that to do that, I need to be spending more time in study. Every day I make decisions with my time, and every day I run out of time. I commit to being in the Word this week before anything else happens in my morning or day.
As more than lukewarm Christians, are we seeking out what more we can do? what more we can give? Or have we become complacent feeling like we've done or given enough?
In Christ, I know I have something good. I have a Friend, Counselor, Father. I have unconditional love and acceptance. I have hope and guidance. I want to live my life so that others want to know more about it, and I want to live my life so that others are drawn to Christ. I want to live into the opportunities that allow me to share what my Faith gives me.
Sunday, October 30, 2011
Friday, October 14, 2011
October 12, 2010
Chapter 3....Crazy Love:
How many times have we heard, said, sang, or written "God loves us". The simplest truth that is drilled into us as a child, but one that, even as adults, we are yet to understand, believe, or accept.
We discussed...
1) what might make it difficult to understand: as humans, we are limited by what we have been witness to.. Most of us shared that our closest understanding of God's love for us is the love between parent and child, husband and wife, but we know that cannot even compare to God's love for us.
2) why it is difficult to believe: we feel unworthy, we feel like we haven't lived up to His love... we don't understand it so we don't believe it.
3) why we have a hard time accepting His love: we let guilt drive a wedge between us, we don't love ourselves... we don't believe it so we don't accept it.
We miss out on JOY because we don't understand, believe or accept. We allow fear, worry, insecurity, and so many others steal our joy. If we focused on God's love and acceptance on us, we would allow ourselves to find comfort in Him, to turn to Him with our every care, to glorify Him in our every day.
We closed with some scripture that helped us to focus on God's love for us:
1 John 3:1a, "How great is the love the Father has given us so freely! Now we can be called children of God. And that's what we really are!"
Lamentations 3:21-24, "But here is something else I remember. And it gives me hope. The Lord loves us very much. So we haven't been completely destroyed. His loving concern never fails. His great love is new every morning. Lord, how faithful you are! I say to myself, "The Lord is everything I will ever need. So I will put my hope in him."
Romans 8:38-39, "For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord."
How many times have we heard, said, sang, or written "God loves us". The simplest truth that is drilled into us as a child, but one that, even as adults, we are yet to understand, believe, or accept.
We discussed...
1) what might make it difficult to understand: as humans, we are limited by what we have been witness to.. Most of us shared that our closest understanding of God's love for us is the love between parent and child, husband and wife, but we know that cannot even compare to God's love for us.
2) why it is difficult to believe: we feel unworthy, we feel like we haven't lived up to His love... we don't understand it so we don't believe it.
3) why we have a hard time accepting His love: we let guilt drive a wedge between us, we don't love ourselves... we don't believe it so we don't accept it.
We miss out on JOY because we don't understand, believe or accept. We allow fear, worry, insecurity, and so many others steal our joy. If we focused on God's love and acceptance on us, we would allow ourselves to find comfort in Him, to turn to Him with our every care, to glorify Him in our every day.
We closed with some scripture that helped us to focus on God's love for us:
1 John 3:1a, "How great is the love the Father has given us so freely! Now we can be called children of God. And that's what we really are!"
Lamentations 3:21-24, "But here is something else I remember. And it gives me hope. The Lord loves us very much. So we haven't been completely destroyed. His loving concern never fails. His great love is new every morning. Lord, how faithful you are! I say to myself, "The Lord is everything I will ever need. So I will put my hope in him."
Romans 8:38-39, "For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord."
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