God Thoughts February 16th

God Thoughts February 16

Memorize: I always thank my God as I remember you in my prayers, because I hear about your love for all his holy people and your faith in the Lord Jesus. Philemon 4,5

Read  Philippians 3:7-11 The Greek word koinonia - fellowship is in these verses what word is it in English?  Clue look carefully at verse 10.

I asked God for strength that I might achieve.

I was made weak that I might learn to obey.

I asked for health that I might do great things.

I was given infirmity that I might do better things.

I asked for riches that I might be happy;

I was given poverty that I might be wise.

I asked for power when I was young that I might 

have the praise of men;

I was given weakness that I might feel the need for God.

I asked for all things that I might enjoy life;

I was given life that I might enjoy all things.

almost despite, myself, my unspoken prayers were answered.

I am, among all people, most richly blessed.

Confederate Soldier 

God Thoughts February 14th

God Thoughts February 14

Memorize: I always thank my God as I remember you in my prayers, because I hear about your love for all his holy people and your faith in the Lord Jesus. Philemon 4,5

Read    Acts 2:42-47* highlight the word fellowship.

We live in a time in history when things seem to change very quickly. Technology alone goes through changes at a staggering pace. A lot of it is a wonderful blessing. For example, if you suffered through cancer five or ten years ago, and someone is diagnosed with the same cancer today, it is very likely they will have options of treatment that did not exist when you had cancer. Medical breakthroughs happen more rapidly today than in even the past decade.

And communication is so different today. We are able to see and speak to people anywhere in the world. If you aren’t sure how to do that, just as a grade school child and they will show you. We can travel to any part of the globe today in relatively little time and with minimal risk. That is something very new in history. We have become “glocal” residents, meaning, living in one local area and yet having global impact and awareness. Yes much is changing.

And the church is not insulated from this reality. There is much anxiety, discussion, worry, wonderings and also excitement concerning what the church needs to be in today’s changing age. There are conferences to attend and books and articles to read and discussions to have to wrestle with what we as church are supposed to be and do in our own “local” settings.

In doing so it is always tempting to look back on the past and yearn for something that was, perhaps some golden age of this or that congregation or denomination. We might look back to the practices of the past and wonder if perhaps we need to model ourselves on what seemed to work well back then.
That is also one way that people read the Book of Acts: as a looking back to how it is supposed to be. So as we approach this passage, it is important to realize that Luke, who wrote this account under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, is not trying to give us a picture of the good old days.

You know what the good old days are, right? Those are the days of long ago about which we have forgotten all the bad things. There really are no such “good old days.” There is only our selective memory or our creative story telling about the past. The Book of Acts is neither of these. Acts is not trying to say, “Remember what the church used to be and do?”

This is the Word of the Lord for the body of Christ in all times and all places. So it is easy to think that if we want to continue to thrive as a church, or to grow or be impactful, that all we have to do is do what the Christians did in Acts. In other words, it is easy to read this passage and say, “Here is the formula for success for a church!” And then we try to get each other to do what it says there.

Is this the good news of this passage? We would be saying, “Here are some more things for us to get busy with, and if we do this, we will solve all the problems of church life and be a success story.” However, what we read is not a formula for success. The account in Acts is not there for us to simply mimic, copy, or imitate. To view it that way assumes that what we read in Acts was an account of the pure church before history and change messed it up. It is to assume that to become a better church we should simply do what the ancients Christians did because they had it all correct.

Instead, Acts points to what God does in this world, both back then and today. This is about the impact of the work of Jesus in this world through His Body. So when we read such a summary of this work as we just read, it is not a blueprint of what plan of action we should take, but a look into the impact of the ongoing work of Christ by His Holy Spirit in this new community He is gathering.

And from that impact we can come to understand and trust more deeply what the Lord intends for us in our time and place. We can look at ourselves and ask the question, “What is the Lord doing right here?” We can be assured that Christ is at work, and that the impact, however it plays out in this time and place, resonates with the themes of the way it played out in Jerusalem among the Jewish Christians there.

So, this is not a formula for success; not a list of goals and action plans for us; but a formula for faithfulness. Another way to say this, is to ask, “What happens when the Spirit of the risen Jesus is at work?”

https://www.crcna.org/resources/church-resources/reading-sermons/church-acts-formula-success-or-faithfulness

Prayer: Father, open my heart toward others and toward you. Break down and melt within me the resistance that I erect against others. Make me to be of one heart and one mind with others in the body, generous in giving, glad to participate in anything that advances this marvelous work going on in the midst of a world which is rapidly drifting into darkness and emptiness and coldness. Thank you, Lord, for the warmth of your Spirit, and for your power and your grace among your people. Ray Stedman

God Thoughts February 13th

God Thoughts February 13

Memorize: I always thank my God as I remember you in my prayers, because I hear about your love for all his holy people and your faith in the Lord Jesus. Philemon 4,5

Read  1 John 1:3-7 * highlight the word fellowship.

We proclaim to you what we have seen and heard, so that you also may have fellowship with us. And our fellowship is with the Father and with his Son, Jesus Christ. We write this to make our joy complete.

This is the message we have heard from him and declare to you: God is light; in him, there is no darkness at all. If we claim to have fellowship with him and yet walk in the darkness, we lie and do not live out the truth. But if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus, his Son, purifies us from all sin.

The phrase "yet walk in the darkness" is the key, to our fellowship. with each other and God.  We know sinless perfection is not what the Apostle John is talking about because verse 8 states; "If we claim to be without sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us." Vincent Word Studies defines the phrase walk in as "literally, walk about; indicating the habitual course of the life, outward and inward"

I have an advantage in understanding this verse, that most do not.  I have spent more time in dark woods following a flashlight, than most humans. You begin with just a pinprick of light in the distance as you walk towards it, the light grows, branches assault your face, and roots trip you, but you constantly re-calibrate the path towards the light.  The dark, branches, wood noises, and roots are all part of walking towards the light, an indication you are moving in the right direction.
You are habitually walking in the darkness, when a branch slaps your face, turn you from the light, and you sit in the darkness.  when a root trips you and you stay. Living in the mud, you no longer have fellowship with light.  Remember; the quest of fellowship requires lots of gospel, lots of time and lots of safe people.

Are you living in mud? Or rising and struggling towards the light?

Prayer: Jesus, you are the light of the world, more importantly, you are the pinprick of light in my life, that brings me joy and fellowship.  Holy Spirit, strengthen my legs to walk towards the light in a dark world.  Father, you created the light and darkness, let me trust you when I momentarily lose sight of the Light.  Amen

God Thoughts February 12th

God Thoughts February 10

Memorize: I always thank my God as I remember you in my prayers, because I hear about your love for all his holy people and your faith in the Lord Jesus. Philemon 4,5

Read Colossians 3:18-25

Paul does not condemn or condone slavery but explains that Christ transcends all divisions between people. Slaves are told to work hard as though their master were Christ himself (3:23); but masters should be just and fair (4:1). Perhaps Paul was thinking specifically of Onesimus and Philemon—the slave and master whose conflict lay behind the letter to Philemon. (Tyndale. Life Application Study Bible NIV (Kindle Locations 200215-200218). Tyndale House Publishers, Inc.. Kindle Edition.)

Paul does not condemn or condone slavery but explains that Christ transcends all divisions between people.   “If, as we believe, Paul wanted Philemon to grant Onesimus his freedom so that he might continue in his service to the gospel, the emphasis on the slave’s obligation to obey the master in all things deflects any criticism that Paul encourages disobedience among slaves. Becoming a Christian does not cancel the requirement for them to show respect for authority and to fulfill their duties. ”

“Those under the Christ’s lordship serve others more gladly and faithfully. The situation with Onesimus may have been the immediate backdrop that explains the inclusion of these instructions on domestic life in the moral exhortations, but they also have a function in the letter’s theological argument. At first glance, they may seem out of place following, without any transition, the more rarefied atmosphere of counsels on life in the new age and the spiritual songs of the worshiping church. Yet the presence of these household rules in this context draws attention to two truths.

(1) The sequence suggests that “putting the age of the new life into practice begins at home.”5 Christ’s lordship finds conclusive expression in the day-by-day, routine experiences of life. The peace of Christ (3:15) is also to rule in the home, and the command to do everything in the name of the Lord Jesus (3:17) applies to the everyday world of family life, where we are most likely to show our cloven hoof. Nothing is more difficult than living in a family where the virtues of compassion, kindness, gentleness, patience, forgiveness, and professions of love (3:12–14) are tested daily.”

Excerpt From: David E. Garland. “Colossians, Philemon.” iBooks. https://itunes.apple.com/us/book/colossians-philemon/id398992905?mt=11

Prayer:  Jesus, may my thoughts, words and, actions in my family display your love for all.  Amen

God Thoughts February 11th

Memorize: I always thank my God as I remember you in my prayers, because I hear about your love for all his holy people and your faith in the Lord Jesus. Philemon 4,5

Read Philemon

After, yesterday's message what did you vow you would do differently because of Koinonia?  As you begin today, how is that action to be more open, available, 

going to be practiced today?

“When people believe in Christ, they become identified with one another in an intimate association and incur both the benefits and responsibilities of that communion. Philemon is fundamentally all about those responsibilities, as Paul, Onesimus, and Philemon, bound together in faith, are forced by circumstances to think through the radical implications of their koinonia.” ― Douglas J. Moo, The Letters To The Colossians And To Philemon

Prayer:  We meet as a family in the presence of our heavenly Father. We meet as brothers and sisters in Christ, accepting the responsibility this places upon us - to love one another as you have loved us. We meet as your lights in this dark world and pray that through our words and our lives others might be drawn into your family, and accept you as their Saviour and Lord. Amen

Read more at: http://www.faithandworship.com/

God Thoughts February 10th

God Thoughts February 10

Memorize: I always thank my God as I remember you in my prayers, because I hear about your love for all his holy people and your faith in the Lord Jesus. Philemon 4,5

Read Matthew 6:9-15

“I have written before about what 2 Corinthians 5:14–15 says about the fundamental nature of sin, but I think it is particularly helpful here. The passage reads, “For Christ’s love compels us, because we are convinced that one died for all, and therefore all died. And he died for all, that those who live should no longer live for themselves but for him who died for them and was raised again” (NIV). The apostle Paul summarizes here what sin does to all of us. Sin turns us in on ourselves. Sin makes us shrink our lives to the narrow confines of our little self-defined world. Sin cause us to shrink our focus, motivation, and concern to the size of our own wants, needs, and feelings. ”

“Sin causes all of us to be way too self-aware and self-important. Sin causes us to be offended most by offenses against us and to be concerned most for what concerns us. Sin causes us to dream selfish dreams and to plan self-oriented plans. Because of sin, we really do love us, and we have a wonderful plan for our own lives!

What all this means is that sin is essentially antisocial. We don’t really have time to love our spouse, in the purest sense of what that means, because we are too busy loving ourselves. What we actually want is for our spouse to love us as much as we love ourselves, and if our spouse is willing to do that, we will have a wonderful relationship. So we try to co-opt our spouse into a willing submission to the plans and purposes of our claustrophobic kingdom of one.

But there is more. Because sin is antisocial, it tends to dehumanize the people in our lives. No longer are they objects of our willing affection. No, they quit being the people we find joy in loving. Rather, they get reduced to one of two things. They are either vehicles to help us get what we want or obstacles in the way of what we want.”

Excerpt From: Paul David Tripp. “What Did You Expect?.” iBooks. https://itunes.apple.com/us/book/what-did-you-expect/id364025030?mt=11

The antidote to the poison of Selfishness is to begin to live for the Kingdom of God.  

Prayer:

Our Father which art in heaven, Hallowed be thy name.

Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done in earth, as it is in heaven. 

Give us this day our daily bread.

And forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors.

And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil: 

For thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, 

for ever. Amen.