Saturday, November 12, 2011

Chapter 5: Serving Leftovers to a Holy God


Another tough chapter! 

This chapter further continued the challenge made in chapter 4 about being a lukewarm Christian – Right up front the author reminds us that “churchgoers who are “lukewarm” are not Christians.” Most of our discussion during the study was around the fact that God asks us to give up everything to follow him and what does that mean.

Our group thought it might not be so literal – in that all of us are not asked to sell our belongings (material things) and float through the world without any ties to them.  While for some this may be the calling, we discussed the fact that another way to give everything to God is to remember that everything in our lives, every task in our lives, all the people in our lives are put there by God and that we should work towards living a life that displays that gratefulness in God’s love.   There lies the toughest challenge for us in our daily lives.  We certainly are a work in progress when it comes to that.

I know your deeds, that you are neither cold nor hot.  I wish you were either one or the other!  So, because you are lukewarm – neither hot nor cold – I am about to spit you out of my mouth.  Revelation 3:15

The author goes on to say that “Jesus’ call to commitment is clear:  He wants all or nothing.  The thought of a person calling himself a “Christian” without being a devoted follower of Christ is absurd.”  We often convince ourselves that we do just enough to call ourselves Christians, when in reality we are trying to make it “easier” so we can follow Christ in a way that fits our lives.  WOW!  That statement right there is enough to get you thinking….just fitting your faith into our life.  Do we honestly think that is enough?

Sunday, October 30, 2011

Chapter 4: Profile of the Lukewarm

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.

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."

Thursday, September 29, 2011

September 28, 2011

We started off with the video from the author on Chapter 2: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PDkSYBY87zk
We live caught up in ourselves...  We often go about life like we're invincible...  We rarely stop to think that our earthly lives are yet a "blip" and that allows us to really lose focus on what's important!


Phil 4:4-6-- Rejoice in the Lord always.... how often have we heard, read, sung these words, without taking fully to heart?  We act like anything we might be going through allows us this excuse- as though when we read "do not be anxious", it's okay for us to write in our own "unless..."  Chan writes that Worry and Stress "communicate that it's okay to sin and not trust God because the stuff in [our] live[s]is somehow exceptional" and that "both worry and stress reek of arrogance..." (42).


"Maybe life's pretty good for you right now... so that you can show the world a person who enjoys blessings, but who is totally obsessed with God.... Or maybe life is tough right now... God has allowed hard things in your life so you can show the world that your God is great and that knowing Him brings peace and joy, even when life is hard" (44).


1 Corinthians 10:31-- So whether you eat or drink or whatever you do, do it all for the glory of God. Do not cause anyone to stumble, whether Jews, Greeks or the church of God— even as I try to please everyone in every way. For I am not seeking my own good but the good of many, so that they may be saved.


We were challenged by a question that we can be asking ourselves daily... How can God use me to glorify Him today?  and What did I do to glorify God today?  We talked about how it really simplifies it to look at today, as opposed to looking at how God can use me to glorify Him for the rest of my life.


"The point of your life is to point to Him.  Whatever you are doing, God wants to be glorified, because this whole thing is His" (45).


In our short-sightedness, it is easy to find any excuse to not be rejoicing, to be worrying, to be anxious, to lose hope, to take control.... but when God commands us, He means now- even if YOU have a perfectly legitimate reason to not be obedient (it's not as legitimate as we think!).  We spent some time talking about and sharing our excuses for disobedience... and we closed our discussion with a commitment to think about and consider what we can be doing RIGHT NOW to stop the excuses, be more obedient, and glorify God with our EVERY DAY.... maybe it's scripture verse memory cards to meditate on a verse right when you're prone to worry or not in a joyous spirit...  and come ready to talk about what you think you can do to glorify God everyday at our next Bible Study in 2 weeks...  Oct 12th!

Saturday, September 17, 2011

September 14, 2011

I. Intro
  A. "I hope reading this book will convince you of something: that by surrendering yourself totally to God's purposes, He will bring you the most pleasure in this life and the next.  I hope it affirms your desire for "more God"-- even if you are surrounded by people who feel they have "enough God." (21)
  B.  "We are going to look at how the Bible calls us to live our lives.  It is important that we not measure our spiritual health by the people around us, who are pretty much like us.  To begin this journey, we'll first address our inaccurate view of God and, consequently, of ourselves....  The core problem isn't the fact that we're lukewarm, halfhearted, or stagnant Christians.  The crux of it all is why we are this way, and it is because we have an inaccurate view of God.  We see Him as a benevolent Being who is satisfied when people manage to fit Him into their lives in some small way.  We forget that God never had an identity crisis.  He knows that He's great and deserves to be the center of our lives.  Jesus came humbly as a servant but He never begs us to give Him some small part of ourselves.  He commands everything from His followers."  (22)


We all agreed this message made us squirm a bit!  We talked about how, in our human nature, we are nearly obsessed with "measuring" everything we do- are we giving enough? are we doing enough?  And most often, we are asking that as a means to get out of giving or doing more!  (This is not your nicey-nice fluff Bible Study!)


II. Awe Factor: Check out crazylovebook.com for the Awe Factor video.  


When is the last time you even thought about how BIG God's creation is?  When we praise God for all that He has made, our praise is limited by what we understand...  Allow this video to help you praise God in a new, bigger way!


III.  Psalm 19:1-4, "The heavens declare the glory of God; the skies proclaim the work of his hands. Day after day they pour forth speech; night after night they reveal knowledge. They have no speech, they use no words; no sound is heard from them. Yet their voice goes out into all the earth, their words to the ends of the world. In the heavens God has pitched a tent for the sun."
  A. How quickly do we forget these truths?  
  B. How unimpressed are we, as we go about our daily lives?
  C. How can aliven/awaken our memory to God's greatness and Jesus' grace?


IV.  What is God like?  His attributes, characteristics? (See pgs 30-34).
  A. Holy
  B. Eternal
  C. All-knowing
  D. All-powerful
  E. Fair/just


We read Isaiah 6 and recognized God's characteristics as described in Isaiah's prophecy.  We discussed how "easy" it is to remain focused on the characteristics that comfort and care for us- and how we naturally want to focus less on His characteristics that challenge us.  It is intimidating to think that God is all knowing- but what a comfort to know that He loves us still!  What better friend than one that knows you well and loves you despite it all!  It is scary to think (Isaiah 6:9-end) that God is NOT tolerant of sin - that he even HATES it (Proverbs 8:13)....  But what kind of parent would He be without discipline?