lifecommunities

Monday, May 28, 2012

11:11AM

Musings from Craig

“Bless you."

Okay, for most of my life that little phrase hasn’t been much more than a response to someone’s sneeze. The rest of my day, week, month…is really an exercise in the opposite direction… “bless me.”

I go into the bank and I want to make sure they get my banking correct. I walk into Starbucks or Tim Horton’s and really want them to get my coffee right…”ugh, when I say triple milk I want it white!” I’m just nicely into my meal at a restaurant, like yesterday, and think, “I thought that waiter was going to bring me more water; where is he?” It’s not that I’m unpleasant … I’m by nature a nice guy … but the focus is on me getting what I want. (By the way, notice how many “I’s” there are in this paragraph?)

What if a shift started to take place in my life and I started looking to bless people instead of having them bless me? What if God endowed me with a different set of eyes and a different heart that looked to bless the people I come into contact with throughout the course of a day. Honestly, I’m not naturally wired that way and society probably doesn’t help me. Truth is, with affluence comes the built in expectation that society (including all the individuals we interact with over the course of a day) actually exists to make my life simpler, easier, manageable, and more comfortable.

Jesus said, “bless those who persecute you, bless and do not curse.” What if I started living like this with regular people I face in life, let alone people who can’t stand me? So, I’m asking this same Jesus to give me eyes, a heart, a mouth, hands and feet that communicate, “bless you.” I’ll keep you posted.

BLESS. CARE. CELEBRATE.

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Monday, May 21, 2012

9:00PM

Monday Reflections

Life Community News

You may have asked the question ‘what does God want from me?’ Jesus said “if you love me you will keep my commandments”. Or in another instance, “why do you call me Lord and not do what I say?”

It starts of course with understanding where one stands with Jesus. I want to know what Jesus wants from me because I trust him and love him. Trusting Jesus as a person is the essence of faith. God made us in his image, which means the way we relate as humans is a reflection of how God is wired. Perfect love flows within God and continuously flows from him. God makes himself available to be trusted.

When a person makes a simple choice to trust God, that is faith. Jesus was teaching one day and a tax collector named Zaccheus, a ‘notorious sinner’, climbed a tree to get a view of Him. Jesus noticed that this in itself was an act of trust and called to him, saying he wanted to be a guest of Zaccheus that day. Zaccheus climbed out of the tree and declared he would make all his past wrongs right and give half his wealth to the poor. All this before Jesus had promised him anything. But Jesus, seeing what faith had done the heart of Zaccheus, pronounced that salvation had come to him that day.

When Jesus remarks about peoples’ faith, it overwhelmingly comes not after people nod their heads in agreement, but when they act on the belief that Jesus can do something no one else can do.

We understand that acting on our faith is not always easy to do. Jesus came to build a church so that we could continually remind and encourage one another in trusting and following him. Jesus has commissioned his church to do what he did, which is to show the face of God to the world and call others to trust him. The whole thing is designed to be fleshed out in community. And, following what Jesus did, these communities of faith need to ‘move into the neighborhood’ just as Jesus did when he became human.

A Life Community is just such a group. We bless a specific group of people around us with our giving and our serving. We live life together and care for each other as an extended family with ever-open doors. And we regularly celebrate all we see God doing among us and all that is good in life.

Bless. Care. Celebrate.

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Tuesday, May 15, 2012

11:03AM