Time to walk not just talk.

Thank you again for being who you are as a committed family.

Here are things I want us to pray over and talk together about:

Our next meetings is in two weeks. It will not be sharing like we did Wednesday night. Richard and I will begin equipping and directing in how to walk out what God is saying to us, so let’s seek God morning, noon and night; let's watch for how He and with whom He wants to involve us with this week.

“Take aways” from the small groups sharing 8.12.15

1. Core Convictions (non-negotiables)

2. How will we express them.

3. What do we need to walk out the revelation God is calling us to do

Convictions/values and how we walk them out

We are a family committed to growing and going in the love of God. 

We walk out our covenant relationship with God and the body of Christ by practicing morning and evening prayer, meditation in the Scripture for how to think and live, intentionally blessing and involving our lives with others to be and make disciples, tithing, participation in a small group, every member serving, honoring spiritual authority and one another, and by refusing gossip,

What do we need to walk out our covenant?

We need both small groups and all together gatherings. We need a place to gather that expresses us being a family that welcomes and serves others. We need equipped to minister to others and be good stewards of God’s creation. We need special events and celebrations. We need the power of the Holy Spirit. We need Christ our peace, our unity and his grace to be joyful for a change.

Grace and peace to you in the love of God

-PD

How to handle opposition and hold onto your values

Joshua and Caleb return with the grapes of the Promised Land in “Spies return with grapes” by Michiel van der Borch, 1332

We always have choices. If I choose to bite on the bait of Satan (his tasty morsels of offense are always offered on the “baitstick” of a trap) then I may be caught and ensnared by it. But I don’t have to live in my pain or in a bitter vow of offense (“I will never let that ___ happen to me again”). I can choose to avoid or even be set free from a stronghold of judgment or bitter root of negative expectation against a person and life in general. Here are three direction to make better choices on how to handle opposition: toward Christ and his body, toward the accuser-Satan, and toward yourself (past, present and future).

Toward God and the Body of Christ (Lessons from Ezra 3 going forward)

1. Give thanks, worship and pray: Keep the altar in your heart free of old ashes. The priests had to take yesterday’s ashes outside the camp and keep the fire burning on the altar (Lev 6:9-13 and Heb 13:13-17). Each day choose to “take out the trash” and add new wood to keep the flame of God freshly burning in your heart - morning, daytime, evening and through the night. Then it will be easier to think on him and call on him through the day.

2. Feed your spirit and soul the truth by meditation in God’s word  (Ezra taught the people God’s commands (Ezra 7-10 and Nehemiah 8).

3. Repent and confess your sins: Humble yourself before God and cleanse yourself of impure motives and sinful thought, words and actions. (Israelites who had married unbelieving wives had had to divorce them (keep hearts with undistracted devotion to Christ-don’t marry the world). “I am a partaker of and contributor to the sins of the world.” “Lord have mercy on me, a sinner." 

4. Don’t withdraw or neglect gathering for fellowship with friends

5. Be generous in word, in deed and in service to those around you. Others need your help.

6. Keep your focus on Christ - what we do we do for the love of God in Christ - it’s not about me. “I ask the grace that my motives, my energies, my actions and my relations with others be purely by your love, service and glory; that I will be saved and use all created things for your intended purpose-the salvation of the world” (ancient prayer).

7. Share in Christ’s suffering for the body (Col 1:24) and continue to do good, as He suffered for you (1 Peter 4:12-19).

Toward the devil

1. Ignore the distraction if possible (person, circumstance or bad spirit). Keep your hands on the task God put before you because that’s where God gives you grace. Ezra records how the Israelites had nothing to do with those who were stuck in the past and sowed discord. The leaders would not allow threats and distractions to undermine the forward purpose of God (until they were ordered to cease work by the king in Ezra 4).

2. Be armed while together building a safe place for your families and for those harassed by the enemy to enter (Nehemiah 4). Wear God’s spiritual armor while you are busy building the new wall of protection together.

Toward your own soul

1. Be aware and acknowledge your pain. Ask Jesus to walk with through the distracting and painful thoughts and feelings. Process your own grief (shock-denial-anger-bargaining-acceptance and peace).

2. Engage and explore your feelings with a friend who can help you (share up with spiritual authority but don’t dump down on someone who may pick up your hurt and offense).  

3. Discern and exchange the lies with Jesus’ own word to you. Within the pain you can encounter Jesus, the Living Word. Speak what He says to you (Rhema) to directly rebuke and resist the devil-tell him to “GO.”

4. “Reframe” and “Resolve" the event or person which activated the pain until you feel a close bond with God and those whom God has brought you into relationship. “Shalom” or “The peace of Christ be with you,” is a peaceful and healthy response. “I am able to have a good response” ( “I am a responsible person”). 

Core Convictions

Passion to know God the Father, Son and Holy Spirit 

The Co-mission to be and make disciples 

Death and Resurrection Life through the power of the cross

We love God and His family (the church)

The Kingdom of God: the care of creation and its inhabitants

In His law meditate day and night—this man shall be blessed

This book of the Law shall not depart from your mouth but meditate day and night in it. Then you will make your way prosperous and have good success. Joshua 1:8  

(see also Psalm 1, 19 and 119))

How can a young man keep his way pure? By guarding it according to your word. With my whole heart I seek you; let me not wander from your commandments! I have stored up your word in my heart, that I might not sin against you.

Blessed are you, O LORD; teach me your statutes!

With my lips I declare all the rules of your mouth.

In the way of your testimonies I delight as much as in all riches.

I will meditate on your precepts and fix my eyes on your ways.

I will delight in your statutes; I will not forget your word. Psalm 119

I read once that Hebrew mothers would read some Scripture to their little ones while giving them some honey or sweet tasting treat (associating pleasant memory with learning God’s word). Jewish people usually have a ornate small box with Scripture in it attached to the door frames of their houses. Priests wore similar little “Bible boxes” around their foreheads in reference to Deut 6:9.

 “Hear, O Israel: The LORD our God, the LORD is one. You shall love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might. And these words that I command you today shall be on your heart. You shall teach them diligently to your children, and shall talk of them when you sit in your house, and when you walk by the way, and when you lie down, and when you rise. You shall bind them as a sign on your hand, and they shall be as frontlets between your eyes. You shall write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates.” (Deuteronomy 6:4-9)

Deut 11:21 adds this promise to the command that your days and the days of your children may be multiplied in the land that the LORD swore to your fathers to give them, as long as the heavens are

above the earth.”

Memorization has become harder for me – probably reflective of short term memory problems of getting older. Other hindrances are stress, mind-clutter of anxieties, discouragements, weariness and temptations. These all take their toll in my concentration. This has disappointed me for years because when I was a new Christ-follower, in my busy college years, I always carried memory cards and memorized hundreds of verses. The more often I pulled them our of my pocket, the more I committed to memory, the easier it seemed to be to absorb even more. I genuinely loved doing it and sometimes even made up little jingles or wrote songs which I can still sing today.

In fact, in the 1970’s we sang Scripture songs as part of our corporate worship and could learn much of God’s Word that way.

Some things have helped me:

1. Writing them down, keeping them handy and reading them aloud so I am using eye, hand, voice, ear, and mind to get them into my heart.

2. Intoning or chanting them or singing Scripture in my heart and to one another heart (Eph 5:19).

3. Associating specific words with images like a story board.

4. Repeating a phrase slowly, emphasizing a different word each time.

5. I’m told that slow, deliberate, going over and over style of memorizing tends to work it into long-term memory, rather than short-term.

6. Dallas Willard wrote that the fundamental thing is to direct and redirect our minds constantly to God. The first thing is to keep God before our eyes, as David said. (Psalms 16:8-9)

In this way we can break old habits and replace them so that God becomes the “polestar” of our inward beings. Jesus is the door, life, and way. Receive him, open to him, and direct our attention to him. This is done best by memorizing and meditating on the Gospels. 

It’s best to concentrate on memorizing great passages. It’s actually more important than a “quiet time” because meditation on the Scriptures can fill the day. The law gets in our mouth by memorization and dwelling on it through meditation.

The Hebrew Word for meditation is used in various word pictures:

Strongs #1965: haghah  coo, growl, murmer; speak, roar, chirp…

These are incoherent sounds like mumbling, sighing in delight while eating something delicious or being full of anticipation (like a dog delightfully gnawing a bone). It is used of quiet and calm reflection like the gentle cooing of a dove, or like the slow and imperceptible melting of a lozenge in our mouth. Meditation can involve feeling strong emotion like a lion growling over its prey.

So, be a lion or a cow, because meditation can vary by engaging strong emotion and passion with noisy sounds or it may be peaceful repetition: chew the cud-swallow-regurgitate-repeat-until it passes through all seven stomachs in order to become sweet milk.

(I am indebted to Pastor Steve Humble who testified recently: “I’m no expert, but I am seeing a difference in my thinking and sometimes in my behavior these days.”)