a drop of water

from a few weeks ago at coast home group (oikos)…just some random thoughts on Acts 2:42-47
Dear Heavenly Father,

42They devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and to the fellowship, to the breaking of bread and to prayer.
I pray that we would be devoted to your word; that we would be constant and courageous in prayer, steadfast and attentive and unremittingly caring and valuing fellowship and the breaking of bread together. I pray that we would include people in our lives so that we have community and accountability for our actions and thoughts and ideas.

43Everyone was filled with awe, and many wonders and miraculous signs were done by the apostles.
I pray that we would see wonders and miraculous signs in the lives of people around me; emotional and physical healing, relationships between friends and family restored, things that are impossible with man, but possible with you God, be done. There are so many needs around me that seem impossible, so many physical and emotional needs, that I can not even begin to solve. There always seems to be a matching of physical with emotional healing, and so I pray for both in the people around me who I see are hurting.

44All the believers were together and had everything in common.
I pray that we could count our possessions, our money, our time, our energy as gifts and resources from God, which we have been given the opportunity to meet the needs of people around us. I pray against selfishness and the pride that says we have a right to what we have earned, when in reality, everything good is a gift from God.

45Selling their possessions and goods, they gave to anyone as he had need.
I pray that we would be willing to sacrifice our own safety and security to make someone else’s position better. I pray that we would resist the American value that what we own defines our worth and realize that all we have the right to do is give what we have and be defined in Christ’s calling in our lives.

46Every day they continued to meet together in the temple courts. They broke bread in their homes and ate together with glad and sincere hearts,
I pray that we would meet daily to pray together and to sharpen each other and to keep each other accountable to God’s calling. I pray that we would have glad and sincere hearts when we eat together and spend time together, not to puff ourselves up but to help each other run the race as if to win the prize, being vulnerable with each other.

47praising God and enjoying the favor of all the people. And the Lord added to their number daily those who were being saved.
I pray that you would allow us to release our plans for our own safety and security, so that we might follow your directions in our lives, gaining the relationships and being the positions to be your hands and feet in this world, so that the number of hearts praising you would be added to daily.

in Jesus name, amen.

Last Thursday we listened to a message by Ricky Myatt, Pastor at Seacoast Community Church. His main message seemed to be that God’s faithfulness is shown not so much in his provision but more so his presence.

I think there is a balance. I would say that God’s faithfulness is shown in the provision of his presence. With that said, Pastor Myatt’s definition of ‘provision’ is weighted by our sense of what we need and more often, what we want. God’s faithfulness is shown not in providing what we want, but providing what we need. This is a shift in perspective. In the United States, the line between what we need and what we want is muddled by culture where ease and relaxation are virtuous. Often times what we really need, what will help us mature, etc is rarely realized. So this got me thinking.

We often study the Parable of the Talents to mean that God has given certain people talents, abilities, etc to use for the kingdom of God, to invest in people, and produce returns. We look on Talents as positive abilities, resources, etc; positive in a world’s definition, but what if we considered Talents from a God perspective. What if we considered the events and happenings in our lives which we have no control over, that we consider as bad luck, to be talents that God wants us to be using to help other people. Events and circumstances that ‘happen’ to us could be used for good if we change our perspective from an individual introspective view to a community-extrospective view (is that word? — haha).

On Sunday evening Mark led a quick study through Nehemiah chatper 4. This chapter talks about the first oppositions against the Israelites building the wall, instigated by local surround leaders, Sanballat and Tobiah. The oppositions were on two fronts, 1. a psychological attack including mockery and sowing seeds of doubt and 2. a physical attack of flexing muscles and threats. Nehemiah met each of these oppositions with prayer and a plan, respectively. I personally think it is interesting that often times we will meet opposition with one or the other. Some of us will just pray about it. Some of us will just make a strategic plan to face it. This happens at work when we (I) are unhappy about our circumstances. We (I) just pray about and don’t really (maybe lack the courage) to do anything about it. Or maybe this happens with ministry where we (I) have a great plan to reach our goal, but we (I) spend very little time praying about it. I suppose there is even a dichotomy, where we emphasize the spiritual side of physical tasks and emphasize the physical side of spiritual tasks.

The question that Mark left core with was: “If the point of the book of Nehemiah is ‘bringing people back to God,’ why is Nehemiah rebuilding a wall? How does him organizing the rebuilding of a wall come into play with the main theme of this book?”

As a friends group we listened to a sermon from Lighthouse Bible Church by Pastor John Kim. Though I am still wrestling with some of the points and convictions that we spoke on, there were a number of good points:

1. “We like to minimize ourservice of others and maximize others service to us.” {my comments}: This is especially true when we go to church and ask questions or make statements like, why didn’t anyone greet me? or the pastor’s message didn’t really address my needs…

2. “Our reference point for sound judgement in seeing ourselves should be God and not man.” {my comments}: When looking out our self-worth, it must be from God’s point of view and it must affect the way we live for his glory. There are two lines of thought that I see: 1. God is perfect, I am a sinful human, I need God to save me, to equip me and to use me to do good. 2. God is savior, I am saved by his grace and all that is good within me is of God, therefore I must be a good steward of his gift. Both affect the way you live and your perspective before God.

3. “Unity does not equal uniformity and difference in function does not equal difference in value–we can not put value on function by human standards but instead put value on necessity.”

p.s. The graphic for the ‘friends’ category is not meant to be inclusive or exclusive, but more of a symbolic representation.  All of you are invited to come out.  I echo Joe’s and Chris’ sentiment in that they look forward to this evening of the week because I can find like minded people (perhaps not specific view alignment) but like minded in that they want to know God more.

Last night Mark led a short and sweet bible study on Nehemiah chapter 3. The chapter is basically a list of people with names, occupations, lineages, families and the part of the wall they were working on in counter-clockwise order.

Mark asked 3 questions. The first was, what do the people listed have in common. To this core answered: they are working simultaneously, side by side; they all have other occupations; they are working on parts of the wall that are infront of their houes. The second was, why does Nehemiah write this chapter? To this core answered: he was giving credit where credit is due; he was demonstrating God’s manifested promise from earlier in the book; he was showing that rebuilding the wall was a communal and collective task. The third question that Mark asked (and articulated the answer to) was, what principles of leadership does Nehemiah show here? To this core answered: delegation, rallies people behind him, and positive encourager. Mark articulated that Nehemiah got people to work side by side, he got people to work on what was important to them, and most importantly he knew the details of each person in charge of each part, down to their lineages. The application is that as a leader, a christian, a friend, do you know the people you are serving? Do you know their friends, their communities, their struggles, their dreams, their hopes, where their hearts are at? Do you know enough to be supporting them in prayer? He understood how everyone fit together into God’s vision.

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During the discussion on vision, Mark made an interesting point. As a leader in AACF you realize how blessed you are to be apart of God’s ministry. You end up learning the most and making christianity your own faith instead of just the faith of your friends or you family. Naturally you want everyone to be able to ‘serve’ and get a peice of the blessing of serving. Mark made the point that it is important not to equate maturity with serving. Though there is a great blessing to those who serve, serving != maturity. He continued to explain their are two main ways God relates to people, 1. personal relationship-one on one time, and 2. through communtiy (friends and family, church, etc). Therefore it is important that introverts focus on being extroverts and extroverts focus on being introverts because God will speak to you on both levels.