Wednesday, May 25, 2005

Good Morning!

Note - I'm not 100% sure, but there is a pretty good chance that I won't be able to make class on Sunday morning. I'll know for certain on Thursday, but just in case, is there someone who can volunteer to lead the discussion this Sunday?

This week, we are working on Unit 4, Life in Christ

Focus Scripture for the Week: Colossians 2:6

As you therefore have received Christ Jesus the Lord, continue to live your lives in him.

Today's scripture: John 12:20-26

-- for the purposes of our focus this week, there are two verses we should focus on. One is verse 25 -- "the man who loves his life will lose it, while the man who hates his life in this world will keep it for eternal life". Our focus this week is about life in Christ, and this verse is really about that priority. We have a choice about living for ourselves and the world, and making it a priority to maintain that life, or making our life for and in Christ a priority.

-- the next verse is a companion to that -- "whoever serves me must follow me, and where I am, my servant also will be" and to me, essentially points out that making life in Christ a priority is about being obedient to Christ." These two verses seem to me to be very supportive of the focus scripture that we have this week, noted above.

-- I feel like like I'm getting like Wesley, in that everything I'm writing has quotation marks in it.

-- the passage from Wesley that begins on page 39 and goes to 40 (while man is in a mere natural state . . .) is a very good passage, and one that gets at what we individually want to happen to us -- this idea that are eyes and ears and heart will be more open to seeing and hearing what God is saying to us and what he is doing for us. We talked about that one of the things that happens as we pursue a daily routine of prayer and reading, is that we will be more likely to see things in our day that pertain to what we have been reading or praying about -- and it is more about our ability to perceive those things because we are more in tune with God.

-- don't forget what we discussed about money this past week -- the idea is that we would look for an opportunity to make a choice to do something a little more inexpensively, less extravagantly, and redirect those dollars to something such as a donation or a tithe.

Today's prayer request: Megan's student Natalie

Natalie is having open-heart surgery today.

Today's class member prayer:

Jerri Wesson

Have a great day.