Friday, July 1, 2005

Good Morning!

Remember about the Fourth of July celebration on Sunday, July 3 at the church.

The new unit for this week is Unit 9 , Marks of a Methodist

Focus Scripture for the Week: Ephesians 2:8

For by grace you have been saved through faith, and this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God.

Today's topic:

Just a fyi, I will be at church on Sunday. Hope to see all of you there, but if you are traveling this weekend, be careful.

-- Given that we are finishing Unit 9, we are a little more than 1/3 of the way through the study, and that today is July 1, the beginning of the second half of the year, thought I would throw out some thoughts for us to think about at this point. I always like to think about July 1 like I do January 1 -- a good time to make some resolutions to do better, be better, etc. My January 1 resolutions are usually long gone by now, and I don't like waiting all the way to next January to try again, so I use July 1 as start over date.

-- Additionally, this week's study is called Marks of a Methodist, and there is some excellent commentary in our lesson this week about that, commentary that provides us some benchmarks to measure our own growth and performances as Christians and Methodists.

-- Not thinking about our study, but just our class committment, how do you think you are doing? Are you doing more than you were doing prior to the start of the class, in terms of setting aside a time daily for prayer, reading, etc.? Do you feel like you are making that a habit -- something that is becoming part of what you are about? What kind of grade would you give yourself on meeting your committment to the class?

-- Do you find yourself doing a better job of incorporating your faith into your daily life at work, at home, etc.? How are you doing generally vs. Wesley's 22 questions? (A link to these are on the class web site). How are you doing on some of the topics we have already studied? How are you doing

-- The important thing to note, and the thing to take encouragment from, is this Wesleyan idea of "moving towards perfection" -- the idea that we never going to be perfect, and we might not be all the Christian that we can be as begin our journey, but we should be doing something everyday that moves us in that direction, and that Methodism provides us a framework for getting better as a follower of Christ. Everyday we should feel like we have done something that moves us a little closer to being that follower of Christ that we are called to be.

Today's prayer request: Holiday travelers

July 4th holiday is the deadliest time of the year for accidents -- let's pray for safety for everyone who is traveling this weekend. To be a little more focused, and perhaps make it a little more concrete for ourselves, let's specifically pray for everyone who passes our church on the interstate this weekend.

Today's class member prayer:

Melissa Herring

Have a great day.

Jay