Monday, October 24, 2005

Good Morning!

Hope you had a good weekend.

We are on our final unit this week. Our schedule going forward is that we will finish this study this week, then we'll take a week off from a study to reflect, review and summarize what we have covered these last 26 weeks (half a year!), and then we will move on to the next.

While the Purpose Driven life study has been mentioned, I think we may do a shorter, different study prior to that. The Chronicles of Narnia is a movie that is going to be coming out this Christmas. It is based on a book by C. S. Lewis, a very famous Christian author, and it is a book that is full of Christian symbolism. Given the wide play that the movie will get in the next couple of months, and it's background, it seems like it would be a very good topic for the class. I'm going to look at a couple of studies, and we'll see if we can't do a short, interesting study that includes going to see the movie.

Unit 26, Going on to Perfection

Focus Scripture for the Week:

1 Timothy 6:11-12

But as for you . . . pursue righteousness, godliness, faith, love, endurance, gentleness. Fight the good fight of the faith; take hold of the eternal life, to which you were called.

Today's Scriptures: 1 Peter 3:8-12

Today's Discussion:

-- already, from the scriptures and the Reflections section, I get a clear sense of what the dominant theme of this unit is going to be -- it is about movement. From the words "going on" in the title of the unit to the word 'pursue' in our focus scripture and today's scripture, I get a sense that we are supposed to be proactive in our faith. If we tried to define "Christian behavior", our first impulse is to define it as things we are not supposed to do or be involved with. But in the beginning of this unit, the emphasis is on things we are supposed to do, the actions we are supposed to take, the attitudes that we are supposed to share.

-- in the second reading from Wesley, he talks about being half a Christian. I think that is what happens when we define being a Christian by the things we are not supposed to do -- to be fully Christian, we have to be actively "taking hold of the eternal life to which you are called" -- we have to be proactively living out our faith.

-- that all starts with the habits that I hope we are developing as part of this study -- the regular daily time spent in study and prayer that connects us with God's grace and tunes us in to what our agenda should be as Christians, both for the day and longer term.

Question for Sunday:

-- on a scale of 1 - 10, with 10 being John Wesleyesque, how proactive have you been in the last month in living out your faith? Is that a better score than you would have given yourself six months ago, when we started this study?

Today's prayer request: Two prayer requests from Brad Douglas

One was someone who had been burned badly when a gas can that was near him caught fire -- he is undergoing skin grafts and other burn treatment. The other was someone who had surgery for breast cancer last week, and is undergoing a round of chemo now.

Today's class member prayer:

Brigitte Severance

Have a great day.

Jay