Wednesday, October 12, 2005

Good Morning!

The new unit for this week is Unit 24, The Way Methodists Live

Focus Scripture for the Week:

Micah 6:8

He has told you, O mortal, what is good; and what does the Lord require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God?

Today's Scriptures: Matthew 26:69-75

Today's Discussion:

-- couple of quick notes this morning.

-- this is the passage about Peter's denial of Christ after Jesus' arrest. It is a sad and painful story to me.

-- to me, the inclusion of this passage in our readings for this chapter is pretty obvious. In a chapter that is talking about the way we live as Methodists and Christians, these verses talk about one of the ways that we may fall short in that walk.

-- the last couple of days, we have talked about the way that we live out our faith should and can be obvious to those around us, and can mark us as a Christian. However, the pressure of the world against Christian living can cause us to turn our back on Christ in order to be accepted, either by co-workers or friends or others. While we won't be asked as directly at Peter was in our scripture, there are times when we will feel compelled to do the very same thing as Peter, which is to put some distance between ourselves and Christ. Sometimes this is in effort to be cool, or an effort to seem more wordly, or simply as a way to justify doing something that we want to do.

-- I think we are like Peter when we downplay the role that the church plays in our life, when people perceive that it might be a big part of who you are, or when someone calls you out about your participation in some activity vs. their perception of your faith "I thought you were big church goer there Alex, I didn't think you'd want to come with us . . . ", or when we neatly cut all references to church out of our normal conversation and relating to others - for instance, when the question comes "What did you do this weekend?" and leaving church out when you mention everything else.

Question for Sunday:

-- when have you downplayed your relationship with Christ in order to fit in?

Today's prayer request: Our bosses

Remember those who are in positions of authority at our work places, for guidance, strength and wisdom as they fulfill their resposibilities.

Today's class member prayer:

Kelly Thaxton

Have a great day.

Jay