Friday, October 28, 2005

Good Morning!

Hope everyone has had a good week. This is the last day of the last unit of this study. I won't have our books until next Sunday, so we will have a week off, though I'll send an email everyday just to keep that going.

I probably will not be at church on Sunday -- just have this week and next to go with the Fall Softball Season. But you should be able to discuss this week's unit as well as any overall impressions/observations that you have about the study.

Remember, as a group, one of the things we are supposed to do is to encourage each other -- so if you have a story about how this study has helped you, or how just your efforts to develop a daily prayer and study habit have impacted you, that would be great to share.

As always, note that all the back emails are on the web at leapclass.blogspot.com. I think there are over 110 posts on the site as of today.

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: Matthew 5:43-48, Colossians 1:24-29, Matthew 7:13-20

Today's Discussion:

-- three different scriptures today, but the first one from Matthew is the one that is flagged as our key scripture for the week.

-- it doesn't really sum up our unit, but it gets back to an important point -- the role of love in our lives and how it impacts our relationship with others. Last week, the focus was on loving your neighbors, which we all take as loving everyone. This week, in this passage, just to make sure that we know that we are supposed show love to everyone, the scripture is focused on loving our enemies..

-- the point Jesus is making in this scripture, as he talks about God sending rain to the righteous and unrighteous -- is that God loves everyone, and that if we are to follow God's command and example, we need to love everyone.

-- at the end of this passage, it connects with our topic for the week with the line "Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly father is perfect." As it comes at the end of a passage about love, it is easy to make the connection that this idea of going on to perfection is really tied up on our ability to love God and love others, and to do it actively, rather than passively. The more we are engaged in living our faith, the more we are going on to perfection.

.

Question for Sunday:

-- do you have a better feel/better ideal of what Wesley meant by going on to perfection? Is it a more accessible concept/idea than it was before, or is it still an intimidating goal?

Today's prayer request: Our hurricane victims

We need to remember the people whose lives are still turned upside down from Katrina, Rita and Wilma, as well as remembering the thousands of people who are helping the victims.

Today's class member prayer:

Nicole McKinney

Have a great day.

Jay

Thursday, October 27, 2005

Good Morning! 

 

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 John 2:1-6

 

Today's Discussion: 

 

-- quick note this morning - running behind.

 

-- a very short and to the point scripture that I don't remember reading before.  I think that the takeaway from this scripture, in the context of our unit, is the idea that "going on to perfection" isn't an optional track for Christians.  It is what we are called to do.   As the Wesley passages talk about -- Christians start every day with the twin commands to love God and to love others.  There are a lot of things that flow out of those commands, but this is the gist of it.  As John writes, (and he doesn't mince any words) someone who calls themself a Christian, and then doesn't follow those two commands (and all that falls out of those) is a liar.   

 

So, going on to perfection isn't really just a Methodist thing -- it is the Methodist name for the path that every Christian should be taking.  I haven't seen a translation of the Bible yet that has Jesus saying "If I were you -- not that I'm telling you what to do or anything -- my suggestion is that you should try loving God and one another."  Jesus (and John in today's passage) are bit more direct than that.

Question for Sunday:

 

-- think about the complete strangers you cross paths with in some way everyday -- in your interactions with them, would they think you are a Christian?

 

Today's prayer request:   Jay's brother and fiance

 

-- my brother Buster is getting married tomorrow in Las Vegas -- for the fifth time.  I would pray that this marriage work out better for him and his new wife-to-be Tracy than his previous marriages have. 

 

Today's class member prayer: 

 

Matt Rocksvold

 

Have a great day.

 

Jay

Wednesday, October 26, 2005

Good Morning!

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: 2 Corinthians 4:7-18

Today's Discussion:

-- today's scripture is about keeping the faith in spite of hardships, giving us encouragement and instruction on how to handle difficult times and circumstances.

-- in the context of going on to perfection, this scripture is a reminder that not everything in our life from here to the end is not always going to be easy -- there are going to be some rough patches. This passage from Paul is a reminder that all of that hardship -- whether it be spiritual or physical or whatever -- is only temporary, and that we have something waiting for us that far outweighs and outshines those hardships.

-- part of our "going on" is that we not give up, that we not quit, or that we should not weaken in our faith. The ability to be strong in our faith, and in our attention to living out our faith, even with things are going poorly is a sign of how much we believe in what is to come for us. In the Wesleyan sections of the study this week, he talks about going on to perfection as simply doing better every day in loving God and loving others. The ability to continue to love God and others as things become difficult for us personally is what Paul is encouraging.

Today's prayer request: Our bosses

We need to remember those who are bosses, and others in authority at our places of work. In particular, we need to pray for all of the decisions that they have to make, that they be sound ethically and considerate of those who work for them.

Today's class member prayer:

April Walker

Have a great day.

Jay

Tuesday, October 25, 2005

Good Morning! 

 

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:   2 Corinthians 2:12-17

 

Today's Discussion:

 

-- the connection between today's scripture and this week's lesson topic is a bit murky, it seems to me.

 

-- that said, there is a very interesting turn of phrase in this passage from Paul, where he is using the idea of fragrance to make a point about our Christian witness.  He is building this thought from a practice of the Roman victory parade.  When there was a victory parade (triumphal procession, in Paul's words) incense was burned at some point along the route, or at the front of the procession.  So not only did the observers of the parade see and hear the sounds of triumph, but there was a smell that was associated with that thought as well.

 

-- however, also in the procession were slaves and prisoners from the captured lands that the Romans were celebrating victory over, and to these people, the smell of incense was not of victory, but of slavery and death.

 

-- there is something about this reference that reminds of one of the more famous scenes in cinema -- a scene from Apocalyse Now, where Robert Duvall makes the observation that he loves "the smell of napalm in the morning.  It smells like victory" -- when there are many others to whom the smell of napalm reminded of nothing but death and destruction.

 

-- the point that Paul is making with this example is that people will react differently to our witness and our message -- to some, it will have the fragrence of life -- to others, it smells foul.  Why people would react differently; or more specifically, why they would react so negatively to the message is mystery.  But it is probably tied up in the idea of what their situation in life is.  Just as the same aroma triggered a different reaction from the Roman general and the slaves in his victory parade because of their perspective, it may be that people who react negatively to the message do so because it may threaten their position.  For instance, I could see someone who was a star in Hollywood reacting very negatively to the Christian message, because to follow Christ could be counter to everything about their lives, and it would put them at odds with the entire culture of the place.

 

-- I have a visual image of some young star or starlet (insert whatever name you know), hearing the message, and wrinkling their nose and making a face as they hear and understand what kind of changes that accepting Christ would mean in their life, as if they had gotten a whiff of an aroma as if something had died -- not realizing that the death they were smelling was their own.

 

Question for Sunday:

 

--  a chance for you to be a bit poetic -- what does salvation smell like?  what is the aroma of love, of heaven?

 

Today's prayer request:  Hurricane Wilma victims

 

Once again, we have a hurricane doing major damage in the U.S.   There are a lot of people in south Florida and in the Yucatan that are having a very hard time.  We need to remember them.

 

Today's class member prayer: 

 

Valerie Waters

 

Have a great day.

 

Jay

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