A new year is upon us and with it brings a new schedule. We will being meeting on Tuesday nights for our weekly gatherings. The times will remain the same. Dinner served at 6:30 and ending 9:00 promptly. (For the kids sake.)
Thanks so much for being a part of our lives. See you Tuesday night for bakes ziti!
This week at BRIC House I would like to do something different.
I would like to try and create a more specific environment. One that is more ordered and reverent. The lighting will be different and the reading/scriptures will be more directed. You can download the prayers before Thursday to read and meditate on them.
This is not an effort to change who we are, but to acknowledge who He is. What I am proposing isn’t a permanent change, but a temporary one. I still love seeing us laugh and play. I love seeing us just being friends and not having any kind of constraints. We joke and poke and everyone enjoys it.
This Thursday however, I would like to invite you to think of yourselves as entering the Presence/House of God, not my house mind you, or that there is anything sacred about 1341 Stanley Street. There isn’t.
You are sacred. We are sacred. We are His bride! His Church. This Thursday, we will follow an “order of worship.” We will pray together, and read together. We will confess together (silent or aloud) and we will study together. Please bring, by God’s grace, humility and brotherly love.
See you all soon.
It has been a wonderful Thanksgiving week. Lindsay and I spent a great amount of time relaxing with friends and family. I look forward to seeing you all soon. It has been too long since we got together last.
The next time we get together we will go over the Spiritual Gift Test. You can download it here: http://cl.ly/1r1t0Q0n1I2G0V0r1h0t. Feel free to complete it before hand or on Thursday night. I was considering having Thanksgiving day leftovers, but I am sure you are all sick of turkey. I will update this post when we figure out what we are going to do for dinner.
How has your Thanksgiving week been?
Our Thanksgiving Day Bird
Jesus said, “Whatever you do to the least of these my brothers, you’ve done it to me.” And this is what I’ve come to think. That if I want to identify fully with Jesus Christ, who I claim to be my Savior and Lord, the best way that I can do that is to identify with the poor. This I know will go against the teachings of all the popular evangelical preachers, but they’re just wrong. They’re not bad, they’re just wrong. Christianity is not about building an absolutely secure little niche in the world where you can live with your perfect little wife and your perfect little children in your beautiful little house where you have no gays or minority groups anywhere near you. Christianity is about learning to love like Jesus loved and Jesus loved the poor and Jesus loved the broken.
- Rich Mullins
For this week’s gathering we will read a passage from Joshua. I will ask a multipart question: What other gods are you worshipping? And why haven’t you got rid of them yet?
“Now therefore fear the LORD and serve him in sincerity and in faithfulness. Put away the gods that your fathers served beyond the River and in Egypt, and serve the LORD. And if it is evil in your eyes to serve the LORD, choose this day whom you will serve, whether the gods your fathers served in the region beyond the River, or the gods of the Amorites in whose land you dwell. But as for me and my house, we will serve the LORD.”
Then the people answered, “Far be it from us that we should forsake the LORD to serve other gods, for it is the LORD our God who brought us and our fathers up from the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery, and who did those great signs in our sight and preserved us in all the way that we went, and among all the peoples through whom we passed. And the LORD drove out before us all the peoples, the Amorites who lived in the land. Therefore we also will serve the LORD, for he is our God.”
But Joshua said to the people, “You are not able to serve the LORD, for he is a holy God. He is a jealous God; he will not forgive your transgressions or your sins. If you forsake the LORD and serve foreign gods, then he will turn and do you harm and consume you, after having done you good.” And the people said to Joshua, “No, but we will serve the LORD.” Then Joshua said to the people, “You are witnesses against yourselves that you have chosen the LORD, to serve him.” And they said, “We are witnesses.” He said, “Then put away the foreign gods that are among you, and incline your heart to the LORD, the God of Israel.” And the people said to Joshua, “The LORD our God we will serve, and his voice we will obey.” So Joshua made a covenant with the people that day, and put in place statutes and rules for them at Shechem. And Joshua wrote these words in the Book of the Law of God. And he took a large stone and set it up there under the terebinth that was by the sanctuary of the LORD. And Joshua said to all the people, “Behold, this stone shall be a witness against us, for it has heard all the words of the LORD that he spoke to us. Therefore it shall be a witness against you, lest you deal falsely with your God.” So Joshua sent the people away, every man to his inheritance.
(Joshua 24:14-28 ESV)
Not sure of the food plans yet.
I have been beating around some ideas in my mind; the clergy/laity division; the importance of doctrine; what is the church?
Then in hits me. Some news I didn’t want to hear. I go through the regular emotional responses, then take a step back. God is sovereign isn’t He? I mean, this isn’t news to Him. What does He have in store for me? Some scriptures come to mind:
For this is the will of God, your sanctification: (1 Thessalonians 4:3a ESV)
My sanctification. Then more verses come:
But when the Pharisees heard that he had silenced the Sadducees, they gathered together. And one of them, a lawyer, asked him a question to test him. “Teacher, which is the great commandment in the Law?” And he said to him, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the great and first commandment. And a second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself. On these two commandments depend all the Law and the Prophets.” (Matthew 22:34-40 ESV)
I can’t help but realize that I don’t love Jesus enough. I love learning about Him. I love talking about Him. I love seeing people excited for Him. But, do I love Him? I feel as though I can spend so much time pursuing so much about Him that I never get around to pursuing Him! This isn’t a new revelation about myself. I am quite aware of how easily I can make idols out of religion. Idols even out of anti-religion ideas and ideals. My wife said it eloquently: “My disappointment has been an illumination of misplaced faith.”
This post is a confession of sorts. An attempt to realize that I have kept my faith and placed my worship upon things of this world and not the Creator of the world.
Father, please forgive me.
[O Lord, Do Not Delay] [TO THE CHOIRMASTER. OF DAVID, FOR THE MEMORIAL OFFERING.] [70:1] Make haste, O God, to deliver me! O LORD, make haste to help me! [2] Let them be put to shame and confusion who seek my life! Let them be turned back and brought to dishonor who delight in my hurt! [3] Let them turn back because of their shame who say, “Aha, Aha!” [4] May all who seek you rejoice and be glad in you! May those who love your salvation say evermore, “God is great!” [5] But I am poor and needy; hasten to me, O God! You are my help and my deliverer; O LORD, do not delay! (Psalm 70 ESV)
During last night’s BRIC House we sat in a circle and listened to what Jesus has been saying to each of us. Consider this verse:
“Pure and undefiled religion before our God and Father is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself unstained by the world.”—James 1:27 HCSB
We talked about what we can do to respond to Jesus’ command of loving God and loving others. Some of the things we came up with were:
I am sitting in a hotel room in Jacksonville, Florida. A generic Unsolved Mystery-like show is on the television. It is dark outside. The weather is warm, almost muggy, but the strong breeze keeps the heat at bay. I have brewed a cup of Earl Grey tea, forgoing the 4 dollar bottle of water.
It is Thursday night. Tomorrow starts a three day conference on House/Organic Churches. As excited as I am to be in a room full of people that have a passion for being in a close community of faith, I am also conscience of the propensity for believers to discuss a system. An “efficiency” if you will.
There is a real need for those that are concerned about the best way to help facilitate a place for people to gather and seek Jesus. It is my prayer that the way doesn’t over shadow the Way.
“They didn’t find me disputing with anyone or causing a disturbance among the crowd, either in the temple complex or in the synagogues or anywhere in the city. Neither can they provide evidence to you of what they now bring against me. But I confess this to you: I worship my fathers’ God according to the Way, which they call a sect, believing all the things that are written in the Law and in the Prophets. And I have a hope in God, which these men themselves also accept, that there is going to be a resurrection, both of the righteous and the unrighteous. I always do my best to have a clear conscience toward God and men.” Acts 24:12–16 HCSB
The method is in no way more important that the Way; more than Jesus. Makes me think of another quote:
We are constantly on a stretch, if not on a strain, to devise new methods, new plans, new organizations to advance the Church and secure enlargement and efficiency for the gospel. This trend of the day has a tendency to lose sight of the man or sink the man in the plan or organization. God’s plan is to make much of the man, far more of him than of anything else. Men are God’s method. The Church is looking for better methods; God is looking for better men.—Edward M. Bounds, Power Through Prayer (Selected Works on Prayer; Accordance electronic ed. Altamonte Springs: OakTree Software, 1999), n.p.
I changed to the History Chanel. There is a show on where “researchers” are hypostatizing aliens as angels that erected church buildings in Ethiopia around 900 BC.
We need Truth and the Way now more than ever.
