Day 135: Being Students

"Therefore, laying aside all malice, all deceit, hypocrisy, envy, and all evil speaking, as newborn babes, desire the pure milk of the word, that you may grow thereby, if indeed you have tasted that the Lord is gracious."  1 Peter 2:1-3

As Christians, we are devoted to living a life as a student.

We will forget that sometimes.  In school, there are usually some students who might understand concepts more easily than others, so those students can help those around them.  But, in the end, the teacher still has more knowledge than the students.  Perhaps later on in their lives, the students will have the same, if not more, knowledge and wisdom than their teachers.

As students, we are called to maintain certain disciplines.  I'm sure there are many teachers out there who wish to have students who are not judgmental, kind, patient, and, above all, willing to learn.  We are not supposed to be correcting our teacher, and we are definitely not supposed to be correcting our fellow students.  Think about this: we are students of the ultimate expression of wisdom (some would even say we are students of Wisdom herself); so how can we even know more than the teacher?

We are called to desire to continue in our learning and our application of our learning.  But the only way that will work is if we put aside all evils around us.  And, in this passage, evils are things that separate us from one another.  Being students requires us to make the classroom into a community of love, support, friendship, and help.   That's how we will be able to apply what we learn, as well.  We are learning how to live with one another to build up the Kingdom of Heaven on earth.  When we start to apply all the love, all the acceptance, all the understanding that Christ teaches us, we will grow into greater beings.

Day 133: Building up a Community

 "Is anyone among you suffering?  Let him pray.  Is anyone cheerful?  Let him sing psalms.  Is anyone among you sick?  Let him call for the elders of the church, and let them pray over him, anointing him with oil in the name of the Lord."  James 5:13-14

I feel like this is something that we've distanced ourselves from in recent times.

We look at church like a place that exists far away from home that is only open on Sunday mornings.  It loses its spirituality over the week and becomes just a building.  We also become divorced from everybody at church once we leave on Sunday.  Yet, that's not what the point is.

When I read the above passage, I think about how important a church was to the community.  All of the activities that are listed above (and even after this passage) are things that we normally associate with church.  The thing is, though, that there isn't any fine print.  There's nothing that says, "If anyone is sick at church," or, "If anyone feels cheerful at church," or "If anyone is suffering at church."  It's plain and simple.  We are the church, and we take it everywhere we go.

The other side to consider is that we need to make sure the church is a community, not just a bank, where transactions happen between a teller and a customer.  Instead, we attend church as a community.  We should be willing to join hands in prayer and healing at any given moment.  We should feel as if the church is our second home, if not our fist.  We need to have camaraderie between all the members.  If there are issues, then we should make sure to go forward and solve them.  Rather than let evil break into our communities, dividing them and infecting every person, we should be guarding all the good that comes from our community.

Our faith is not something that we just say.  Anybody can crack open a prayer book or (in that case) look up the Creed page on Wikipedia and recite the words with no faith.  That's easy.  It's living our faith that we are called to do.  When we read the bible and learn what to do, we can build up our communities to become stronger.  It takes a great effort to build up a community, but when we do, it will benefit us, healing us, and celebrating with us.

Day 102: Edifying Evangelism

"As I urged you when I went into Macedonia —remain in Ephesus that you may charge some that they teach no other doctrine, nor give heed to fables and endless genealogies, which cause disputes rather than godly edification which is in faith." 1 Timothy 1:3-4

This is a good admonishment that we don't hear enough.

We need to bring our evangelism back to the basics: the proclamation of the Gospel.  There are times when we allow for different things to get in the way of proclaiming the Gospel.  Jesus gave us some very good examples of how to proclaim, especially with the use of parables (and even explaining some of them to us in simple terms).  But we can also become obsessed with different things.

One thing that I think of is how we might become obsessed with that one Bible verse and try to figure out how we can make that Bible verse our own.  The truth of the matter is that we want to start making the entire evangelization to be something that glorifies ourselves rather than God.  When we show that we have so much knowledge about a certain matter, we can start to distance ourselves from those we are trying to reach.

Instead, we should remember that evangelism involves godly edification.  Rather than argue with others about minutia, we should be edifying one another, especially those who are new to Christ.  Jesus spent his entire ministry building up his disciples, and he is also edifying us each time we communicate with him through our prayers, worship, and reading.  Therefore, we must continue this tradition to our own students.  We must continue to build them up rather than tear them down.

Lord over All

"I lift up my eyes to the hills; from where is my help to come?" (Psalm 121:1)
I have to thank God for my mom.  She helps me through everything.  She was my strongest supporter for my coming out, and she remains my strongest supporter.  As such, she also offers to help me out in every way possible.  However, many times, I refuse her help.  I feel like by turning away from my resources I will become a better person.  However, she insists.  In the same way, Jesus is always willing to help us.  When approached by a messenger from a centurion, a very powerful member of Jewish society at the time, Jesus did not hesitate.  Jesus just went to help.  When He arrived at the house, the centurion declared Jesus' sovereignty.  In the end, Jesus healed the centurion's ailing slave.  Sometimes we all put on a mask of strength before God, despite the fact that there will never be any help from anywhere or anyone else.  We'd prefer to stumble and fall, yet Jesus is always there, ready to pick us back up, for He is the sovereign Lord over all.