Tuesday Teaser for 10/29

For those of you who are checking in for the teaser today, I have really got one for you..........

We have no class tomorrow.

Total teaser.

Come and join us for the fall festival 5:30-7:30!

REAL Love

We had a small class last night, due I suppose to fall break. I expect you all to be back next week! Even with the small number I really enjoyed the time with my sisters and their input, youngest to oldest. :)
We tackled the challenging topic of loving the way God loves last night. We examined the story of Jacob and Esau reuniting. In it Jacob was able to see the face of God in his brother, through the love and forgiveness that was shown. It is humbling to think that I can show someone the face of God in my actions. The flip side of that is that if they are looking and it is not God that they see, then what ugliness am I showing? Yuck.
We learned that you can not grow in your relationship with God without subsequently growing in your dealing with others. We were made to live in community. God is a relational being and calls us to be as well. While one-on-one time with God is vital to spiritual growth, it is not all that we need. Jesus frequently withdrew to pray and be with the Father, but then He immediately went back into the trenches. We are messy people - all of us. I have used this image before but since it is mine I can use it whenever I want without plagiarism. :) Often in our dealings with others we put on protective equipment, think of the gowns, gloves, and masks in the medical arena. We do not want their germs, their "dirt," to get on us in any way. Jesus never wore protective equipment. Think of the hands-on approach He took with lepers! We need to remove our metaphorical PPE (personal protective equipment) and wade in. Be willing to get their dirt on us. Take off the gigantic waders and slog through. Your tennis shoes will never be white again, but your soul will. Practice unexpected grace. Show someone the face of God. They must see His face before they will listen to His word.

Two sets of applications for you - the first is from the book, the second is not.

• When there is conflict, take the initiative to resolution before the next worship gathering. Think of Mt 5:23-24 Do not offer anything to God without at least trying to resolve the conflict. You can not change the other person, but through God both hearts can be changed.
• Seek reconciliation between a family member by calling or writing. Be sure to show love, not blame.
• Fill your heart with passages on forgiveness. Mt 6:14-15; 18:21-35; Lk 17:3-4; Eph 4:32; Col 3:13

Thinking of Love -Choosing to give someone your time and attention, no matter what. These tasks will not necessarily be possible in one week

• Reach out to someone this week, either verbally or with the written word. A note of encouragement or support. Make this to someone who may not be expecting something from you. Reach outside of your normal box. Show unexpected love.
• Spend time with that person, one-on-one or very small group, within the next month. Invite them into your home, or to go for a walk or whatever. Give the gift of time and attention.
• Meet a need in their life over the next 6 months. Every one's needs are different. Only by investing your time will you be able to see the need. Even folks with tons of money have needs. You can not pick someone who doesn't have a need.

Be the face of God, show unexpected grace.

Tuesday Teaser for 10/22

For the folks who are checking in regularly for the teaser I apologize for the lateness. Long day. For those of you who come late - no apology, you didn't notice anyway. I am just glad you are here!

This week we will be looking at making God's love come alive through us. I am intrigued that the author uses the story of Jacob and Esau re-uniting to teach us a lesson on love. An unexpected story for me, but one I am warming to. Who else on earth do we love more easily and sometimes more difficultly(Is that a word?) than our siblings/families? Those outside our families can be dropped if they over-irritate us, however family is for life, creating an interesting tension if irritation occurs. How does this play out in God's family. Why is it that we can drop our Christian family members without much remorse? To be frank...Where is the love? Christ himself said "By this all will know that you are My disciples, if you have love for one another." (Jn 13:35)

Would anyone KNOW that I was His disciple if I didn't tell them? Would they know about you?

See you tomorrow!

REAL Forgiveness

Thanks to everyone who came and participated last night. I know the teacher was a little chatty, but that is what happens when everyone is so encouraging, it only makes me talk more! Forgiveness is something that I work on, I have a long memory and do not easily forget the offenses done to me, real or imagined. While some may argue that forgetting is not part of forgiving (and there is some truth to that), I think that the forgiveness modeled by God requires that we forget more than we have in the past, at least I need to forget more. Those who are walking a new road do not need to rehash old sins over and over again because WE can't let it go. Others may not be able to see a new road because WE are constantly reminding them of their old/current one. (Again I will state that we need not be stupidly forgetting things that would make ourselves or others unsafe, wisdom is something that God endorses.)

Let us model our forgiveness on God, the ultimate example. In Isaiah (43:25) God states "I, even I, am He who blots out your transgressions, for my own sake, and remembers your sins no more." Again in Jeremiah 31:34 He again states the wickedness will be forgiven and sins remembered no more. This concept is reviewed by the Hebrew writer in 8:12 and 10:17. God does not hold our past transgressions over our head waiting for us to slip up and go splat.

Forgiveness will take action on our part. We have to decide that they don't have to pay. What can we do when it is hard?

• Make a list of what God has forgiven you, big and small. This can help lend perspective.
• Talk with someone about your hurt. Make this a trusted, confidential mentor figure. Chatting it up with anyone you see is not a healthy purging, but only starting up the cycle of hurt and betrayal on your own.
• Pray for God's forgiving spirit to fill you. Sometimes we don't "feel" like forgiving due to our bad day or the fact that the offense is major(and sadly there are MAJOR offenses out there both outside and inside a Christian community). What we can not pull off alone, God can do through us.

Sometimes we just want someone to pay. We cry out for revenge and call it justice or fairness. Life under the sun is not always fair. Bringing kingdom living into our day to day lives is hard, but I believe ultimately worth it. Let's try forgiving like God forgives. If not, we are generally only hurting ourselves.

Tuesday Teaser for 10/15

I am almost afraid to do this post. It is possible that when checking in that I might scare you away! If we thought that authentic intimacy and trust were difficult, I believe they can not hold much of a candle to our topic tomorrow, real forgiveness. As many of you have heard me say, the church is full of regular people. And regular people are imperfect and likely to hurt your feelings. If your feelings have not been hurt yet in the church it is possible that you haven't been paying attention.

What makes church special is not that we avoid the imperfections of human relations, but that through Christ we strive to face our slip ups, confess them, and actively work on doing something about it. (That is repentance - an action word, not a thoughtful word) Forgiveness, we will discover, is a choice we make. Like our other concepts thus far, we need to choose to forgive. The way we chose intimacy and we chose trust. We will need to forgive even when we don't "feel like it." I would imagine that mostly, we won't feel like it. I want to share the definition for forgiveness with you, again this definition I am borrowing from the 252 basics curriculum. Mull this one over and let me know what you think. Forgiveness - deciding that someone who has wronged you doesn't have to pay.

The parable of the prodigal son is our text for tomorrow, and I know that many of us may have preconceived feelings about the characters in that story. Let's try to wash those away and look at the scene through fresh eyes. Jesus was the best story-teller ever. His tales were never just one layer thick. Let's get ready to dig in together. :)

See you tomorrow.

REAL Trust

Thanks again to all of the ladies who joined us last evening. I thought the discussion was good, even in spite of the fact that I felt like was doing most of it. Trust is such a difficult and personal topic. We can be surrounded at times by the image that you can trust no one but your self. Trusting others is a risk, but one that is needed to develop the relationships that are vital for the success of God's mission here on earth.

We saw in Joseph a time where trusting would be difficult and how his response showed something of his character. We saw how God stepped in and helped him trust, which ended with Joseph trusting in both his future wife and his God.

God does not ask us to live in a way that He did not demonstrate himself. Christ entrusted His disciples with the work of the kingdom, knowing that we would not always succeed. Which makes me think of a quote from Mother Teresa "God has not called me to be successful. God has called me to be faithful." As we trust in Him in this walk, He will strengthen us on our way. We can continue to trust in Him even if we are not surrounded by success.

We had two application paths this week. The first suggestions are for those who are currently facing an issue of trust with another person. (I will caveat this with use these steps with someone who may have acted "out of character," re-establishing trust with a habitual offender is a much more complicated process and not the scope of our discussion)

• Talk through the situation that is causing your mistrust. Be open with the person about where you were hurt. Try to understand potential influences to the situation that you may not have thought of before. How was the trust lost?
• Affirm something in that person. They may have hurt you now, but they have done other things that were beneficial. Affirmation will help rebuild confidence.
• Ask them to do a small task. Make it achievable to ensure success. Baby steps!

Let me give an illustration to this issue as it relates to children. . I believe all of us want our children to treat others respectfully, tell the truth , and in general "be good." Inevitably they will mess up - occasionally in a very dramatic fashion. Trust is lost. Do we abandon the relationship? Probably not. So we follow these steps, discuss the loss of trust and pinpoint how that came to be, affirm other actions they have done well (because we all respond better to praise than criticism), and them we give them a small task to succeed at, to get back on the road of trust. I have followed this path with my son as it relates to school behavior and I have seen it in parents of teens as it relates to curfew violations and the situations that some teens fall into by friend association. We walk this road of re-establishment with our children. It would be a worthy road to walk with our brothers/sisters in Christ.

For those who currently have no fences to mend right now I suggested another track. God calls us all to something. We must trust in Him sometimes to take a step towards that "ministry" - be it with children, teens, elderly, shut-in,impoverished conditions, mentally challenged, physically challenged, encouragement of the body, and I think you get the picture. Let this be a little push. TRUST GOD! Do something - don't wait for the perfect situation before acting - act anyway. For this track I suggest the following steps

• Talk with someone about where you feel you are being led. If you don't know, ask a trusted friend or mentor. They probably do know. Gifts in others are often easier to see than the ones in ourselves.
• Tell someone in a ministry how they have been an example to you. Everyone needs encouragement. Thank them for doing what they do and leading by example.
• Do something small in the area of your interest. This can be a phone call, an Internet search, some volunteer time, anything.

I hope you have a great week and be sure to check in again on Tuesday, where maybe I will write less and you can get done reading faster. :)

Tuesday Teaser for 10/8

I hope we are all ready for another great discussion on authentic relationships. This week we will be discussing trust. It is another word that we throw around at times without thinking too deeply about the definition. So in order to prepare for our talk tomorrow I want to ask:

• What is your definition of trust?
• What do you require from others in order for you to "trust" them?
• How is trust involved in following rules/commands?

I have recently been reading a biography of Mother Teresa and it is awesome. She was a great example of God's love to His people (all His people, even those who do not profess to follow Him). Many things have struck me in this reading but one which relates to this weeks lesson. Mother Teresa trusted God's direction in her life. He "asked" her to do amazing things and she did them without hesitation. When she said she would trust God to provide her food, she meant that - she walked out of the door of the convent without anything. She did not pack some provisions or arrange for food donations first - actions we would have considered sensible - she simply walked out. She trusted God. When we feel that God has "asked" us to do something, do we trust that it will work out, or do we arrange things to make it happen? Please do not think I am suggesting that we wander the streets waiting for divine intervention, because God does call us to action and wise decisions. However sometimes I think we plan and arrange and set up and discuss and rethink and I think you get my point. Where is the trust in that scenario?

This week I pray that we look to God and trust in His direction. I pray that we act on that direction and support one another along the way. See you tomorrow!

REAL Intimacy

Hello Girls! Thanks to everyone who is checking in on the blog. I enjoyed class last night and I want to give my appreciation to everyone for going along with my rambling about women at the well In our separated existence, in our separate houses, in separate neighborhoods, I do miss the image of female community that has existed in times past. Lets work toward having that community again, although lets keep the indoor plumbing and do something else. :)

Let's keep in mind the applications for this week:

• Share something about yourself that you normally wouldn't reveal
• Entrust one of your tasks to someone else this week
• Gift a gift to a friend that says something about yourself

Keeping true to the concept of intimacy I am going to apply one of our homework topics to this blog. When teaching and talking to groups I tend to stay as upbeat as possible, but that would not be authentic today. So I am going to share what I normally wouldn't. I had a bad day. Nothing bad happened, everyone is well and happy. We are looking forward to a weekend at the Zoe conference and a chance to worship with a ton of Christians at once. Life is good. Nevertheless I allowed myself to get overwhelmed and in a funk anyway. That was not what I originally intended to write, however it is authentically where I was today and it does fulfill homework number one. It is against my nature to say that in a group setting. Please note that I used the past tense when relating my funk. While not quite up to perky status, I have regained some measure of okayness. :) I know that we all have moments, hours, days, weeks, and sometimes even longer periods of what I refer to as general funkiness. It is ok to admit that. You need not look perfect all the time.

I pray for greater intimacy in our group and in our church. I pray that our closeness will mimic Christ as He related to His friends/family while here on earth and how He relates now to each who walks in His way. I am too comfortable with things being "nice." Intimacy will not always be easy or pretty and we may get our feelings hurt but I believe it will draw us on to greater things.

Have a great week!