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Stop Competing and Comparing and Envying each other

God’s various gifts are handed out everywhere; but they all originate in God’s Spirit. God’s various ministries are carried out everywhere; but they all originate in God’s Spirit. God’s various expressions of power are in action everywhere; but God himself is behind it all.

Each person is given something to do that shows who God is: Everyone gets in on it, everyone benefits. All kinds of things are handed out by the Spirit, and to all kinds of people! The variety is wonderful:

wise counsel

clear understanding

simple trust

healing the sick

miraculous acts

proclamation

distinguishing between spirits

tongues

interpretation of tongues.

All these gifts have a common origin, but are handed out one by one by the one Spirit of God. He decides who gets what, and when.

You can easily enough see how this kind of thing works by looking no further than your own body. Your body has many parts—limbs, organs, cells—but no matter how many parts you can name, you’re still one body. It’s exactly the same with Christ. By means of his one Spirit, we all said good-bye to our partial and piecemeal lives. We each used to independently call our own shots, but then we entered into a large and integrated life in which he has the final say in everything. (This is what we proclaimed in word and action when we were baptized.) Each of us is now a part of his resurrection body, refreshed and sustained at one fountain—his Spirit—where we all come to drink. The old labels we once used to identify ourselves—labels like Jew or Greek, slave or free—are no longer useful. We need something larger, more comprehensive.

I want you to think about how all this makes you more significant, not less. A body isn’t just a single part blown up into something huge. It’s all the different-but-similar parts arranged and functioning together. If Foot said, “I’m not elegant like Hand, embellished with rings; I guess I don’t belong to this body,” would that make it so? If Ear said, “I’m not beautiful like Eye, limpid and expressive; I don’t deserve a place on the head,” would you want to remove it from the body? If the body was all eye, how could it hear? If all ear, how could it smell? As it is, we see that God has carefully placed each part of the body right where he wanted it. But I also want you to think about how this keeps your significance from getting blown up into self-importance. For no matter how significant you are, it is only because of what you are a part of. An enormous eye or a gigantic hand wouldn’t be a body, but a monster.

What we have is one body with many parts, each its proper size and in its proper place. No part is important on its own. Can you imagine Eye telling Hand, “Get lost; I don’t need you”? Or, Head telling Foot, “You’re fired; your job has been phased out”? As a matter of fact, in practice it works the other way—the “lower” the part, the more basic, and therefore necessary. You can live without an eye, for instance, but not without a stomach. When it’s a part of your own body you are concerned with, it makes no difference whether the part is visible or clothed, higher or lower. You give it dignity and honor just as it is, without comparisons. If anything, you have more concern for the lower parts than the higher. If you had to choose, wouldn’t you prefer good digestion to full-bodied hair?

The way God designed our bodies is a model for understanding our lives together as a church: every part dependent on every other part, the parts we mention and the parts we don’t, the parts we see and the parts we don’t. If one part hurts, every other part is involved in the hurt, and in the healing. If one part flourishes, every other part enters into the exuberance. You are Christ’s body—that’s who you are! You must never forget this. Only as you accept your part of that body does your “part” mean anything.

You’re familiar with some of the parts that God has formed in his church, which is his “body”:

apostles

prophets

teachers

miracle workers

healers

helpers

organizers

those who pray in tongues.

But it’s obvious by now, isn’t it, that Christ’s church is a complete Body and not a gigantic, unidimensional Part? It’s not all Apostle, not all Prophet, not all Miracle Worker, not all Healer, not all Prayer in Tongues, not all Interpreter of Tongues. And yet some of you keep competing for so-called “important” parts.

But now I want to lay out a far better way for you.
1 Corinthians 12:4‭-‬31 MSG
http://bible.com/97/1co.12.4-31.MSG

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[Small Group] Spiritual Training

Last Night’s Gathering – You are a blessing to us

Y’all are such a blessing to me and my family. A big thank you to those who made it in person and to those who were with us in spirit even if not in body.

This Week – Spiritual Training

This week we are going to do something different. I’m very excited about this and encourage you to slide anything else to the side and be sure not to miss this particular week’s prep and especially not miss the gathering next week.

We’ll call this week “spiritual training”. It will be a focused type of kindling/arousing/awakening the spiritual fire inside.

This week, instead of focusing on the Wiersbe guide/workbook questions, I want us to read the selection of scripture from lesson 3 (Psalms 44-47) but not go into the questions in the study guide.

Instead:

Training/Exercise

Pray for the Lord to reveal His wisdom to your heart and spirit, not for you to just acquire knowledge in your mind. And pray that you won’t doubt and that it won’t be stolen away. Trust Him. He is faithful and true.

Read through Psalm 44 once, all the way through.

Then ask yourself the following questions:

1) Who?

2) When/where?

3) How?(What?)

4) Why?

NOTE: With the first three, we are trying to intentionally and consciously paint a picture in our minds (or walk out a play or movie in our minds) that activates our senses and draws us in like a good movie does. This is a creative exercise for our minds, like a child’s faithful “make believe” game, not just a factual/academic exercise.

Who?
Who are the people or groups of people involved in this (author, spoken of, spoken to, playing a part in it, etc)?

When/where?
What is the background/stage/ environment for this text? What would it have looked like, felt like, smelled like, sounded like or even tasted like? If you were going to make a video to recreate this Psalm, how would you set up the stage for the actors?

How?
Can you summarize and picture what happened and the sequence of events? If you were writing out a script and recreating this as a child would in a play or game, what is the general order of events?

NOTE: Now we have stepped through the above, we will step past “just the facts” and surface level written letter “meaning” of the passage and move on to application.

The Why?

“The why inside them”
What is an underlying message or theme the people “inside the story” or the author would have been learning or teaching through this passage?

“The why through Christ”
How does knowing what we know today about the life and teachings of Christ reveal something new or additional or parallel to this passage? Is there a way that we can understand or find parallels in this passage?

“The why inside me”
If we are truly Christians at heart and not just claimed by name, we have the spirit of Christ in us. Knowing this about ourselves and knowing our identity in Christ, what does this teach us, or stir up in us, or convict us to repent of?

NOTE: This is a method of study that I use with my daughter as we read through the Bible together, and it is one of the primary and most profitable ways I have found to approach studying scripture in a way that makes it real, makes it memorable, and makes it effectively applicable for my day to day life.

This approach takes time that is still, quiet, and focused on the Word of God. I know that many of us have busy lives where God may only have had access to our left overs in the past. This is not me judging you or condemning you, I’m just speaking the truth about many times in our lives when we have let other things take priority over God and we have missed out on blessings and growth and kingdom opportunities as a result. I promise that this approach will bear riches for you of you try it. And quality is king here, not quantity. It would be better to dive into this fully committed to the method and to seeing just one passage “come alive” to you — rather than rushing through it like a last minute homework assignment so you can say to yourself that you finished all four Psalms before time to turn in your work.

If you feel stuck or stumped, walk away from the book and spend time praising the Lord for the wisdom you know He is planting in your heart through time in His Word, even if you can’t yet see the fruit of it in your mind, etc.

Rinse and repeat. If you now know Psalm 44 intimately and personally and you are hungry for more, move on to the next one.

NOTE: My goal is to record a video of me walking through this process with one of the Psalms for this week so you can see an example of this played out. Hopefully I can share that in the next day or so.

Next Week’s Gathering – Outpouring

I would also like to build on this “spiritual training” when we gather next week by having a short study followed by a time of “soaking” where we work those spiritual muscles we have been exercising and we allow the spiritual gifts to be active and the Lord speak to us and through us even more clearly. You can come with an expectation to see the Spirit of the Lord — “breathing life into His people”, and the “fount of living waters flowing out of our bellies”. You do not want to miss this gathering.

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Undeserved Treasure

Be Good Husbands

 

My wife, my bride,
Sweeter today than the day we wed,
More patient with my faults now than when blinded by attraction,
A more beautiful and radiant doe now than when masked by her youth,
Demonstrating that gentle and quiet spirit that comes from the Lord.
She trusts in the Lord and she listens to and knows the heart of my words,
She and I are warring on the battlefield but not against one another,
Because we are one, standing united against that enemy that hates us,
We are one in Christ as she is not my adversary but is my helpmate,
We are one in truth as she is my spotless blameless treasure washed by the Word of God,
We are one in love.
We are one.
Not to be separated,
for we are not just joined by vows,
but by the Lord God Almighty Himself.
The enemy shall not overcome,
The enemy shall not make camp in this, the Lord’s territory.
The enemy has been overcome,
For the enemy met with resistance
And did not divide and conquer
But is revealed conquered
By the Blood of the Lamb
And by our testimony
That we love,
Yes we love!
Not me,
But We
And He.

We are taught
We are led
We are called
We are sent
Together
by God
with God
Together
Forever.

1 Peter 3:7

7 In the same way, you husbands must give honor to your wives. Treat your wife with understanding as you live together. She may be weaker than you are, but she is your equal partner in God’s gift of new life. Treat her as you should so your prayers will not be hindered.

Proverbs 18:22

22 The man who finds a wife finds a treasure,

    and he receives favor from the Lord.

Proverbs 19:14

14 Fathers can give their sons an inheritance of houses and wealth,

    but only the Lord can give an understanding wife.

Mark 10:7-9

7 ‘This explains why a man leaves his father and mother and is joined to his wife, 8 and the two are united into one.’ Since they are no longer two but one, 9 let no one split apart what God has joined together.”

I wonder how often we look at our wives as “undeserved treasure” instead of looking for what we could find fault in (and tear down in our own minds) about this woman who is united with us as one?

Or maybe some of us haven’t reached that point where we actually are “united into one” with our wives?

Maybe we’re trying to be Clemson on one side of the field while they are trying to be Carolina – each battling for title of lord within the battleground of our own households?

Maybe we’ve been fooled into forgetting about the real enemy and the division that can be sown so that we refuse to acknowledge the only one that can truly be Lord and bring unity in our households?

Husbands, have we been foolish in thinking that she must be understandable before you can be understanding towards her? Have we expected her to come and speak with us like a man, or like a common neighbor — or even as someone bringing their case into our courtroom to be considered and judged in the courts of reason? How foolish, when she should be able to enter her emotional pleas to us expecting grace and mercy and love. Where is your compassion, you hard of heart? Doesn’t an outpouring of love, a going forth of this gospel, start at home? Are we not called to love her like Christ loves the church?

Do not have her begging for crumbs of love at the table of your marriage – she is no dog! She is part of you. She is your treasure to be second only to Christ himself in your heart! Above your job, above your career, above your children, above your friends, above your hobbies – she is one with you if you are indeed one in Christ.

Or is that the root of the issue? Have you forgotten who you are without Christ? Have you forgotten the wretched state from which He has called and delivered you so that you think so much of yourself that you can look down upon the very one you are sent to be Christ to in your household?

Repent, husbands. Honor her today. Not with platitudes and flowers, but with a willingness to hear her.

Ask her how she feels about the state of your relationship. And when she answers, do not get offended. Do not make excuses. Do not justify your own perspective. Do not turn away from these words that reveal hurts to your body that you had been ignoring – because hurts to her are hurts to you – if indeed you are one. Seek understanding. Find unity. Stir up love.