Call to Worship God,
to Gather Together
1 Thessalonians 3:12, 2 Thessalonians 3:5
May the Lord make your love increase and
overflow for each other and for everyone else,
just as ours does for you.
May the Lord direct your hearts into God’s love
and Christ’s perseverance.
~ Apostle Paul
Pondering Point
Maybe the word ‘blessing’ is not the most fitting here, but would it not be a blessing to see your love for others increase and have the Lord direct your heart into His love and into a perseverance equal to Christ’s. Ask Father God for fulfillment of these ‘blessing’ during the upcoming week for you and others.
Be Kind and Compassionate
to One Another
Ephesians 4:32a
Be kind and compassionate to one another
~ Apostle Paul
Pondering Point
Here it is, very simple. Be the face of kindness and compassion in the name of Jesus today to everyone you meet. Put something in your pocket or on your wrist or mark your hand as a reminder throughout the day to do so.
Ponder these four questions with God (and maybe someone else):
- Who was compassionate to me this past week? Thank God.
- Who lacked compassion toward me? Forgive and pray for them.
- To whom did I fail to show compassion? Seek forgiveness.
- To whom did I show compassion? Praise God for faithfulness.
Prayer
Lord Jesus, be glorified in my life through my acts of kindness and compassion. In Your name I pray and live today. Amen.
The Other Half of Church
Once a week, there will be extended quotations from this book for your benefit. We will work through the book over the summer months. Here is your first:
Jim [Wilder] and others believe that an Enlightenment model of transformation has influenced our churches, and this is why joy and love are no longer the central characteristics of Christian discipleship. According to Enlightenment thinking, the formula for transformation is:
transformation = truth + good choices + power.
It is easy to believe that if our Christian communities have solid biblical teaching and doctrine (truth) and we are encouraged to apply the teaching to our lives (good choices), the Holy Spirit will enable us to understand the truth and make good choices (power). We expect this will lead to transformation. The formula looks reasonable to modern eyes, but it has a fatal flaw. It is missing the most important variable. Love, the primary mover of character, is absent without hesed, we see little transformation.
I will carefully remind you, we are not suggesting that truth, choices, and power have no place in discipleship. We are restoring hesed to its central place. In their book, The Solution of Choice, Jim Wilder and Marcus Warner explain the role of love in discipleship.
page 85, The Other Half of Church
When hesed replaces truth as the foundation of discipleship, the whole model self-corrects. Placing love at the core of the transformation process allows truth, choice, and power to play their proper roles and not bear a weight they were never intended to carry… Developments in modern brain science have made it clear that any model of transformation and character change must be anchored in the development of a love bond with God and his people.
Wilder, Jim and Warner, Marcus. The Solution of Choice