- Acts 9: 26-31
- Psalm 22: 26-27, 28, 30, 31-32
- 1 John 3: 18-24
- John 15: 1-8
- Transforming grace
- Saul had planned to go to Damascus, round up some Christians, and bring them to Jerusalem for trial. Instead, he went to Damascus, got converted, and came back to Jerusalem, but on a totally different mission. No one sent Paul to "apostle boot camp". Instead, his past study, his devotion to God, his years of prayer were all put to use, just from a totally different vantage point.
- When is a time when your point of view on someone or something changed drastically?
- Why did that happen at that point in your life?
- How did you feel going into that shift in your perspective?
- How did that change you?
- Is that experience still changing you today?
- Known by their descendants
- All of us want to see our children and grandchildren grow up with the same values that we have. After all, we worked hard to develop the values that we have, we know that our values have led to a meaningful and rewarding life. We want that for our descendants.
- How are your children and grandchildren different from you as far as how they approach life?
- How do you explain those differences?
- How do you pray for those next generations?
- What do you see in their future?
- Ever emerging
- What does it mean to be full of the Spirit?
- For the person full of the Spirit, how do you think that they make their decisions in life?
- Do you wish that you could live that way?
- How do you think that we become more and more full of God's spirit?
- What's stopping you?
- Finding freedom
- Pruning is all about sacrificing in order to be more focused, more tightly purposed. It's often painful. Sometimes needlessly so.
- How do you know when to allow a new demand into your life? It might be a new relationship, a new set of season tickets, a new volunteer organization that you've always wanted to support ...
- How do you make room for new things in your life?
- How do you know when it's time to prune something that may have been very meaningful once, but now is no longer needed.
- Is it sinful to be burned out?
- Preparation for Reconciliation
- Where is God calling me to face a rewrite of my world view?
- Where might God be calling me to trust His faithfulness in my descendant's lives?
- Where is God calling me to the next right thing?
- Where might God be inviting me into greater freedom by shedding something in my life?
Nothing gets wasted
All of our days are numbered.
Most of us mercifully don't happen to know what that number is.
We want so much to be meaningful, accomplished, worthy of this life.
So that, in the end, when the final curtain falls on our life, we know that we did well.
And if there's only so many days left in my calendar,
How should I spend them, where should that precious time be invested, what goals define me?
For years I worked for a community that, in the end, decided that I had outlived my usefulness.
I'm still trying to figure out whether it bothers me more that they thought that of me -
Or that they just might be right.
Either way, it's a frightening commentary on all of those years, the late nights, the lost weekends.
I got into teaching, and now I wonder -
Why didn't I make this switch a long time ago, and not waste all of that time?
I tell myself that I have much to pass along to my students
That I would never have learned myself without those "wasted" years.
Just lately, I'm coming to a place that finds peace, not in finding hidden treasures in my past.
But rather, learning to trust that God is able to to redeem anything, if only we let Him.
That the miracle of these few short days that I have, that we all have together -
Is that God can take whatever we give Him, and fashion a miracle out of it.
That God can use my life to bring new life to others.
I just need to be humble enough to get out of God's way.
Shalom!
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