Jesus

We completed our series on “The Least of These” by looking at Jesus.  It is very easy to think about Jesus when we are in Life Group or at church, but sometimes it is not as easy to remember Him through out our every day lives.  We looked at Peter’s denial of Christ from Matthew’s gospel (26:31-75) and we began to understand why we tend to forget Jesus in our daily lives.  Here is what we learned from Peter:

1.  Selfish motives arise in times of crisis.
2.  Peter failed to grasp Jesus’ teachings, true purpose and warnings.  Don’t we often do the same?
3.  Pride goes before the fall.  Peter’s actions did not match his words, his life was out of balance.
4.  Peter wasn’t yet ready to give his all…his life

I guess the final thing that we can learn from Peter is that he did learn from these mistakes as became the leader of the New Testament church.  But he also felt remorse as soon as he understood what he had done.  How often do we feel remorse once we have realized we have denied our savior?  How often do we go outside and weep bitterly at this realization?  I am afraid that we deny Christ in more ways than we realize.  Sometimes it’s our silence, other times it’s our actions, maybe our words.

Mother Teresa was quoted as saying “Each one of them is Jesus in disguise”.  What a great quote.  My prayer for you and for me this week is that as we encounter others we remember that each one of them is Jesus in disguise.  How will you treat them?

The Stranger

This week we discussed our interactions, or lack there of, with strangers.  Strangers could be those we have not meet, but they could also include people who are different from us in some way.  Why is it that we tend to ignore these people?  What should our attitudes and actions towards people who don’t share our political or religious beliefs, people who are not like us in areas such as education, race, social or economic classes?  Have we been trapped inside the Christian “bubble”?

Passages such as Exodus 22:21, Psalm 82:4 and Zechariah 7:9-10 teach us that we should treat strangers and those different from us as we want to be treated.  Doesn’t it seem that too many times we leave social responsibility, community care and health concerns to the government?  According to scripture, it is clear that these responsibilities fall to us, His followers.  If we took God’s word seriously and allowed it to produce positive change in our lives, I wonder how the answer to many of these questions would be different?  I suspect they would be drastically different.

We are all broken, imperfect people trying to figure life out.  We are all sinners in need of Grace.  Since that is a true statement, I am no better or no worse than the people I ignore on a daily basis.  I wonder if the next person that I encounter that I do not know, the stranger, do they know the secret of God’s love?  Am I willing to exchange a smile and an encouraging word to plant a “seed of love”?

The Persecuted

When Jesus preached the infamous Sermon on the Mount, he started with the Beautitudes. Jesus included a statement on persucution when he said, “Blessed are those who are persecuted for rightousness’ sake, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven”. I believe we have a hard time with this statement and others concerning persecution mainly because we don’t fully understand what it means to be persecuted. We are very fortunate to live in a place where we can pray, worship, own a bible, conduct a bible study in our homes, along with many other visible and public signs of our religious freedom. Very rarely do we even consider that this is a priviledge and one that is not shared in many parts of the world. Have many friends have you lost because you are a Christ-follower? Has your family disowned you? Has your life been threatened? Do we risk inprisonment by following Christ? The answer to all of these questions is obviously “not likely”.

The fact that we don’t understand something or choose to ignore it does not mean that something doesn’t exist or isn’t real. One of the main points of this series is to challenge us to become more aware of those that we can easily forget or ignore. I want to challenge you this week to do something to become more aware of those who are suffering and being persecuted because they willingly follow Christ in a very hostile environment. There is a great resource to help you become more aware of the persecuted church. You can visit www.persecution.com sign up to receive the free monthly newsletter The Voice of the Martyrs. This newsletter is a great way to feel more connected with what is happening around the world and will guide you as you pray for those are undergoing persecution on a regular basis.

If you are aware of other resources, please let me know.

Suppose your life was threatened because you are a Christ-follower. What if your family was in danger because of your relationship with Christ? I know it’s hard to imagine, but how would respond?