- Attend church service weekly.
- Volunteer during another service.
- Attend bible study or Sunday school or midweek service (sometimes all three are offered)
- Serve in a ministry that helps the poor and needy.
- If you are a leader (and we know who you are), then we'll have a few more meetings to attend, contacts to make, events to organize and teams to rally.
- Attend periodic special events hosted by the church.
- Be a great husband or wife and invest time in your marriage.
- Oh, and make sure you are involved in men's' or women's' ministry.
- Get in a small group and meet regularly.
- If you are a man, you must be in a men's' small group for accountability. Otherwise we know you look at porn.
- If you are married, you probably should also be in a couple group if you care about your spouse.
- Read your bible every day. Anything less than 30 minutes is probably not enough.
- Be a good citizen. Vote and get involved in your community.
- Give ten percent of every penny that you make. And give to the special offerings. And give to the kids going on the missions trip. And give to the building fund.
- Go on a missions trip. Been on a local trip? Overseas is your next step.
- Invest in relationships in your neighborhood and at your workplace.
- Invite people to church. Every week. The purpose of that, of course, is so you can get them to church so they can do #1 through #16 above.
Worn out from that? Oh, well don't forget about all of the other expectations that everyone else in your life also has. Your friends, work, family, sports your kids are involved in, school activities, etc. The things above aren't necessarily bad, but the key is to figure out how we can help people bring their walk with Jesus into their lives. We don't need more things to do or activities to feel guilty about, we need to focus on who we are becoming. The hard part about that, and why we have list like the ones above, is because that is hard to measure. A relationship with Jesus will show in the fruit we bear, but sometimes that fruit may take a while to produce. More activities aren't the results of bearing fruit, a life centered around Jesus is where we should be aiming. What is your measuring stick?
1 comment:
Hallelujah!!!
This is my secret rebellion. As long as we use some kind of church participation as a measuring stick to try and determine what is or is not actively going on in a persons heart, we are going to keep missing the point of Jesus.
It all starts inside and works its way out. When I focus entirely on what you're (or I am) doing on the outside, I will be creating a false Jesus and a false Religion.
There are a lot of good things listed on this list. But none of them are a good measuring rod for what's happening in my heart.
(and consequently when I try and do them all, I do none of them well).
We're supposed to be walking in freedom, and often (our) expectations become the killers of all that. The problem with all of our expectations is that they are just that. They are "our" expectations. They are not Gods.
Gods expectations are higher than ours but they aren't measurable by people because they all start on the inside and work their way out. His expectations are totally emersed in his Grace, so that real life is a result. And real life doesn't always work itself out in the same way, or towards the same meeting, ministry, etc.... Which means that we can't measure them against each other. When we try to, we destroy what God is doing, and we start building something else.
Instead of asking, does a person attend meetings? small group?? Morning church?? Sunday school?? CR?? Wednesday night bible study?? accountability group?? etc. We should be asking, does a person have love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control?
Instead of asking how many things do you do? A better question (i think) is, where is your community? And where is your ministry? Where do you love people?
And I cant micro manage that for myself, let alone can I do that for you.
If someone is missing something that they do on a regular basis suddenly, and know one knows why, the compassionate thing to do is check on them because we care. But even the missing of that meeting is not an absolute indicator for what's going on in a persons heart. It may be a connecting point for someone.....(it might not be). But they might be able to start attending the meeting again, and yet be in a worse place than when they started, and yet because they're at the meeting, everyone thinks their alright. This is the danger of setting up the "false expectation".
What I'm supposed to do is come along side you...(whoever that "you" is, that God gives me) and walk with you towards all of these things.... ie love, joy, peace patience etc... They will be reflected in what I do, and in some way, become so entangled that they become part of my Salvation as a whole, and the world that I live in, my community, my ministry etc...
Wow. This is my topic. I could go on and on. But I wont. Thank you for this place to express....
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