Delighting in the Divine
Yes to freedom, yes to play and yes to celebrating the moment!
All tagged community
Where are you?
It is the first question God poses to Adam and Eve when they eat the fruit.
God asks a lot of questions. And none of them are because He doesn’t know the answer...
Lie 4: What I am trying to achieve is more important than the relationship.
Truth: Your mission here on earth is first to love God and then to love others. Loving others is one way of also loving God!
Passivity and busyness are two snares the enemy uses to destroy relationships...
We desire to do great things for God and we crave a community to do it with. Unfortunately, when we work alongside others we soon discover that there are people who have mixed agendas, others who are unkind, others who are passive, others who got out the wrong side of the bed this morning. And those people are us!
Now that you can see the prize and all the beautiful fruits that unity can bring, let’s talk about the price.
My husband and I began living in community 5 years ago after moving from a neighborhood where nobody would talk to us! As well as getting to know our neighbours, we have gathered people around us who have become leaders of their own communities and students from our school of ministry. There are lots of people and many leaders around us, who we work with and live life together with. There are LOTS of opportunities for disagreements and misunderstandings and LOTS of conflicts and potential conflicts...
I have applied the vine and branches passage in John 15:4-5, every time I have read it, to my own personal walk with God. 100% of the time I have viewed the passage like this: If I, Anna, abide in Christ, and I, Anna, seek God and have communion with Him at all times, then I, Anna, will bear much fruit...
Never have I seen a nation so honoring and proud of the role of President and yet so dishonoring and undermining of the President himself as the United States.
Recently, I saw a Facebook post by a Christian disrespecting the current President and comments which were equally disrespectful and it caused me pain and gave me much to think about, especially seeing as my first reaction was to judge them, just as they had judged the President! ...
It is 5pm and the last bowl has been washed up, the house looks vaguely in order and everybody has left. Today we had a lovely Thanksgiving meal together as a community.
There were over 30 adults present from different nations. Some old friends returning for another Thanksgiving, some new friends from this year, new babies, new people, faithful friends who have been on the journey together for years...
Recognise!
Call to mind!
Meditate on!
Mull over!
Remember!
Do not forget the goodness that God has done for you! ...
I shared recently about pushing against resistance in order to see breakthrough. I have found this to be essential when wanting to see breakthrough in relationships with others which can lead to much joy!
Life has given me plenty of opportunities to have misunderstandings, painful relationships and disagreements with others and I'm sure you have had those too. In many of the relationships at school or university, I was able to pull away when things got hard, but marriage and living in community with others has meant that I have had to work at unity. It was really hard at first, but choosing to commit to the person and not pull away has led to joy! The feeling of joy and unity that comes when a broken relationship has been restored and brought to another level is worth it! ...
I wasn’t expecting our last days in the US and our return to Peru to be so dramatic. We had a wonderful albeit super-busy time in the UK and US spending time with so many friends and family and making new friends. We were looking forward to coming back to Peru and beginning to process our trip!
However, the last few days of our time in the US, I ended up in the Emergency Room in Lexington, Kentucky, with horrendous abdominal pains...
Yesterday an old friend of our community came and apologized to Mark. He had heard some things about us and had withdrawn his friendship to our community for a long time. He came to ask for forgiveness for having withdrawn and for having judged us. His apology touched us and saddened us. Not because of what had been said about us - we knew those things already and had dealt with them, but rather because this is what happens throughout Christ’s bride and creates divisions everywhere.
Today, on Christmas Eve, as I have finally stopped after an exhausting last couple of months, and realized all the presents I haven’t had time to buy and the preparations I haven’t done, I had a couple of hours this morning to hit the local shopping centre.
But I decided not to go...
