Creating a bridge

So lets see if we cant connect this past sundays lesson to this coming sundays lesson. To do this Im going to focus on verses 12,13, and 16 from the past lesson. Really simply called "the body verses".

12to prepare God’s people for works of service, so that the body of Christ may be built up 13until we all reach unity in the faith and in the knowledge of the Son of God and become mature, attaining to the whole measure of the fullness of Christ.
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16From him the whole body, joined and held together by every supporting ligament, grows and builds itself up in love, as each part does its work.

In reading this it shows that we were all given different gifts for a reason. To put it simply, we're all supposed to be different, because, lets face it, if everyone were an athlete, there would really be no competition, nor any reason to strive to be better, and it would be SUPER boring. So, we all have the abilities to do different thigns so we can "build" upon these different traits to better serve the community of faith.

There are a lot of different people in the community we live in just like there are different people in our community of faith. My thought is that we dont have our gifts to help the people within our community of faith perse, we have these abilities to help the people in our living communitites that are NOT a part of our community of faith. We have to be the ones to show them why it would be advantageous to become a part of our community of faith. We do that by using those gifts we were given in combination with living that "Christian lifestyle" to show them how much the Christian part helps the other parts. When they see those benefits, they will be intrigued, and thats our chance to bring them into our community of faith by sharing the word of God with them.

One thing you will notice throughout all of my pieces here, or anywhere for that matter, is I avoid the word "religion". The simple reason is because I feel like that word has a very negative connotation. You hear words like "religious nuts" or "pushing religion". I think that religion is man made and very fragile and lives under hugely false pretenses. Religion is the reason we have so many battles to fight in order to win over those that are not a part of our community of faith. There were a LOT of bad things done in the past and through today in the name of "religion", that is why we have to do these things. Faith, is about trust in God, and the Word of God, and the gift of salvation through Jesus Christ. So you will hear about faith from me a lot.

You will hear people say that their lives are dark or full of despair, but they sit there in apathy doing little to nothing about it. To quote a song on rock radio "The darkest hour never comes in the night. You can sleep with a gun, but when ya gonna wake up and fight?" This displays to me the exact sentiment a lot of people live with these days when they have thigs wrong with their life, and it speaks a lot to the world of "religion". Leaders of "religion" will stand in front of crowds of fellow "religion followers" and talk about the things wrong in the world today because of people who dont follow their "religion", they always get a lot of Amen, woo-calp, pomp & circumstance, but then they go home & sit down in front of their TV to complain about it some more. The way were going to build up our community is to wake up and fight. This doesnt mean physical fights or violence against those not a part of our faith, it means getting out there in the trenches and helping the people that need help and showing them what you can gain from having faith, and use the gifts you were given by God in that process. Use those gifts to fight that fight.

To close this I will hit back to the text from this past sunday:
21Surely you heard of him and were taught in him in accordance with the truth that is in Jesus. 22You were taught, with regard to your former way of life, to put off your old self, which is being corrupted by its deceitful desires; 23to be made new in the attitude of your minds; 24and to put on the new self, created to be like God in true righteousness and holiness.

Very simply - youve been told of what Jesus expects from you in how to live your life. We all have John 3:16 memorized, and we show up at church on sunday, but its up to you to take the words you were told thorugh the Bible and through Church and go out and live them from monday to saturday each week too. So let's "wake up and fight", get out there and use your gifts, show what love is, make that LEAP, or to put it simply, Have & show Faith