Authentic Christian Community

This week in our Cell Groups we looked at our Core Value that we want to be an Authentic Christian Community.

As part of our time around the word of God we looked at 1 John 3:16-24 and spent some time asking the Lord to speak to our hearts through the Message translation, which is both encouraging and hard hitting. We underlined the phrases that stood out for us. I have put in bold what they were for me.

"This is how we've come to understand and experience love: Christ sacrificed his life for us. This is why we ought to live sacrificially for our fellow believers, and not just be out for ourselves. If you see some brother of sister in need and have the means to do something about it but turn a cold shoulder and do nothing, what happens to God's love? It disappears. And you made it disappear.

My dear children, let's not just talk about love; lets practice real love. This is the only way we'll know we're living truly, living in God's reality. It's also the way to shut down debilitating self-criticism, even when there is something to it. For God is greater than our worried hearts and knows more about us than we do ourselves. And friends, once that's taken care of and we're no longer accusing or condeming ourselves, we're bold and free before God! We're able to stretch our hands out and receive what we asked for because we're doing what he said, doing what pleases him. Again this is God's command: to believe in his personally named Son, Jesus Christ. He told us to love each other, in line with the original command. As we keep his commands, we live deeply and surely in him, and he lives in us. And this is how we experience his deep and abiding presence in us: by the Spirit he gave us."

For me this passage is all about possibilities. Very often we do have the means to meet another's need. I love the phrase "living in God's reality" What the world tells us is the truth about ourselves and what our circumstances tell us is real is so often a lie or a fantasy. God deals in truth. I take great encouragement from the phrase, "once that's taken care of" I once lived with paralysing fear but God dealt with it. It's taken care of. God doesn't give impossible commands. We can do what he says and what pleases him. Our relationship with him and others does not have to be shallow or superficial but deep.

One of the questions we asked was:

What does it mean to lay down our lives for our brothers?

I'd love to hear what some of the other cells came up with in answer to this or anyone else's response.

God bless

Carol