Are You Living Your Part?

If you are a young person reading this, have you asked yourself, “Am I living my part within the body of Christ?”  “Am I playing my part and living my role doing what God has made me to do?” 

Did you know that regardless of your age, maturation, skills, giftedness, and whether or not you have gone through puberty, that you are a part of the body of Christ? 

Ever since reading Do Hard Things and conducting some additional research upon the importance of responsibility in the life of a young person (see “What’s the big deal about young people being responsible?”), I was reconsidering how God does not divide the body of Christ into age categories.   

For example, we read in 1 Corinthians 12.12, 14, and 27 in the New Testament, 

For even as the body is one and yet has many members, and all the members of the body, though they are many, are one body, so also is Christ…For the body is not one member, but many…Now you are Christ’s body, and individually members of it.

After reading this little blurb on the body of Christ, we must ask ourselves, “Has God set an age limit for a Christian to become an official part of the body of Christ?”

After reading this passage the resounding answer to the question is NO! 

With that being said, why don’t you take 1 1/2 minutes to watch the following video clip:

Since there are no age restrictions made by God in regards to one’s participation in the body of Christ, everyone needs to consider that:

1. Everyone is a part of the body regardless of their age, sex, nationality, and feelings.
2. Since everyone is a part of the body they have a purpose in it to serve God, for the fame of Jesus.
3. If you are not living your part, then everyone one of us suffers, including myself, adults, and silverheads. 
4. You, yes you, are the eyes, hands, feet, shoulders, and mouthpiece for Christ!

In reiterating the final message of the video, “ARE YOU LIVING YOUR PART?“

If not, “Why not?” “Have you considered that your lack of participation is causing others to suffer?” “Did you know that if you are not living your part then you are missing out on what God has in store for you?”   

Since you are important and vital to the the body of Christ, then why not consider being more of an active part of it? 

If you worship with us at Perrow, then why don’t you click here and see how you can get plugged in! 

If you have any questions feel free to get a hold of me.

A lesson from a yard sale in the fight for costly grace

Several weeks ago my wife and I participated in our neighborhood yard sale.  We had high aspirations for the day, anticipating to make a few extra dollars and unload some trash to be recycled as someone elses treasure. 

Before the day officially began, my wife Jessica had an amazing idea to lure in the yard sale shoppers.  She suggested that we offer miscellaneous “free” items and place them in a basket towards the end of all of our items.  What she had in mind was attracting anyone who came by as if these free items were bloody steaks and the customers were carnivorous animals (well, the latter may be true in certain parts of the state). 

Anyways, to make a long story short, no one picked-up one free item!  At this my wife was dumbfounded, “How could one item not be picked-up?”  “How did the ‘bait’ fail to lure in and snag our prey?” 

I said something along the following lines to my wife, “Items without cost are items without value.”  

So I went back inside and made a sign that read, “ALL items 25 cents.”  And go figure, nearly all of the items that were in the basket were snatched up and paid for within an hour, whereas no items were picked-up for free in the previous 3 hours! 

In the same way that yard sale items are not valued without cost, so too…

Principles on How to Teach our Children from Deuteronomy 6.4-9

This past Sunday I had the opportunity to teach on Multigenerational Faithfulness.  During this time we looked at the role of the family, and in particular the fathers, in teaching and passing on the faith to their children.  We discovered through Deuteronomy 6 and just a few other passages, that the family is to bear the primary role and responsibility of passing on the faith to their children.  Therefore, the church, the government (i.e. public schools), and/or private schools, are to serve as secondary means and not primary.  This means that these different organizations are to serve as support mechanisms for the family.  For example, if the church provides a Sunday School for children and youth, the parents are to ensure that their children and youth are doing the required work, not the church staff.  Moreover, if students are dropping out of school at break neck speeds, which they are dropping below 59% in 17 of the largest 50 cities (http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,344190,00.html), it is their parents and/or legal guardians responsibility to ensure that their child is doing their assigned work, attending classes, and fulfilling other obligations and not the governments.  That’s another story for another day.

Moving on, this past Sunday I told the congregation that I would provide the remainder of my notes for the message via my blog.  The following two items will address what it means to “teach” and what we are supposed to teach our children.

living as one questions

During our small group time this past Wednesday there were some fairly interesting questions that were asked that I didn’t get to hear a response from.  First, since the questions were interesting and of course thought provoking, I think that it is important for me to say that I can’t take full credit for them.  I used the most of them from multiple books I have laying around my office.  Sorry to disappoint some of you by shattering your creative image of me. 

Moving on. 

I would love to hear back from you what you said, or would have said, in answering these questions.

living as one questions

During our small group time this past Wednesday there were some fairly interesting questions that were asked that I didn’t get to hear a response from.  First, since the questions were interesting and of course thought provoking, I think that it is important for me to say that I can’t take full credit for them.  I used the most of them from multiple books I have laying around my office.  Sorry to disappoint some of you by shattering your creative image of me. 

Moving on. 

I would love to hear back from you what you said, or would have said, in answering these questions.

living the ODD life: living as one

Last night we picked-up where we left off two weeks ago in our series called living the ODD life.  The first night was just an overview of what we were going to teach from 1 Corinthians 12.12-26.  Yesterday evening we looked closer into 1 Corinthians 12.15-20 and what it means to live as one. 

It’s amazing how Paul, who wrote the letter that we are studying from the New Testament, compared the body of Christ (i.e. a group of Christians) to a human body.  What we saw last night in a simplistic biological study, was that even though our own physical bodies are made up of many different parts, such as toes, hands, ears, lungs, red blood cells, etc., it is still one body all living and working together. 

The same holds true for the body of Christ.  Even though we are all different from each other in some shape, way, fashion, or form, we are still one body, we are too still live and work together as one (read 1 Corinthians 12.14 and 20). 

Not only are we to live our lives together in such a way, but we are not to exclude ourselves from it because of any insecurities that we may have when we compare ourselves to someone else.  We read in 1 Corinthians 12.15-16 that “If the foot says, ‘Because I am not a hand, I am not a part of the body,’ it is not for this reason any the less a part of the body.” 

This means that even though we may not be somebody else, and have a particular gift or ability, such as singing or playing an instrument that we are not any less a part of the body, a part of the group, a part of what is going on (to get plugged in check-out http://www.perrow.org/youth/plugin.html).    

Here’s a couple of quick questions

The ODD life

Last night we started a new series on Wednesday evenings that will run for 4 consecutive weeks.  The title of the series is “We’re ODD.” 

Before you are offended in anyway, I want you to know that I am not talking about being unusual (in a bad way),  irregular, weird, or an odd number, such as 3, 5, 7, or 9.  What I am talking talking about is that we are One, Different, and Dependent upon each other. 

Let me briefly explain

being thankful when things are bad continued

This past Sunday I had the opportunity to teach on “being thankful when things are bad” (actually, the title was “exulting in our tribulations).  As I said before, the lesson came from Romans 5.1-5 and emphasized verse 3.

Well, since I am fairly new to this “preaching” thing, I do well on content, but tend to struggle on delivery.  No excuse, just the reality.  What I am most excited about is that there will be plenty of more opportunties to learn and grow and really teach people and not lessons (I sometimes tend to do the first as if I was a professor). 

Isn’t it difficult to be thankful when things are bad?  I wonder if I am the only one that finds it hard to express joy and gratitude when things are not necessarily going the way that I intended them to?  For example, just the other night

encountering Jesus (part 3)

Today many people say that they have “encountered” Jesus in their life.  Unfortunately many people haphazardly say that they are Christians.  Typically people look back on a time when they prayed with a man on television, to raising a hand or walking forward to the front of the worship center during a church worship service, or some sort of goose bumps that went up their spine while they were praying.  People say that such experiences prove that they have encountered Jesus.  

encountering Jesus (part 2)

Who is Jesus Christ

In general, I believe there are three basic things that we must know and believe about Jesus:

1. Believe in who He was, is, and claimed to be.

2. Believe in what He did.

3. Believe in what He taught.

So, who was and is Jesus and who did He claim to be?