Open—S. Rule, C. Buchanan
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We think 242 in 242.
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All right, everything.
So.
Uh, yeah. I want to have a good day at the end of the month. Breathless. I'm down there. Let's describe it. Let's discriminate in, uh, 5 * 2 years. It's about 5 minutes and, and, and they can do with one network. Uh-huh.
Again, uh.
And so I'm burning things on completely.
My siblings gone and I prescribed everything evening together and two hours and two hours later, I love you.
Diversified.
Chapter 2, First Thessalonians 2 and it's.
And the verse 13 I was thinking of, but we'll read the whole verse. First Thessalonians 2.
13.
For this cause also thank we God without ceasing.
Because when you receive the word of God, which you've heard of us.
He received it not as the word of that, but As for his intrusion. The Word of God, which actually worketh also knew that.
Our Father, we thank you for thy word and thank you.
How we made having it open now.
We think of how Christians there at that time were commended for receiving it as the word of God, and we just trust that we would have that same, umm, appetite interest. That word is open, that we may hear Thy voice speaking to us from Thy word. Will they receive it? As it is indeed the word of God, it might have that effect of being.
Beneficial to each and everyone here. We thank You, Father for Thy word, and so we pray for Thy health, we commit it to Thee, and we ask that Thou provide us what is suited. We just give you thanks.
00:05:18
I trusted the floor that's put on my heart something very simple and I trust very practical. It's been a real help to me personally and I trust it will be to you as well.
It's gonna start with sadness, but end with the singing we were just singing about. So bear with me, It won't be what you think it is when we turn to the first portion. Umm. Or maybe it will Second Samuel, Chapter 12.
Just gonna read the first few verses. Second Samuel chapter 12 beginning with verse one.
The Lord sent Nathan unto David, and he came unto him, and said unto him. There were two men in one city, the one rich and the other poor. The rich man had exceeding many flocks and herds, but the poor man had nothing save 1 little ewe lamb, which he had brought, bought, and nourished up, and it grew up together with him and with his children.
It's at ease of his own meat and drank of his own cup.
And lay in his bosom, and was unto him as a daughter. There came a traveler unto the rich man, and he spared to take of his own flock, and of his own herd to dress for them for the wayfaring man that was come unto him. But took the poor man's lamb, and dressed it for the man that was come to him.
A number of years ago we moved into our current home. 12 years ago we moved in and we've been home for a couple of years and looking out the window of the living room area, kind of where we spend the biggest chunk of our time on to the backyard there was an ugly.
Bush. Just this ugly Evergreen thing. I couldn't give you the the gardener, I can't give you the species or whatever. It's just an ugly Evergreen Bush broken down. Been there since long before we moved in.
And we wanted to have a fruitful backyard. So one day it became my job to go in the backyard and get rid of that thing. And I'm not a gardener. So I bought one of these little hand saws, went into the backyard and thought, how am I going to get this thing out of the ground? I've got a regular shovel, a little hand saw. So I took all the branches and vigorously, it was kind of fun. Vigorously cut through the different branches, got down to the little.
Increasingly, probably three to four inch trunk on that thing. And now I could access the base of it and I dugout maybe 6-8 inches from the base of that Bush and didn't get far, far down in and ran into a route. And I thought if I jump on that spade, I'll cut through it. So I jumped on the spade and didn't cut through it. So I went around to the other side and maybe if I could rock this thing back and forth, I'd be all right. And I won't bore you with the details.
Couple hours later, uh, in a much larger hole around that thing and a whole bunch of roots down in the ground that I saw through down inside the ground. I got enough of it with the leverage from the shovel that the Bush was out and we had a eyesore in the backyard and we have a fruit tree there now.
A little while later on though, just down from that fruit tree, we wanted to put in some tomato plants, make the backyard a little more fruitful. They were digging quite a ways down from where that shrub had been and got just a couple inches below the surface. Shovel wouldn't go through and after digging around for a while, there was nice big healthy root. There's only one thing that could have come from, but I was a good long ways away and once again, go back.
The garage, pull out the little saw, saw through it to be able to put in a garden. And that's what I'd like to share with you this afternoon. Very simply in the life of David Trace, a route back that goes not just back to the prior chapter, but a whole long way back in his life to something that was a lot deeper than what was in the prior chapter until we come to the point where maybe there's more past that. That's as far as I've traced out the route. I'm going to take you back to that route, show you how the Lord pulled it out.
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And then what can be put in the place of it in our own life? So if you look at this story here, there's nothing about adultery or murder in this story. I'm going to assume that all here, perhaps some of the younger ones don't know all the details, but I'm going to assume all here know this history of the prior chapter when David was guilty of lust that led to adultery, which led to murder.
And those are things that are out in the open, and they're the big.
Obvious part of David's life. And you look at those things and they're awful. But you know, this story doesn't talk about that.
That's not what the Lord brought to David and to his conscience. He wanted to go back further into the ground, to a root that was deeper, that over many years had gotten to this point. And So what he talks to him about is abusing his authority.
David was the shepherd. He began as a shepherd. He lived like a shepherd when he was running in the wilderness caring for his men. His men brought him water from the well at Bethlehem and he pours it out. He had such a care for his men, he realized what it cost. He had a love for them and you see it throughout the time that he was on the run. And he had a shepherd's heart as a king too. I don't want to over.
He acted many times as a king, like a shepherd, a lovely spirit.
But.
Somehow, somewhere along the way, things have been building up underneath and they broke out. And the analogy I began with the ugly Bush of Chapter 11.
You trace it back a little bit.
Perhaps the first thing you notice in Chapter 11 and going back in David's life was him walking on the roof and looking and the lust and the covetousness for another man's wife. And perhaps the first time we read the story, that's what the Lord brings and convicts our heart with. If that's something that we struggle with. Maybe a little bit later on we come back to the first verse of the chapter and it says and it came to pass after the year was expired at the time when the kings go forth, the battle that David.
Sent Jovan his servants, and we say, oh.
Back behind the lust and the covetousness was laziness. And so if I'm out in the yard, which my gardening analogy in our front yard are all the dandelions and they're beautiful flowers, but not in the front yard. And so the way to get rid of them isn't to mow over them, chop off the head, but to get out the dandelion digger and dig way down or however you treat your lawn that you treat it so you get out that deep root. And so if we trace.
Back the laziness of David. Oh, that's where this problem came from.
But when Nathan came to David, he didn't convict him of laziness. That's tracing back. That's part of the route that's leading back in a different direction. Let's turn back, though, a little bit further to Second Samuel chapter 5, just to read a verse.
We'll follow the route back from there.
Second Samuel, chapter 5.
And, umm.
Umm, verse 13.
Now this is when David has come to reign in Jerusalem.
He comes to Jerusalem and he's established himself finally in Jerusalem, and when he establishes himself as king there, look at verse 13. And David took him more concubines and wives out of Jerusalem after he was come from Hebron, and there were yet sons and daughters born to David. If you go along in this portion, you'll find a wonderful thing. This route was running underneath the ground, but on there were many other things.
Going on in David's life and in fact at this period of time when he takes the city of Jerusalem and becomes his capital city, the Philistines come up to threaten it and when they come up, if you look at it on a map, when they come up the valley of Raphael, I believe it is yes. It's in verse 18 of this very chapter just further down in this chapter, they come up that valley. It's the valley of the giants. And when you read about it, it's one thing here when you look at it on the map you find.
They're about four miles from the gates of his new capital.
When they got to this point and David inquires of the Lord, and then they come again, and David instead of going and acting on the pattern of the past, he goes and he inquires with the Lord again, and he gets a different fresh set of instructions.
Think about it for a moment. A trained, professional army of powerful philistine enemies 4 miles from the gates of his city. How long is it gonna take him take them to walk casually? They'd be there in an hour.
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And David stops and prays. It's not that David wasn't in a relationship with the Lord. It's not that David wasn't acting in a way that's a wonderful example of faith to us, but there was an element in his life at this time.
That wasn't being judged. There was the opportunity to judge it. Let's go back to chapter.
In the prior chapter.
It says, umm, verse 12 Now this is when the man killed Ishbashev, and they took his head. He was the head of the House of Saul that David was at war with. It took his head and came all night across the plane, brought it to David, and David judged them for their wickedness. And verse 12 it says, And David commanded his young men, and they slew them, and cut off their hands and their feet.
And hang them up over the pool in Hebron.
Perhaps you've made an application to cutting off the hands and the feet. But what struck me in reading through this was where did David learn that he acts in chapter four in a wonderful way? He acts with a righteousness that's right and proper. He acts with energy to not allow the wicked deed of these men that had killed Ashwasham. There was a very strong, positive spiritual element in his life at that time.
But.
Why did he cut off the hands and the feet?
Do we find that? Perhaps you can correct me afterwards. Maybe there is a place in the law that mentions that, but I haven't seen it. It doesn't seem to be the way that the Lord instructed them to. It's not the way Samuel acted, but there just seems.
Wait, when they entered the land of Canaan, what did they do with those that king? Was it Adam Ibiza? And he the one that had the 70 kings under his table and they maybe I got the number wrong. The thumbs were the great thumbs were gone, The great toes were gone, right? Imagine warfare in the day when you have to hold a sword without your thumb.
Imagine the day of warfare when you run to the battle.
Without your big toe, that's a way of rendering your enemy powerless. And here he is, David, new to the Kingdom, chopping off hands and feet. Where does that practice come from? Turn back another chapter to Chapter 3.
And.
In chapter 3 and verse.
Three.
I'll read.
Umm, yeah, just just first three David just become King and Hebron and it says in his second son Chili of Abigail, the wife of Naval, the Carmelite, and the third, Absalom, the son of America, the daughter of Talmai, king of Geisha.
Other than David tracing back the root of it sin to its real source when he re in Psalm 51, a wonderful meditation in its own right. As far as the actual actions of Chapter 11, this is as far back as I've noticed where it goes to this verse. But what's happening here? David's just become king. He's acted in faith when he's been on the run for many, many years. He's become king. And what's he doing?
If you look at a map.
Judah, with Hebron in It is in the South of Israel, the Kingdom of.
Saul's descendants that was still there that he was at war with comes north of there. And then if you move off to the to the side, the upper right, as you look at that map, the you're in northern northwestern Jordan and southwestern Syria today you find this land of Gisher. So what would you do with the king?
Here at war with another Kingdom, doesn't it make sense to make an alliance with a Kingdom that's up behind them? Didn't that happen later on? Didn't the king of Judah take money and send it to the king of Syria so that the king of Israel would turn away from him?
Let's go back to this verse. Absalom, son of America, the daughter of Talmai, king of Geisha. David's making an alliance.
With an enemy on the border of Israel, the 10 tribes at that time that he was fighting with, he's making an alliance. But where do you get that idea?
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That doesn't match with the word of God and I would just suggest to you that it's not the main point that I want to make. I would just suggest to you that perhaps David, when he came to power as king, when he'd been on the run, it was so obvious that he had to turn to the Lord in everything that David, yes, he failed at times. He got scared and he ran away to the Philistine. He repents, he returns. One of the wonderful things in his life is his repentance, even with the sin that we're tracing back here.
But when he came into the Kingdom.
It's as though he looked for Where's the manual on how to run a Kingdom?
And he picked up a page of a chapter from the Canaanite, and he picked up a page of the chapter from other Eastern kings. And he looked at the way they built their power and they built their their harem and.
He's mixing that in with wonderful examples of faith without knowing it was going on. Let's turn back one more time.
To Deuteronomy.
Chapter 17.
Perhaps you can share with me afterwards if that route traces back further.
For Deuteronomy 17 says.
Verse 17. Notice the close.
Uh, company. These two verses keep Deuteronomy 17, verse 17. Neither shall he multiply wives to himself.
That his heart turned out away, neither shall he greatly multiply to himself.
Silver and gold. Now the next verse. And it shall be when he sitteth upon the throne of his Kingdom, that he shall write him a copy of this law in a book, out of that which is before the Priests, the Levites. The two verses go one right after the other, and I think that David had begun his reign here.
And he began when he sitteth upon the throne of his Kingdom.
They wrote out the book of the law. The verse right before this instruction was about not multiplying lives. It doesn't say not greatly multiply. Solomon did that. But it seems that as David began his reign, he's looking for how can I be king? And he's looking at the world's book on how to be king to carry out this new role in his life. And he's mixing that with true, proper, wonderful faith in the Lord.
But notice four things in the next verse. And it shall be with him.
And he should read therein all the days of his life, that he may learn to fear the Lord his God, to keep all the words of His of this law, and these statutes to do them.
Once we got that shrub out of our backyard, that's not the end of it. It's an ugly scar. But once it was out, there was a place to plant where there's a nice honey crisp apple tree now and it's got a reasonable amount of fruit on it and looks nice. I hope it'll taste good this year. We'll see.
But there's a nice fruit tree growing in its place, and I would suggest to you that if there is something in your life, it would be good to turn to the Word of God to find it, and perhaps what's on the surface.
Isn't the real problem. I'll give you one example besides David, but I'm not necessarily concerned that there's anyone here who has taken the throne of a Kingdom and is going to abuse power. There may be a father or someone in the assembly or even a mother in the home, or a brother with younger siblings that may have abused authority and may need some of that instruction. But perhaps that's not the issue for you.
If there's one common struggle in my own life.
It's in the area of patience. Patience is not an area of fruit that grows naturally in the garden of my heart. But the problem is not to try harder on patients. I'll point out where the the at least one route that I'm aware of that's below the problem of impatient lies in a moment. But look for yourself in this verse of what the instructions were.
Says he was to learn to first of all he was to read therein. So the word of God was something that he was to read the in all the days of his life.
That was the book, it was to read, but not just to physically read, but you can read close the book and having a clue what we read. And so it was to read that he may learn to fear the Lord is God. That's the first thing, having that reverence in awe of God and of his instructions and what he's directing us in in our life. That's the bottom line. And we'll come to one other verse.
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Umm, and I'll and I'm done. But.
It's covered even more beautifully, I think, in that other verse, so I'm not going to do it here with the fear of the Lord.
The next is to keep all the words of this law. I'd like to just suggest.
That that key thing is similar to what Mary did. Remember how she took those things? She kept them and pondered them in her heart. And I would suggest to you that there's the reading of the Word of God, that we would begin with the fear of God, that we would keep it in our heart. That is, it's something to meditate on. It's something to have. There is that fertile ground that's going to lead to fruit.
And so once the weeds been removed.
There's something that's going to keep new weeds from growing. That's reading the Word and having the fear of God before us. Then there's the keeping of it in our heart. That's the meditation on it each day. And then the last part of the verse to do them.
That carrying out of what God has instructed. Now just one more portion briefly and Ephesians chapter 5.
The weeds been removed, there's a fertile ground to plant it in and the Word of God and there's a chance for growth. We need to check on that growth.
In Ephesians 5. I'm going to read the verses in a moment, but I wanna give you one more.
Fruit analogy. Food analogy.
My wife, when she goes to buy watermelons, has a pretty good system. Works real well. Not foolproof, but it works pretty well because sometimes you go to the store and they get these giant bins sitting there on the on the pallet full of watermelons and Renee will go along and thump them sometimes. Pick it up, move it to where it's a good position for being pumped and tap on the watermelon. Listen to the sound.
Go grab another one, tap on it sometimes.
You find Warner quickly, sometimes it's the 8th or 9th watermelon and finally the sound is right and that's the good one. And we take it home and I guess it was a pretty Goodyear. It's almost always a really good watermelon. It's got a certain sound to it. Now look at these verses. Ephesians 5. I'm going to suggest to you, this is your, uh, heart freshness indicator. This is the watermelon thumping.
A verse that you can apply in your own life. Ephesians chapter 5 and verse.
Umm, we'll read from verse 18.
Through 20, through 2118 to 21 and be not drunk with wine. We're in a success That's going to dull the senses, dull the spiritual senses. If there's an overabundance of focus on natural joy, natural joy has its place, but the abundance of it is going to dull the sense. But be filled with the spirit speaking to yourselves. It's not talking about in the assembly, although it has its application, of course, but it says speaking to yourself.
In psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing and making melody in your heart to the Lord.
Giving thanks always for all things unto God and the Father in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ. I'm going to suggest to you that the freshness indicator for your heart before the Lord is verse 20.
And for me for sure giving thanks always.
For all things unto God and the Father.
Not talking about just giving thanks after the diagnosis of cancer or the what we would think of as the big things in life. That's important too, of course, but the freshness indicator occurs when the.
Turn signal on your way to work for green lasts for three seconds and the year of the second car in line and you don't get through and you have a problem with patients, you have a wonderful freshness. This is all hypothetical, right?
There's a great freshness indicator for whether the heart is thankful and in the fear of God.
For all things, at all times.
The Lord wanted that light to go red. I better get an extra 2 minutes for prayer on my way to work this morning.
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Oh.
Maybe it's an indicator that there's a chance to turn back to that prior verse and fill the time up with.
Singing and making melody in my heart to the Lord. Maybe your issue isn't patience. Maybe your issue has a different, uh, character in your life. The freshness indicator on it is when you stub your toe. When you, whatever it happens to be in your own life. If it's giving thanks.
All things at all times. Then our relationship with the Lord is fresh. If not, there's an opportunity to back up a verse and start over. One more thing in verse 21.
Submitting yourselves 1 to another in the fear of it says God here in the King James. This is Christ and Mr. Darby's translation. I would just suggest another secondary maybe freshness indicator is when we're in the body of Christ and we're interacting with one another.
There's a whole bunch of roles that come later in this chapter. There's roles of authority and there's roles of submission. There's roles of certain kinds of responsibility and we're to respond to. It's fascinating to look at whether it's the Lord or the Christ or whoever in each of those relationships. But before we get to any of that, it's recognizing that where we are in the body of Christ, that spirit of submission to God in verse 20 carries over into verse 21 to that spirit of meekness and yieldedness.
And are dealing with everyone else as seeing them as a conduit, a blessing to me from the ascended Christ. There's another freshness indicator. If I'm indica interacting with my brother and my heart is filled with irritation. It's filled with filled with, umm, criticism. It's filled with everything that suggests that I view that my brother as the problem. Then if that's what fills my heart, there's not the Spirit.
Verse 20 The fear of the Lord and yielding to him in all things, and there can't be the opportunity for blessing to come through him with a yielded spirit.
I like our brothers.
Analogy of a freshness indicator.
And I have a freshness indicator that I believe the Lord has shared with me something that I need to work on, and I believe He's put on my heart to share it as well with you. Let's start by going back to the Gospel of John, chapter 10.
We were in this chapter yesterday.
Just going to read.
Just parts of a few verses here.
John 10 verse 11. First of all, I am the Good Shepherd. The Good Shepherd giveth his life for the sheep.
Verse 15 As the Father knoweth me, Even so know I as a father, and I lay down my life for the sheep.
Verse 17 Therefore death, my father loved me because I lay down my life that I may take it again. Now we had some discussion yesterday about these verses about the Lord Jesus as the Good Shepherd who gives his life, and the phrase that comes in and the other two verses and some translations in all three verses is laid down my life.
For the sheep, we had a lot of.
Encouragement about the Lord Jesus being the Good Shepherd who gave his life.
Not only in the reading meetings, but also in the gospel meetings.
He is the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world in the way he became. In that way, the Lamb of God that takes away the sin of the world is by giving up his life, by laying down his life on the cross. And now through faith in Him, we can have our sins washed away. We can have eternal life.
That makes him the Good Shepherd.
But it doesn't only say I will lay down my life in reference to the cross, it just says I lay down my life for the sheep.
00:35:03
Turn with me to 1St John Chapter 3.
First John chapter 3 verse 16 hereby perceive we the love of God because he laid down his life for us, and if we stop there we have that same.
Picture of the Lord Jesus giving his life for us.
But the verse doesn't stop there.
Start over again. Hereby perceive we the love of God, because He laid down his life for us, and we ought to lay down our lives for the brethren.
The Lord Jesus laid down his life not only at the cross, certainly at the cross, but not only at the cross. Day after day he laid down his life for the sheep. He could say, I came not to do my own will.
But the will of him that sent me?
I can think of a time when he and his 12 best friends, the disciples, were in the wilderness. They had come apart purposely for the purpose of, uh, of getting away from the, the crowds, relaxing.
Maybe recuperating a little bit, the crowd found out where he was and they followed him. Now perhaps his purpose for going out there or the disciples purpose for getting away was to kind of raft and and get a little away time. But the crowds followed him and his heart went out to the multitudes. And once again he laid down his life. He set aside his own perhaps preferences, if I can put it that way.
The disciples certainly did, and He provided for the multitude, not only in his words, but I think in that example by providing them food, bread and fish.
And we can look at a number of other examples as well. Now the Lord did have times where He got away.
To with his, as I say, friends, his disciples, I believe the House of Lazarus and Mary and Martha was one of those places where he was able to get away and rest and recuperate. But day after day he laid down his life for the sheep. And here in first John it says, we perceive the love of God because he laid down his life for us, and then it presents.
The Lord Jesus laying down his life as an example.
To us.
Now we.
Cannot.
Lay down our lives in any way that would take away sins we cannot in any way.
Atone for or redeem. So that's not what it's talking about here. This is talking about in a practical way, setting aside perhaps our preferences laying down.
Our life for God's people. So now the place in John where the Lord Jesus says.
He that loveth his life shall lose it.
Jesus laying down his life day after day is an example for us of how we can lay down our lives for our brother. Now I would we're talking about freshness indicators and just in a real practical way the way the Lord has used this to.
Speak to me is some of those freshness indicators. Am I doing this?
OK, we like people who like the same things as us.
We like to hang out with people who like the same things that we like.
Nothing wrong with that, but is that the only people that we hang out with?
Or do we branch outside of our groups?
Are we willing to set aside our preferences in that way, lay down our lives and reach out to those who maybe we.
Don't have as much in common with.
00:40:02
I think that's one freshness indicator, if I could use borrow that phrase, of whether or not we are willing to lay down our lives for our brethren.
Are we willing to step outside of our comfort zone? Not just step outside of our comfort zone, but step outside in a direction towards our brothers. It just happens that earlier last this past week, I had through my work, I had two days of training that they sent me to. It was kind of a enjoyable class. It was what they called leadership training and they talked about different personalities and we all had to take this test to determine what our.
Personality preferences are and you know, they have this chart on the wall and it was kind of divided up into four different quadrants and every. I mean, there's a number of personality indicators out there. This one happens to be one that divides it into thinkers, controllers, team builders and expressive these four blocks. And perhaps some of you have.
Are aware of this? I think it's a Berkman method or something, I'm not sure exactly what it is.
But this is, and then of course, nobody is exclusively in one box right now, but it's a way of determining our own preferences. And we tend, one of the things we learned, which is we probably already knew, is we tend to like people who like the same thing. We tend to gather with people who think the same way we do.
But the the whole one of the main reasons for this this class was to help us to understand that the people in our work groups don't all fit into the same quadrants where we are. And we need to be willing to be phrase they use with adaptable. We need to step outside of our own comfort zone, take a step towards those people in our work group communicate in a way that they prefer to communicate.
For example, some of us are less expressive.
And some people come into the room and they are just more expressive and you can see them and you can tell right away that this person is an expressive.
Maybe you're thinking of someone, I don't know, but uh, there are people like that. I'm not, but I have people in my work group that are and when I communicate with them, I need to be willing to adapt and I don't need to back away because that person is just communicating in the way they like to communicate and I am communicating in the way I like to communicate.
And so we did several lessons and several in this class about stepping outside of our comfort zone. And I couldn't help but think about it myself. And then as I was discussing the same class with someone else, they said, you know what, that sounds like good Christian practice.
To be willing, if we're going to help one another, to step outside of our comfort zone, step towards the people, communicate perhaps in a way that we find a little unnatural or a little restrictive or, uh.
Different, But are we willing to do that? I think that is one very small way that we can lay down our lives for our brethren now.
I'm not talking about a forced 3 minute conversation with somebody on your way out of the meeting room.
Call.
That's a start.
You know, some of you come from large meetings. I've talked to some of you who come from. You have.
A a large meeting. Most of you probably come from a medium to a small.
Size, meaning some of you come from a very small and a few from what I'll call tiny. Less than 10 people.
Those of us that have the tiny meetings, we don't have as many opportunities to do this with our immediate brothers that we share fellowship with at the board's table just because of distance. There are other ways we can do this.
But I did not appreciate this.
This part.
Of being a Christian when I had a large assembly.
When you have a lot of people around, it's easy to participate in just your own subgroup of the meeting room.
00:45:07
You have a smaller meeting. It's much harder, and the Lord uses that sometimes to push us outside of our comfort zone so we can do that.
Other practical ways is not just in our communication, but in our, in our words or our, uh, practices, the things that we do. You know, some of you may have a person in the meeting room who is the organizer. That's one of the quadrants, they call it controller.
And a person gets sick or a person has a baby and the chart goes up on the bulletin board. Sign up for meals. And oh, by the way, you can't just take whatever you want because we don't want people to take two things or the same thing two days in a row. So I'm going to.
Umm, coordinate control, even down to the menu and you roll your eyes and you think, uh.
I didn't want to do it on Tuesday. Thursday would be OK, but I didn't want to do it on Tuesday. But my name is on the board on Tuesday.
Take advantage of the opportunity that you have to lay down your life in that small way for your brother and your sister.
Some of us don't have a bulletin board with a list of names of meals we can.
Provide.
Or helping out, whatever way, whether it's a Sunday school or.
Vacation, Bible school or hobby class, whatever it is, these are all ways that we can lay down our life. And these I think, are in a sense a freshness indicator, at least as it relates to this particular aspect of our Christian life.
In just a.
To point out a few things I do see looking around the room.
Young people over here, mostly.
Young families over here, mostly.
I understand there's nothing wrong with that.
But do the young people only talk with the young people? Do the young families only talk with the young families? Or do we are we willing to?
Mix it up a little bit. Strike UA conversation with someone else. You know one thing I did learn in this leadership training, and I thought this was very interesting. If you take one step towards them, the re, the natural response of most normal people is to respond and take a step towards you. So if you communicate in a more open way with someone who is an open communicator, they will take a step towards you.
And communicate and respond and reciprocate and communicate in a way that subconsciously they already recognize that you like to communicate.
I find myself doing this without even realizing. You talk to somebody who's quiet and sitting at their desk like this and you, you find yourself sitting down and not looking them in the eye and you just look at the paper in front of you and you go through things that you wanted to talk about. Whereas somebody comes in and they said, how was your weekend? What did you do? You know, I did this and, and you find yourself communicating in a way that they like to communicate. And so you've, I, I just say this.
Because it's not just to the young people, but the older ones. Sometimes we feel a.
Reluctance, I don't know, to step towards the the the young people and they're not gonna be interested in the things that I have to say, are they?
But when you do take a step towards them, they in return respond and take a step towards you.
Do the married couples only communicate with other married couples?
Or are they willing to talk about, talk to, and reach out to others?
People with children, do you only talk about or hang out, sit at the table with people with children? These are just little freshness indicators. And I'm not saying there's anything wrong with that, but if that's only the people that we talk to and after meeting, we only talk to.
Our own little group.
Maybe we need to branch out a little bit.
The Lord Jesus and this is just these are just things that.
I am sharing because the board has revealed them to me. In my own life. I have a tendency and I don't think I'm alone in this. And it requires effort. It requires, again, stepping out of our comfort zone. There are people, and I believe there's people in this room who are naturally open and they see the people in the room that are by themselves. I'm not that way. It's I have to remind myself to look around and see who else is in the room and maybe.
00:50:26
Make an effort. There are people who are naturally more open and aware of what's going of the people around them, and you may find it easier to reach outside. That's that's a gift, that's an ability that the Lord gave you. You can use that for him as well.
I hope that my.
Practical advice guidance is uh.
Not, uh, it it is.
I do not intend to point out anything to anyone. I don't know of uh, what you, who you hang out with after meeting. This is not a direct. This is not directed towards anyone, except maybe towards myself.
That's just one of the ways. There are so many other ways that we can lay down our lives for our brethren too.
And we have a wonderful example in the Lord Jesus. And as we go through the Gospels, we see way after way, day after day, how he in practical ways demonstrated laying down his life. And then of course, it did culminate in his going to the cross and giving his life for us. And that's the ultimate example. But most of us are not called that. Unbelievers are called to give up their lives for their for their brethren.
Uh, but most of us, for most of us, it's, it's a living sacrifice that we're called to. And, uh.
Just share some of those little freshness indicators and trust that the Lord, uh, uses that to maybe bring some things to attention in your own life.
Depending on the number 17.
May the great.
By all of the White Son.
Where all the Lords? Where the Lord stays around, Right, right, right on the floor, right above.