what I learned today

I have a confession. I am guilty of judging people based on their contributions to the ministry. Both serving as a volunteer in some capacity as well as lack of giving. (I don't see giving records - but based on needs of the church MANY people do not tithe). I am guilty of assuming this means that people either do not have a personal relationship with the Lord, or that they are selfish or spiritually immature. There I said it...now I must ask for forgiveness.

Today I was reading in "Life Together" by Bonhoeffer and became very convicted and looked hard at my own life.

I am a dreamer - I know what I THINK a Christian community should look like. God deals in absolutes - He makes it pretty easy to understand - our junk makes it difficult. This is what I read today...

"Innumerable times a whole Christian community has broken down because it had sprung from a wish dream. The serious Christian, set down for the first time in a Christian community, is likely to bring with him a very definite idea of what Christian life together should be and to try to realize it. But God's grace speedily shatters such dreams...God is not a God of emotions but the God of truth. Only that fellowship which faces such disillusionment, with all its unhappy and ugly aspects, begins to be what it should be in God's sight, begins to grasp in faith the promise that is given to it.

He who loves his dream of a community more than the Christian community itself becomes a destroyer of the latter, even though his personal intentions may be ever so honest and earnest and sacrificial. God hates visionary dreaming; it makes the dreamer proud and pretentious. The man who fashions a visionary ideal of community demand that is be realized by God, by others, and by himself."

I stand convicted - letting go of my own agendas - and thanking God for each little thing. I will be satisfied with the "small measure of spiritual knowledge, experience and love that has been given to me - so I constantly look forward eager for the highest good!"

I love Crossroads and all who attend. May our community truly reflect our thankfulness to God for all things and become a genuine Christian - non-judgmental community that attracts the lost to Jesus!