In fact, I'm personally requesting everyone to take time to post/comment this week in response to a specific question below or about something they're spiritually processing (or struggling to process as is often the case for me). I don't want to let us disengage!
There are some good questions this week:
Discussion:
- Why do you think it's so easy for good people to be ungodly--to live most of the week as if God doesn't exist, as if they are not responsible to Him and dependent on Him?
- If you feel comfortable, share a time when you went through daily activities without even thinking of God. What impact did it have on your life or on those around you?
- What practical things can we do each day to "train" ourselves "for godliness" (1 Tim. 4:7) so we please and glorify God during even ordinary activities?
- What are some blessings God has given you? Why is it important for us to thank Him for these blessings and make such thankfulness a natural part of our lives?
- Where does the faith come from to believe and thank God even in the midst of difficult circumstances? Describe a challenging time when you were--or were not--able to give thanks. What did God teach you through that experience?
Personal Reflection:
- Reread 1 Corinthians 10:31 and Matthew 5:16. To what extent are you mindful of doing "all" to the glory of God? How has ungodliness crept (or marched) into your social relationships, ordinary activities, your prayers, your daily planning?
- Do your words and actions demonstrate that you consciously and prayerfully seek to glorify God--or tend to forget about Him? What are your attitudes and actions communicating?
- How much has God done for you in Christ? In what ways can you be sure to take time each day to thank God for His temporal provisions and spiritual blessings?
- If God stood in front of you right now and told you to do everything to His glory, what changes would you immediately make in order to make Him the center focal point of your life?
Prayer:
Lord, I pray that you would kindle within each of us an even stronger desire to live a lifestyle of godliness and thankfulness. I ask that you would graciously continue to reveal yourself to us, so that we can see you clearly and do nothing but respond to your greatness! Send your Spirit to convict, to heal and to guide. Thank you for our relationships with one another and for the ways you are working in each of us.
In Jesus,
Amen.
5 comments:
Hi All!
I have to apologize for being mute last week. Thank you Tiff and Beth for keeping us going! I have to admit that I read the chapters but nothing really stood out to me all that much...this week though....hmmmm...where do I start?!? The chapter on ungodliness was really good...
So why is it so easy to be ungodly?? One thing for me is busyness. I'll never forget our pastor in the twin cities saying that BUSY stands for Being Under Satan's Yoke...wow! But even when I'm NOT busy I find myself being preoccupied with other things which are most of the time quite self-centered and not at all God-centered. I suppose then my answer to the question is that it's just plain easier to be ungodly than it is to be Godly. For me anyways, it is WAY easier to go through my day just thinking about the next thing coming rather than if what I am doing is being done for the glory of God.
I thought it was interesting that he used the sins of the tongue, such as gossip, sarcasm, and other unkind words as an example of being ungodly to a degree. Those sins of the tongue just keep resurfacing lately for me...we talked about it last week in our mom to mom group and also in our twenties and thirties group. So when I ask myself the question on page 58 "How ungodly am I?" I have to say pretty ungodly if my tongue is any indication...ughh!! Knowing that working on my ungodliness could help tame my tongue though IS encouraging!!
I loved the scripture references that he gave towards the end of the chapter on ungodliness. When I looked up 1 Cor 10:31 I noticed that I had previously underlined it...I wish I could stamp it on my hand as a reminder...OR maybe I should tatoo it to my hand...maybe that would work!! Ok, I'm probably not going to do that BUT I am going to post it on my mirror in my bathroom...at least then it will be a reminder throughout the day when I'm here at home...now to think of where to post it at work...
Here's the verse..."So whether you eat or drink or whatever you do, do it all for the glory of God."
Blessings Noggies!!
So I asked everyone to blog but then haven't even been able to get to it myself! It's almost time to put Mason to bed, but first I'll share a few quick thoughts...
I think what I'm discovering is that with a lot of these "little" sins I really struggle to see them as a big deal. That sounds awful to say, but I think it's in my "all or nothing" way of thinking. Subconsciously I think, "I can never get this right, so I'll just kind of keep trying and not worry about it too much."
I can definitely identify with Sheila's preoccupation with other things that are usually self-centered. I'm right on track with that! Even when I am thinking about God, sometimes I'm not godly. I even make my relationship with God about me some (or maybe a lot) of the time. "Am I feeling closer to God? Do other people think I'm close to God? I'll be mad at God if I don't get an answer." It's shameful to think that, and honestly it feels a little hopeless when I realize the level of my self-centeredness.
I can say the same for my level of thankfulness. I have a hard time knowing how to really thank God. I know it's simple. We love him when we keep his commands. We tell him we're thankful. We live life for Him and we love others. But I fail at doing all those things, and when I just tell him "thank you," it doesn't seem like enough, you know? How do I really show true gratitude to someone who literally gave his life for me? It goes back to "all or nothing," because I think there is nothing I can do because anything I can give won't be good enough. On top of that, there's the self-centeredness that simply keeps me from even trying to say thanks.
So, I'm really not trying to beat myself up here. I know I'm forgiven, and I know God continues to restore and transform things in my life. I just want to be better, and I get sick of myself sometimes! I really don't have an elegant way to close this, so I guess that's it for now!
Well, my PC is back up and running temporarily...my monitor went out. Guess I need to find a way to thank God for that (uh oh, is sarcasm a respectable sin too?)
I finally got my material read and although most of it made sense to me and I can agree with everything that Sheila and Beth said, I do have a fundamental problem with one piece of this thankful thing.
While I know that good will come from all things...it sure seems easy to put into print that we should thank God for everything..even the difficult things. Yes, I think we can all get there and that is part of growth, but it just seems he totally skipped the piece of processing a difficult situation in our human way (denial, anger, or whatever the emotion may be).
I think if I talked to the author, he would probably agree (not sure on that though) that it is o:k to process something before jumping right to the Romans verses that provide hope. (8:38-39 I believe) Those are the two verses that Kevin gave us at Camden's funeral....however, that was AFTER he talked a great deal about acknowledging the pain. I had another pastor ask if I ever got mad at God about our loss. Nope, never did and never felt that I needed to. He assured me that God could handle it and I agree.
I also recall a friend of a friend who lost a full term baby (sorry for this continued train of thought). She sent me an e-mail that was only a couple of days after her loss and she had jumped straight to what an awesome God we have and how her mourning was selfish and God so much as told her that. I read it wondering how on earth someone could really jump straight there. I didn't want to be a pessimist, but wow, really? A few weeks later, she was locked in her bedroom and had hit rock bottom (shocking, I know).
After typing all of this, I realize it's probably obvious. But it does raise the question for me, when should we show thanks? Certainly God will know if we really mean it, right? I've said a many a prayer that is "God, I know You have a plan here that is much bigger than my mind can imagine, I trust you." I suppose that is getting close to thanks....better keep working on it.
Hope you all have a renewing Sunday tomorrow!
I don't have a broken monitor as a reason for not getting here this week.... just life! We're developing kind of a spoily baby who really likes to be held, and the whole typing with one hand thing just takes too long. So I guess I need to work on the baby's habits so I can get back to the blog! :) Anyway...
I'm kind of feeling like, after only 2 chapters of the "nitty gritty," that perhaps I should spend the rest of my life as a mute. Not that silencing my words would erase the sinfulness of my heart, but at least it wouldn't spread to anyone else around me so easily! Goodness sakes. But to be more serious and less sarcastic (I checked the table of contents and didn't see "sarcasm" listed, but I'm guessing it will get addressed somewhere in there!)
I think it's just really raising an awareness in me of my own sinfulness. I mean, I've always known I was a "sinner," but I evidently really bought into the whole idea of just avoiding the "big" sins b/c I've spent so little time being aware of and trying to be free of these respectable sins. Like Beth said, knowing I could never be perfect and not really thinking they were that big a deal. Not really even thinking of them as sin a lot of the time. But you know what they say... knowing is half the battle, so a growing awareness is a good thing, in a stinky sort of way, when it concerns the degree of your own sinfulness.
I've been hearing a Big Daddy Weave song all the time lately (is it on our NOG CD? I can't remember!) and these lyrics always jump out at me:
Now how could I,
After knowing One so great
Respond to You in any way that's less than all I have to give....
It hits me every time... How can I be so self-focused that I would ever think God deserves less than absolutely everything just because my life doesn't look exactly like I think it should? Like Beth said, He gave his LIFE for me!!! I suppose the answer to the question in those lyrics is ungodliness; living my life without constant thought of my total dependence on Him. I can somehow let myself live as if He were irrelevant (p. 58).
Because even when I hear those lyrics and mean them from my soul, 5 minutes later I yell at my kids or criticize someone or think about how much more "stuff" I want, etc. These respectable sins are really an easy trap to stumble into.
The unthankfulness theme pointed me to consider the strength or weakness of my faith....Jerry makes it clear that being thankful at all times and in all things is a choice we have to make in faith based on God's promises. I'm pretty sure my first thought in difficult circumstances is NOT thankfulness. It can often be quite a process to get there, but it usually starts with just resolving to believe God's promises and praying a prayer like the one in the first full paragraph on p. 86, asking God to help me get to the place of genuinely believing He's about my good.
I think Nancy, that Jerry does allude to the fact that it sometimes will be a struggle to get to the point of thankfulness because he talks about trying to do it by sheer willpower, with our lips but not our hearts. So to me it sounds like his ideal answer to when to say thanks might be "all the time," but at the same time, only if you truly mean it. And then he'd say to constantly strive to grow in your faith in God so you can mean it more quickly more often because you truly believe His plan will make you more Christ-like.
(I'm afraid that is going to sound like a "you should work harder to get over grief faster because it shows you don't have faith" and that's not what I mean at all, so hopefully you will hear my true thoughts somewhere in there. I admit that it took me a couple of months to get to acceptance when I found out I was pregnant with Tori, and I'm not sure I got to true thankfulness until she was born and I held her in my arms! And I still have days when I don't feel all that thankful--not for Tori, but to be back in this stage of life. So while my circumstances were entirely different than yours, I do understand the questions you're asking.)
If I never rambled on too long before, I certainly have now. Hope there was some sense in there somewhere. It is 1:05 a.m. after all....
I'll wrap up with some more Big Daddy Weave lyrics as a prayer:
...But by Your grace,
I wanna love You not with what I say but everyday
In the way that my life is lived
Oh, poo, Nancy. I just reread Sheila's comment and yours and then read Jerry's words on p. 59 about sarcasm being a sin of the tongue. Yep, that one IS in there, too!!
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