Bearfruit

“Share What You Wear” is a program organized through my church that distributes countless thousands of clothing and basic houseware items free to needy people in Des Moines. Semi-trucks full of items are being unloaded at Grace Church now and starting Thursday, scads of people, hundreds at least, maybe thousands (I have no clue how many) will come through the building and get good quality used clothes for themselves and their kids.

If I spoke every language but did not love others, my words would be like noisy clanging. If I saw the future, memorized all of wikipedia and had an inner resolve strong enough to move mountains but did not love others my gains would be worthless. If I gave everything I had to the poor and even died for a good cause I might have something to boast about, but without love I would be nothing.

What is love? It is patient and kind, never bragging or jealous or rude. It never demands its own way nor keeps track of the times it has been let down. It does not enjoy getting away with what is wrong - it celebrates when justice prevails. Love never gives up, always has hope and can last through every circumstance.

Everything else known to mankind will become useless in time except love - it is precious forever. As an adult, we remember the actions of our youth and understand that we saw life as if we were looking through a foggy mirror. Right now our understanding of the universe is similarly incomplete, but when we achieve full understanding we’ll look back and be ashamed of how we’ve behaved.

Three things will last forever - faith, hope and love. The greatest of these is love.

- a paraphrase of 1 Corinthians 13

My class last night seemed to enjoy an illustration I gave so I decided to share it here. The class is the first of 5 I will teach called “Getting a better spouse,” which is a poor name, but the goal is to make our families stronger by improving the husband and wife relationship. The common denominator of all the people in the class is that we all have kids and as any parent knows, sometimes life seems incredibly busy. Also at times it can feel like our kids are the center of our families and all life revolves around them.

As parents its critical to admit that one of our most important job is to raise our children properly (cf Proverbs 22:6, Deuteronomy 6:6-7). But that doesn’t mean the children become the center of the family. They need to learn that the world does not revolve around them. Therefore the class’s goal will hopefully help draw the mom and dad together. Doing this helps the whole family.

But… the husband/wife relationship is not the most important relationship in the family. The most important is the parent/God relationship. God invented the family and He

Let’s see, God made the universe, the earth, the plants, animals, sun, moon… then he made a man, whom he assigned the task of naming the animals, then he made a woman and created the institution of marriage. All of this in six days. Then he invented the “day of rest.” What did God do on this day?

The answer is simple. Don’t start by preaching, don’t start with morality. Don’t start by trying to be angelic. Start by caring for others. Jesus said,

34 “So now I am giving you a new commandment: Love each other. Just as I have loved you, you should love each other. 35 Your love for one another will prove to the world that you are my disciples.” John 13:34-35

Just found out about the pyGame Bible Dave. Fun, challenging and very creative. You’re a pilot whose plane has crashed in the jungle. Now, you have to search through mountains, jungles and caves looking for your precious cargo that got scattered - 200 bibles. Good luck!

Tonight I taught my small group class… this was part one of a two part lesson entitled, “Practical Tools for Sharing the Gospel.” Among the controversial parts were, “Memorizing Scripture” where I challenged anyone in the class to quote a chapter of scripture… (Becky quoted Psalm 23 flawlessly from memory, two others implied they could quote a chapter as well) What makes this controversial is few people like it when they’re told that they’re not doing something that they should be doing, and I wholeheartedly believe that scripture memorization is a commandment from God.

The language of the Bible. Paul spoke Hebrew, Greek and Aramaic. Possibly other languages too, but these three we can be certain of. When he traveled around on his missionary journeys, he invariably came to visit people who did not speak one of those three languages. In these cases, one of two things happened - either God enabled the people to understand him (aka speaking in tongues - and by the way, this is the true meaning of tongues, not spouting gibberish as you roll around on the floor) or He provided an interpreter.

I was wrong… I thought this would be about calvinism, but instead it’s about Isaiah 32:1a,3 (NLT). Actually, it may be related to calvinism… The verse is, “Look, a righteous king is coming!… Then, everyone who can see will be looking for God, and those who can hear will listen to his voice.” This is another one of those verses that seems to be both for and against predestination. Look carefully at the wording: For predestination - “everyone who can see.” For free will - “will be looking.”

I searched and searched, but no matter how hard I looked, I couldn’t find time. So finally, I broke down and made time. It will only take you a minute… go read Psalm 19.