Fruit of the Spirit

Joy

Love in Jubilation

Peace

Love in Repose

Longsuffering

Love on Trial

Gentleness

Love in Society

Goodness

Love in Action

Faith

Love in Endurance

Meekness

Love at School

Temperance

Love in Discipline

Galatians 5:22-23

Corrie Ten Boom

Corrie Ten Boom told of not being able to forget a wrong that had been done to her.

She had forgiven the person, but she kept rehashing the incident and so couldn't sleep. Finally Corrie cried out to God for help in putting the problem to rest.

'His help came in the form of a kindly Lutheran pastor," Corrie wrote, 'to whom I confessed my failure after two sleepless weeks." 'Up in the church tower," he said, nodding out the window, 'is a bell which is rung by pulling on a rope. But you know what?

After the sexton lets go of the rope, the bell keeps on swinging. First ding, then dong. Slower and slower until there's a final dong and it stops. I believe the same thing is true of forgiveness. When we forgive, we take our hand off the rope.

But if we've been tugging at our grievances for a long time, we mustn't be surprised if the old angry thoughts keep coming for a while. They're just the ding-dongs of the old bell slowing down."

'And so it proved to be. There were a few more midnight reverberations, a couple of dings when the subject came up in my conversations, but the force,which was my willingness in the matter,had gone out of them.

They came less and less often and at the last stopped altogether: we can trust God not only above our emotions, but also above our thoughts."

Source unknown

Things To Do

There are at least four things you can do with your hands.
You can wring them in despair;
You can fold them in idleness;
You can clench them in anger;
Or you can use them to help someone.

Bits & Pieces, January 5, 1995, p. 24

Little Stuff

Success is often reached through the little stuff. When Pat Riley coached the Los Angeles Lakers from 1982 to 1990, the team won four NBA championships.

In taking over the New York in 1991, Riley inherited a team with a losing record. But the Knicks seemed able to play above their abilities and even gave the eventual champions, the Chicago Bulls, their hardest competition in the play-offs last May.

How does Riley do it? He says his talent lies in attention to detail. For example, every NBA team studies videotapes and compiles statistics to evaluate players' game performances.

But Riley's use of these tools is more comprehensive than that of his rivals. 'We measure areas of performance that are often ignored: jumping in pursuit of every rebound even if you don't get it, swatting at every pass, diving for loose balls, letting someone smash into you in order to draw a foul."

After each game, these 'effort" statistics are punched into a computer. 'Effort," Riley explains, 'is what ultimately separates journeyman players from impact players.

Knowing how well a player executes all these little things is the key to unlocking career-best performances."

Little Things Do Mean a Lot by Robert McGarvey, Reader's Digest

Values

Values are often unwritten assumptions that guide our actions. Values demonstrate our convictions and priorities. Values are confirmed by our actions, not just our words.

Values are not a doctrinal statement; they are convictions that determine how our church operates. Values provide the foundation for formulating goals and setting the direction of the church's ministry.

Core values are the 5-10 key statements that reflect the distinctives of a church. Key issues for determining your core values: If the church were really the church, what would it be doing? What makes you angry? What do you get passionate about?

How do you invest your time and money? What's your biggest criticism of the church? For what do you want your church to be known? What are the essential functions of the church?

Determining your core values: Brainstorm a list of potential core values. Make sure each value is easily translated to action. Group similar statements together. Highlight the ones that are the most important. Write a tentative list of 4-7 values. Check for completeness.

Do all the essential ministries of the church flow logically from one of the core values? Describe the specific behaviors that will demonstrate each core value in action.

Bob Logan

What Is Sin?

Sin is anything that is contrary to the law or will of God. For example: if you lie, you have sinned. Why? Because God has said not to lie (Ex. 20:16).

If you do what God has forbidden, then you have sinned. In addition, if you do not do what God has commanded, you sin (James 4:17). Either way, the result is eternal separation from God (Is. 59:2). Sin is lawlessness (1 John 1:3) and unrighteousness (1 John 5:17).

Sin leads to blindness (John 9:41) and death (Rom. 6:23).

Paul, in the book of Romans, discusses sin. He shows that everyone, both Jew and Greek, is under sin (Rom. 3:9).

He shows that sin is not simply something that is done, but a condition of the heart (Rom. 3:3:10-12). In Ephesians Paul says that we are 'by nature children of wrath" (Rom. 2:3). Yet, 'while we were still helpless, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly" (Rom. 5:6).

The power of sin is centrifugal. When at work in a human life, it tends to push everything out toward the periphery. Bits and pieces go flying off until only the core is left.

Eventually bits and pieces of the core itself go flying off until in the end nothing at all is left. 'The wages of sin is death" is St. Paul's way of saying the same thing.

Other people and (if you happen to believe in him) God or (if you happen not to) the World, Society, Nature,whatever you call the greater whole of which you're part,sin is whatever you do, or fail to do, that pushes them away, that widens the gap between you and them and also the gaps within your self.

For example, the sin of the Pharisee is not just (a) his holier-than-thou attitude which pushes other people away, but (b) his secret suspicion that his own holiness is deficient too, which pushes part of himself away, and (c) his possibly not-so-subconscious feeling that anybody who expects him to be all that holy must be a cosmic SOB, which pushes Guess Who away.

Sex is sinful to the degree that, instead of drawing you closer to another human being in his humanness, it unites bodies but leaves the lives inside them hungrier and more alone than before.

Religion and unreligion are both sinful to the degree that they widen the gap between you and the people who don't share your views.

The word charity illustrates the insidiousness of sin. From meaning a free and loving gift it has come to mean a demeaning handout.

'Original Sin" means we all originate out of a sinful world which taints us from the word go. We all tend to make ourselves the center of the universe, pushing away centrifugally from the center everything that seems to impede its freewheeling.

More even than hunger, poverty, or disease, it is what Jesus said he came to save the world from.

Frederick Buechner, Wishful Thinking, A Theological ABC, (Harper, San Francisco, A Division of Harper Collins Publishers, 1973), pp. 88-89

Sex Survey

The sexual revolution notwithstanding, nearly all married couples are monogamous, two new sex surveys say.

A University of Washington, Seattle, study in October's American Journal of Public Health found 94 percent of married couples had one partner in the previous year.

Likewise, a survey by the National Opinion Research Center in Chicago determined that only about 4 percent of married people had sexual partners other than their spouse during a one-year span.

Overall, infidelity has been practiced by only 21 percent of men and 13 percent of women, according to the survey.

The studies dispute data by such investigators as the Kinsey Institute of Sex Research and author Shere Hite, who have suggested anywhere from one-third to three-fourths of married couples cheat on their mates.

'There probably are more scientifically worthless 'facts' on extramarital relations than any other facet of human behavior," says Tom W. Smith of the National Opinion Research Center.

Smith says adultery is more prevalent among younger people, urban dwellers, the unchurched, and the previously divorced.

Christianity Today, November 22, 1993, p. 42

How Adults and Youth Learn

J. Dennis Miller, president of Church Youth Development states that a problem with educating young people in the church stems from a failure to understand how young people learn.

He claims that adults learn in the following pattern:

1. acceptance of absolutes;

2. subordination of attitudes and actions to absolutes;

3. application of truth received to life experience.

Knowing something as an adult is based primarily upon remembering information and intellectual learning.

Youth, Miller contends, learn in a different way:

1. evaluation of life experience;

2. discovery of attitudes and actions which validate their life experiences;

3. identifying truth based on their relevance to life experience;

4. acceptance of truths that prove reliable from life experience. Life experience is the main influence on the learning young mind.

Source unknown

Truth

The truth that makes men free is for the most part

the truth which men prefer not to hear.

- Herbert Agar -

Preaching Resources, Spring 1996, p. 71.

Car Accident

It wasn't like Scott Kregel to give up. He was a battler, a dedicated athlete who spent hour after hour perfecting his three throw and jump shot during the hot summer months of 1987.

But just before fall practice everything changed. A serious car accident left Scott in a coma for several days. When he awoke, a long rehabilitation process lay ahead.

Like most patients with closed head injuries, Scott balked at doing the slow, tedious work that was required to get him back to normal,things such as stringing beads. What high school junior would enjoy that?

Tom Martin, Scott's basketball coach at the Christian school he attended, had an idea. Coach Martin told Scott that he would reserve a spot on the varsity for him,if he would cooperate with his therapist and show progress in the tasks he was asked to do.

And Tom's wife Cindy spent many hours with Scott, encouraging him to keep going. Within 2 months, Scott was riding off the basketball court on his teammates' shoulders.

He had made nine straight free throws to clinch a triple-overtime league victory. It was a remarkable testimony of the power of encouragement.

Our Daily Bread, April 9

Sand in His Shoes

Imagine all the obstacles a person might have to overcome if he were to walk from New York City to San Francisco.

One man who accomplished this rare achievement mentioned a rather surprising difficulty when asked to tell of his biggest hurdle.

He said that the toughest part of the trip wasn't traversing the steep slopes of the mountains or crossing hot, dry, barren stretches of desert. Instead, he said, 'The thing that came the closest to defeating me was the sand in my shoes."

Our Daily Bread