06/27/13 TOUGH BUT VALUABLE
Last evening, during Bible study, I suggested the value of asking ourselves what we bring to a relationship (family, church, friendship, acquaintance). Not our gifts, skills, talents, abilities, but what graces, what spiritual wealth do we bring to others. Do we give the blessing of the love, mercy, wisdom, patience, kindness, honesty of Christ to others? When we are gone will we be missed because of the godly influence that we use to provide?
I also pointed out that hardly anyone would be willing to humbly and submissively sit together with Christ like believers and allow those believers to confront the questionable, the weak, the contradictory areas of his/her life. Yet, this is the essence of Body Life in the Church. Too bad there is so little of it.
I referred to John Wesley's Class Meetings, which used this form of believers mutually admonishing one another. I also gave my own experience from such small group confrontations with fellow Bible college students and using it in my discipling of young men at various times in my ministry.
Everyone needs to be in victory when they do this. There is no room for self promotion or character attacks. Admonition must be done in love and receiving it must be done in humility. Not only is the person who is the focus of the group (at a particular session) subject to open, honest and loving evaluation, so are the people who voice their view. They must be willing to hear the response of the other people in the group. These sessions are not "gripe" sessions. The participants also acknowledge the Christlike and positive areas of the person in question.
All in all, it requires a focused life, a disciplined life, a surrendered life. It requires prayer, humility, kindness, wisdom. It produces great rapport, trust, love and fellowship with other people and it produces an awareness of need and a desire for Christ-likeness in the person who is being confronted.
