Unto You is Given

I pray for them I am not praying for the world but for those you have given me, for they are yours
-John 17:9

I was sitting down with Elise this evening and we were discussing a few things about what the spiritual condition of this campus is? It seems both our eyes have been opened to the fact that so many of the younger christians have fallen away from their first loves and turned to other things than the love of Christ. This is sad to hear. The fact remains though that God chooses to use the circumstances in our lives to show just how great God truly is with the contrast of crummy and so wonderful. The breaking that is happening all around me is painful to see, especially with those who I care so much about, but God will use it and that is the only hope I can find in these certain situations.

I want to focus tonight on the subject of friendship because I got smacked in the face tonight at Celebration by the sermon about how crummy of a friend I have truly been in certain areas.

God has given to us people that constantly surround us and we often times make these our friends but how many times do we as a christian community take time to meet with those poeple who are not our friends and how dare we not take the initative to meet everyone who is in the body of christ and who has accepted Christ and develop a community that is so radically different. Cliques are so wrong!!! Think about it, we are supposed to be all loving but how can we not love by excluding certain people. I have not met so many people who could be a great blessing to me. Part of accepting God's blessing is stepping out of our comfort zone because that is how we get blessed. We cannot not act but we cannot act all the time either we must do with what God has given us to deal with. Not one person is going to change the world one can start a change but it is not in the power of one man to change the world. Jesus changed the world but it was the twelve disciples going in twelve different directions that only got that message out to about 1000 miles or so away from Jereuselum being martered in Etheopia, Egypt, Persia, India...and then the next followers had to carry it further. Christianity is about unity but how often times do we make it about ourselves?

I read this one book once on why the gospel kinda phizzled out to a degree in the 4th and 5th centuries. The reason was that we were putting our own plans into action instead of relying on the unity of the body of Christ. If we truly were unified as I experienced last week with the 60 or so that gathered to pray all day long then things would be radically different in our world. I think if we were to choose to love, if we were to choose Christ as the main focus things would be in a perfect state of harmony. It is interesting to find the one time Jesus isn't praying about the world he is praying for those given to him specifically that they will be unified and not rely on their own strength but rather the strength of the Father. We need to be unified! We need to take active steps meeting and being nice to people who really don't deserve niceness, wearing a smile, taking time to genuinley care about people. Sacrificing ourselves for others, in every form that can take. Being there to experience joy with a friend, being there to be a shoulder to cry on.

Unto you is given many people many choices many circumstances, glorify God in all you do no matter how trivial or pointless it may seem!

JG