a mere housewife
Not your cup of tea
My former pastor has been preaching through Revelation -- this sermon was very good, and I think, worth consideration.
Churches, like individual believers, have strengths and weaknesses. That's clear in the letters there.
I don't wish to be offensive ... but I almost commented on a particular thread lately that we don't even need the Babylon Bee to turn it into satire. I said nothing at all, because I know I am my own best caricature, and I still want to be treated with grace. There are definitely great weaknesses that show up in my own mirror -- and so, in any community of Christians I've ever been a part of!
And I'm so grateful for the huge blessings of all those communities. I'm also grateful for the communion I find with people who are not reformed; and their zeal and love of Christ is often an example to me. I'm very glad God lives in and works through each member, flawed though we all are!
Something I've found very encouraging is the biographies of women from reformed traditions, like Corrie Ten Boom or Darlene Diebler Rose. Both these women found themselves in concentration camps in WWII, where they absolutely had to work together for support with very wide range of Christian fellowships. Both were were at the heart of those fellowships with their Bibles and prayer in Jesus' name. When those large diverse groups of believers came together, it was not around icons or incense or prayers to saints etc. They sat listening around the Scriptures which Corrie Ten Boom and her sister had clung to, that God miraculously preserved to them. They heard about Jesus' saving work for them, His sufficient and free grace, and how it changed even the extreme trial they were going through. And they prayed to Him. The same with Mrs. Rose. Those ladies were able to hold out simple reformed faith and worship as an open door, not as a dividing wall: and that simplicity was the centerpiece of fellowship with God and one another that many believers knew in a vital way at that time. I think of that and wonder how I can do the same in such gratefully different circumstances -- how to hold out what I love in the reformed faith, that has set me free, as an open door. I do believe that truth I love is at the heart of all Christian fellowship.
Churches, like individual believers, have strengths and weaknesses. That's clear in the letters there.
I don't wish to be offensive ... but I almost commented on a particular thread lately that we don't even need the Babylon Bee to turn it into satire. I said nothing at all, because I know I am my own best caricature, and I still want to be treated with grace. There are definitely great weaknesses that show up in my own mirror -- and so, in any community of Christians I've ever been a part of!
And I'm so grateful for the huge blessings of all those communities. I'm also grateful for the communion I find with people who are not reformed; and their zeal and love of Christ is often an example to me. I'm very glad God lives in and works through each member, flawed though we all are!
Something I've found very encouraging is the biographies of women from reformed traditions, like Corrie Ten Boom or Darlene Diebler Rose. Both these women found themselves in concentration camps in WWII, where they absolutely had to work together for support with very wide range of Christian fellowships. Both were were at the heart of those fellowships with their Bibles and prayer in Jesus' name. When those large diverse groups of believers came together, it was not around icons or incense or prayers to saints etc. They sat listening around the Scriptures which Corrie Ten Boom and her sister had clung to, that God miraculously preserved to them. They heard about Jesus' saving work for them, His sufficient and free grace, and how it changed even the extreme trial they were going through. And they prayed to Him. The same with Mrs. Rose. Those ladies were able to hold out simple reformed faith and worship as an open door, not as a dividing wall: and that simplicity was the centerpiece of fellowship with God and one another that many believers knew in a vital way at that time. I think of that and wonder how I can do the same in such gratefully different circumstances -- how to hold out what I love in the reformed faith, that has set me free, as an open door. I do believe that truth I love is at the heart of all Christian fellowship.