Sunday evenings...

...look like this these days =)

10/31/2010 set

I will give you praise
Our eyes long
Hakuna mungu Kama wewe
Revelation song


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The Butterfly Circus

A friend of mine on Facebook sent this along on, and I thought it was great! Definitely worth 20 minutes of your time.

(Click this if the embedded video doesn't work)

Tonight

Tonight, we're revisiting James 4. We had a great discussion last week that was mostly about humility, but there were specific things addressed in the passage that we didn't really dig into. Let's do that tonight! If there really isn't much more to say about the chapter, we'll power on through to James 5 with eyes closed, heads lowered, and fingers pointing like horns.

We're meeting at Spot again tonight at 7:30pm, but we may be changing the venue next week to the men's discipleship house on West Delavan. It's open to discussion, and there may be some alternating of venues going on, but we should definitely meet there next.

See y'all soon!

Men's Bible Study 10/11/2010: We Humbly Digress

This past Monday, we looked at James 4. There is a ton of stuff in this passage, and perhaps we were never going to get into everything it says in one sitting, but our conversation about it immediately focused on this:

James 4:10
Humble yourselves before the Lord, and he will lift you up.

Our discussion focused on what humility means. Among the things that were brought up was the idea that humility involves submitting oneself in obedience, which does not merely involve intellectual agreement, but action as well. We went into a really detailed discussion about the nature of submission and "true" and "complete" humility. It was mentioned that humility does not require that we despise our own gifts and abilities, and that we should try to view ourselves with as much clarity and honesty as possible. Finally, there was the sense that it is entirely possible to be obedient in our actions, to submit to a request or a command, but to still not be humble.

If that sounds scattered, it's because we talked about so many different aspects of humility! It also gets more complicated anytime you add the words "true" and "complete" in front of anything you're talking about.

The Greek word for humility used in this passage is tapeinos, and has the following meanings:

1) not rising far from the ground
2) metaphor:
a) as a condition, lowly, of low degree
b) brought low with grief, depressed
c) lowly in spirit, humble
d) in a bad sense, deporting one's self abjectly, deferring servilely to others

The one time submission in servitude comes up, it is "in a bad sense". That's not to say James didn't mean it in this sense at all. After all, many his hearers would have focused on the "worse" meaning possible, and if, in the world, servitude "in a bad sense" is considered foolish, are we not supposed to be fools for Christ? However, when we look at the whole passage, it would seem that the "lowly in spirit" sense of the word is just as applicable to the situations he is talking about.

It could be said that pride is at the root of all the issues James addresses in this chapter. "Fights and quarrels" are usually started when someone's pride has been hurt, or in pride a hurtful thing is said, and in pride people choose not to seek clarity or common ground. In pride people slander one another, considering themselves good enough to be "judges". In pride we declare our plans and set the trajectories of our lives, instead of submitting them to God and saying "Your will be done". Perhaps a good discussion for next time is how being "lowly in spirit" may be practiced, and how they would apply to these situations James talks about?

Next week:
Chapter 4, or Chapter 5. I don't know! I'm not making any plans! (But that doesn't mean I'm humble)

Oops

And I forgot to hit "Publish" after I typed yesterday's post up. Anyway, it rained yesterday, and we had it on good authority (Cory's) that it's not fun to play mini golf on a soggy course. So we wound up at Zetti's where we discussed penal substitutionary atonement, the gift economy as a alternate picture of atonement, and the personal testimonies of Cory, Iani and Matt.

It was a blast, but we'll try something indoors next time!

Tonight we are meeting at 7:30 at Spot on Elmwood, and after that we are going to play miniature golf at a place of Cory's choosing. It will be a time of fellowship and fun, though you (yes, *you*) are going to go down in flames before the might of my considerable putt-putt skills.

Fasting and Prayer for Sean: This Thursday, we will be fasting all day and meeting to pray in the evening at 7:00pm at the church on Potomac. I know a few of you don't know Sean too well, and we will talk about what's going on with Sean as a group during the meeting.

Nehemiah 1:4-7
When I heard these words, I sat down and wept and mourned for days; and I was fasting and praying before the God of heaven.

Next week, we have a tentative plan to go help out at Allen's house. His mom has a few things that need to get done, and it'd be a real blessing to her and Allen if we all pitched in to help out!

See you tonight!