A Beloved Community (14)

Isaiah challenges us with our focused. He opens this chapter with the words Cry Aloud! In this text this word Cry means proclaim. Don’t hold back. Lift up your voice like a trumpet. So he wants to get Israel attention. About what? Let them know about their transgressions and make them understand their sin. Now many of us would start searching or examining and evaluating our sin. He could have listed a number of transgressions or sins. There are plenty in this room to choose from. They are not so different than us today. We have sin. We have all sinned and fell short of the glory of God.

SIN keeps us from becoming what God is trying to make us. That’s why the Hebrew writer warns us to lay aside every weight and the sin that so easily besets us. Sin blocks our potential. I told you recently we are on the precipiss of being a great church. What would keep us from being great? SIN actions that dont please God. He lays it out You seek me daily and delight to know his ways. watch this as if they were a nation that did righteousness. HMMM.. We act like we are doing right but when you pull back the curtain God sees something else. We say we want to be close to him but action say differently. So in all the right we might be doing we may be missing the mark. Why? Its no need of getting frustrated with God for missing the mark. Just do right!

He marks some identifying things that keep us from pleasing God.

First to concerned with Our self Interest.

Our self interest leans towards selfishness. He said in verse 3 you seek your own pleasure. or pursue your own business. We dont have as much as hidden agendas we just have self agendas! We have to be careful about being in kingdom work and having a self agenda. your self interest needs balance.

We cant oppress

We cant quarrel and fight

We must not act as children who don’t get their way

The first obstacle, our own developmental levels, refers to where each of us is along the spiral pathway of our psychological and emotional development. Have we developed beyond the stage of throwing tantrums? Are we like confident adults or fearful adolescents in our emotional reactions? Do we spend a lot of time and energy defending our ego needs (such as making sure that our rank or position is acknowledged)? Are we narcissistic? Do we offend easily? Do we crave power and attention? Are we dishonest with ourselves and others? Are we obsessive about controlling the way people behave or the way things are done?

Lockard, Jim. Creating the Beloved Community: A Handbook for Spiritual Leadership (pp. 18-19). Oneness Books. Kindle Edition.

Lockard, Jim. Creating the Beloved Community: A Handbook for Spiritual Leadership (p. 18). Oneness Books. Kindle Edition.

Secondly we ignore the interest of others

When we are too consumed with our own interest we easily ignore the interest of others.

He says that the Lord is pleased when we feed the hungry bring relied to the poor and the homeless and clothed the naked. Then to add to that embrace our family with open arms. says Is it not to share your food with the hungry

and to provide the poor wanderer with shelter—

when you see the naked, to clothe him,

and not to turn away from your own flesh and blood? Two weeks ago we introduced the theme for 2019 Repairer of the breach! If we are to be repairer of the breach we have a responsibility of creating a Beloved Community. What is a beloved Community. Its a place where all feel welcomed. The marginalized, the oppressed, the least among us as well as the elite, the prosperous, the easy accepted are welcomed. Let me say it this way. We welcome the Have and the Have Nots!

The children of Israel were being warned because they had left the focus the Lord would have them to focus on.

What is our focus. To love God with our whole heart, our whole mind and our whole soul. And to love our neighbors as ourselves. Matthew 22

:36 -40 Addresses this when the lawyer who was trying to trap Jesus ask the question what is the greatest commandment. 37 And he said to him, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. 38 This is the great and first commandment. 39 And the second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself. 40 On these two commandments depend all the Law and the Prophets.”

Now we know that this is not the second commandment given to Israel but it sums up the second half of the commandments towards man.

“Hear, O Israel: The LORD our God, the LORD is one. Love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength” (). This is known as the Shema, taken from the first word “hear” in Hebrew.

This 1st command seems to be impossible to obey. That’s because, in the natural state of man, it is impossible. There is no greater evidence of the inability of man to obey God’s Law than this one commandment. No human being with a fallen nature can possibly love God with all his heart, soul, and strength 24 hours a day. It’s humanly impossible. But to disobey any commandment of God is sin. Therefore, even without considering the sins we commit daily, we are all condemned by our inability to fulfill this one commandment. This is the reason Jesus came so when we fall short in our feable attempts to love God and or neighbor he covers us with his Grace.

It is our duty to strive to do this daily. When we stray to far from it we need a reminder as Isaiah gave to the children of Israel. In all our church going, in all our worship, in all our piousness if we fail to share and care we have done nothing.

The Lord ask that question Is this this the fast i have chosen? Well if you realize what you were doing was not pleasing God would you modify your behavior? Thats a question. Well what we been doing is not pleasing to God. He is asking us to create a Beloved Community. Dr. Martin Luther King said “Our goal is to create a beloved community, and this will require a qualitative change in our souls as well as a quantitative change in our lives.” ~ Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

The Beloved Community is a collection of individuals who are learning how to love themselves, one another, and the universe.

It is a place where purpose and passion meet, where we practice being the person we desire to be and support others in that effort. It is where our faith in spiritual principles is realized as true compassion and service. The Beloved Community is a strong attractor to those who seek spiritual realization.

The Holy Bible: New International Version. (1984). (). Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan.

It is not a place of struggle but of continual progress toward a vision. That progress may have its ups and downs, but there is a sense of forward motion and of being involved in something vital. Dr. King also share this concerning this beloved community

“The end is reconciliation; the end is redemption; the end is the creation of the Beloved Community. It is this type of spirit and this type of love that can transform opponents into friends. It is this type of understanding goodwill that will transform the deep gloom of the old age into the exuberant gladness of the new age. It is this love which will bring about miracles in the hearts of men.”

Watch this “Dr. King’s Beloved Community is a global vision in which all people can share in the wealth of the earth. In the Beloved Community, poverty, hunger, and homelessness will not be tolerated because international standards of human decency will not allow it. Racism and all forms of discrimination, bigotry, and prejudice will be replaced by an all-inclusive spirit of sisterhood and brotherhood.”

How can we live in the wealthiest country in the world and still have hunger and homelessness. We have developed a mentality I got mine you get yours.

We have found ways to discriminate and alienate instead of opportunities to accept, embrace and affirm. We cant brag we are the church if we are not acting as the church should.

We must be as healthy as possible and continually work toward getting healthier. We must act in ways to help our members realize their own loving and compassionate natures more fully and to help them express those natures in the world beyond the actual or virtual walls of the church. And we must recognize our humanness, our tendency to fail along the pathway of learning.

The Beloved Community:

A consciousness of compassion

A consciousness of love and connection

A consciousness of deep and radical self-knowledge

A consciousness of healing

A consciousness of vision

A consciousness of pioneering

A consciousness of evolution and emergence

A consciousness of mutual support

A consciousness of contribution

A consciousness of possibility

A consciousness of resiliency

These qualities arise from the gathering of spiritually aware people who seek to deepen their realization through practice, learning, and connection.

From these ideals and practices, The Beloved Community emerges – a community with something significant to contribute to the more universal beloved community. Committed people dedicated to the expansion of love and possibility constitute such a community.

The idea of the compassionate heart means, in part, developing a way of being where one is for something and against nothing. There is no external conflict arising from The Beloved Community – no need to make others wrong to feel better about themselves or their beliefs and practices.

Lockard, Jim. Creating the Beloved Community: A Handbook for Spiritual Leadership (p. 13). Oneness Books. Kindle Edition.

Lockard, Jim. Creating the Beloved Community: A Handbook for Spiritual Leadership (p. 10). Oneness Books. Kindle Edition.

Lockard, Jim. Creating the Beloved Community: A Handbook for Spiritual Leadership (pp. 9-10). Oneness Books. Kindle Edition.

Lockard, Jim. Creating the Beloved Community: A Handbook for Spiritual Leadership (p. 9). Oneness Books. Kindle Edition.

Lockard, Jim. Creating the Beloved Community: A Handbook for Spiritual Leadership (p. 8). Oneness Books. Kindle Edition.

Lockard, Jim. Creating the Beloved Community: A Handbook for Spiritual Leadership (pp. 7-8). Oneness Books. Kindle Edition.

Lockard, Jim. Creating the Beloved Community: A Handbook for Spiritual Leadership (p. 7). Oneness Books. Kindle Edition.