Different Strokes For Different Folks

1.       Jesus was the great initiator.  He made the 1st move.  Often the most important factor in whether or not a church is seen to be a friendly church.  There is an element of risk in being a person who initiates relationships.  There will be times when you will be misunderstood and there will be those times when we frighten people away.  To not accept the risk is to take another risk – it is the risk of not caring.  That is even worse.  The worst thing that a church can become is non-caring. The emphasis is not on feeling an emotion of love but on acting in love.  C. S. Lewis has a helpful comment on what Christian love involves:

It would be quite wrong to think that the way to become "loving" is to sit trying to manufacture affectionate feelings. Some people are "cold" by temperament; that may be a misfortune for them, but it is no more a sin than having a bad digestion is sin; and it does not cut them off from the chance, or excuse them from the duty, of learning "love."  The rule for us all is perfectly simple.  Do not waste time bothering whether you "love" your neighbor; act as if you did.  As soon as we do this, we learn one of the great secrets.  When you are behaving as if you loved someone, you will presently come to love them.  If you injure someone you dislike, you will find yourself disliking him more.  If you do him a good turn, you will find yourself disliking him less.  There is however one exception.  If you do him a good turn, not to please God and obey the law of love, but to show him what a fine forgiving chap you are, and to put him in your debt, and then sit down to wait for his "gratitude," you will probably be disappointed.... But whenever we do good to another self, just because it is a self, made like us by God, and desiring its own happiness as we desire ours, we shall have learned to love it a little more or, at least, to dislike it less.   See:  Matt 22:37-39; Col 3:14

q      That means at times that we will be made uncomfortable or put in awkward situations for the greatest cause in the world.

q      That means that we will wrestle with people’s sin.  We do not have the luxury of standing back and clicking our tongues.  Sin binds people and creates a complexity within their lives that they truly become bound to.  To simply “tell” people what to do is to insult them.  You become another name on a list of people who really didn’t care about other people – you just wanted to solve someone’s problem so they would go away and leave you alone.  Listening places a person in a more “vulnerable” position.  It assigns for us a different role.  We are not the problem solver – we are one who walks alongside of others because we care.

PLEASE LISTEN TO ME

When I ask you to listen to me and you start giving me advice, you have not done what I asked.

When I ask you to listen to me and you begin to tell me why I shouldn't feel that way,

you are trampling on my feelings.

When I ask you to listen to me and you feel you have to do something to solve my problem,

you have failed me, strange as that may seem.

Listen! All I ask is that you listen.  Don't talk or do-just hear me.  Advice is cheap; 20 cents will get you both Dear Abby and Billy Graham in the same newspaper.

And I can do for myself; I am not helpless.  Maybe discouraged and faltering, but not helpless.

When you do something for me that I can and need to do for myself, you contribute to my fear and inadequacy.  But when you accept as a simple fact that I feel what I feel, no matter how irrational, then I can stop trying to convince you and get about this business of understanding what's behind this irrational feeling.

And when that's clear, the answers are obvious and I don't need advice.  Irrational feelings make sense when we understand what's behind them.  Perhaps that's why prayer works, sometimes, for some people-because God is mute, and he doesn't give advice or try to fix things.  God just listens and lets you work it out for yourself.

So please listen, and just hear me.  And if you want to talk, wait a minute for your turn-and I will listen to you.

-          by Author Unknown

Parabolani

See Philippians 4:18

In those days when people visited prisoners who were held captive under Roman authority, they were often prejudged as criminal types as well.  Therefore a visitor exposed himself to danger just by being near those

who were considered dangerous.  The Greek term Paul uses here for "risking" -- paraboleumai -- is one that meant "to hazard with one's life .... to gamble."  Epaphroditus did just that.

In the early church there were societies of men and women who called themselves the parabolani, that is, the riskers or gamblers.  They ministered to the sick and the imprisoned and they saw to it that, if

at all possible, martyrs and sometimes even enemies would receive an honorable burial.  Thus in the city of Carthage during the great pestilence of AD 252, Cyprian the bishop, showed some remarkable courage.  In self sacrificing fidelity to his flock, and love even for his enemies, he took upon himself the care of the sick, and bade his congregation nurse them and bury the dead.  What a contrast with the practice of the heathen who were throwing the corpses out of the plague-stricken city and then were running away in terror!

q      A godly Christlike love accepts people as they are without qualification.  The act of accepting people in no way condones their sin.  It rather gives them hope to rise above life’s circumstances rather than wasting energy in defending themselves.  Dale Carnegie once said, "You can make more friends in two months by becoming really interested in other people than you can in two years by trying to get other people interested in you. Which is just another way of saying that the way to make a friend is to be one."   G.K. Chesterton used to say, "The truly great person is the one who makes every person feel great."  I think that we could change this just a little bit by saying “ You can win more friends to Christ in two months . . . “

2.       Sometimes people outside of the church doors have a better idea of the way we should live then we do.  (Jews do not associate with Samaritans) 

3.       Jesus knew how to ask the right questions.  He was a Master of the question.  We will often get farther by asking good questions than by giving them answers.

4.       Jesus knew how to read people’s hearts.  Recognized the areas of dissatisfaction that people come to accept and spoke to them. He heard what they were really saying.

q      He saw a woman whose life was defined by her routine.

q      He saw a woman who was confined by her routine.

q      He saw a woman who was relationally dissatisfied.

5.       When people are convicted by the truth there are often many tangential issues that surface.

6.       The challenge for the church is “keeping the main thing – the main thing.”

7.       There is no greater power than the personal testimony when it comes to reaching our communities.

I Stand By The Door

I stand by the door.

I neither go too far in nor stay too far out,

The door is the most important door in the world ‑‑

It is the door through which men walk when they find God.

There's no use my going way inside and staying there,

When so many are still outside and they as much as I,

Crave to know where the door is.

And all that so many ever find Is only the wall where a door ought to be.

They creep along the wall like blind men,

With outstretched groping hands.

Feeling for a door, knowing there must be a door,

Yet they never find it . . .

So I stand by the door.

The most tremendous thing in the world

Is for men to find that door ‑‑ the door to God.

The most important thing any man can do

Is to take hold of one of those blind groping hands,

And put it on the latch ‑‑ the latch that only clicks

And opens to each man's own touch.

Men die outside that door, as starving beggars die

On cold nights in cruel cities in the dead of winter ‑‑

Die for want of what is within their grasp.

They live, on the other side of it ‑‑ live because they have not found it,

Nothing else matters compared to helping them find it,

And open it, and walk in, and find Him . . .

So I stand by the door.

Go in great saints, go all the way in ‑‑

Go way down into the cavernous cellars,

And way up into the spacious attics ‑‑

It is a vast roomy house, this house where God is.

Go into the deepest of hidden casements,

Of withdrawl, of silence, of sainthood.

Some must inhabit those inner rooms,

And know the depths and heights of God,

And call outside to the rest of us how wonderful it is.

Sometimes I take a deeper look in,

Sometimes venture in a little farther;

But my place seems closer to the opening . . .

So I stand by the door.

There is another reason why I stand there.

Some people get part way in and become afraid

Lest God and the zeal of his house devour them;

For God is so very  great and asks all of us.

And these people feel a cosmic claustrophobia,

And want to get out.  "Let me out!" they cry.

And the people way inside only terrify them more.

Somebody must be by the door to tell them they are spoiled

For the old life; they have seen too much:

Once taste God and nothing but God will do any more.

Somebody must be watching for the frightened

Who seek to sneak out just where they came in,

To tell them how much better it is inside.

The people too far in do not see how near these are

To leaving, ‑‑ preoccupied with the wonder of it all.

Somebody must watch for those who have entered the door,

But would like to run away.  So for them, too,

I stand by the door.

I admire the people who go way in.

But I wish they would not forget how it was

Before they got in.  Then they would be able to help

The people who have not yet even found the door,

Or the people who want to run away again from God.

You can go in too deeply and stay in too long,

And forget the people outside the door.

As for me, I shall take my old accustomed place,

Near enough to God to hear Him and know He is there,

But not so far from men as not to hear them,

And remember they are there, too.

Where?  Outside the door ‑‑

Thousands of them, millions of them.

But ‑‑ more important for me ‑‑

One of them, two of them, ten of them,

Whose hands I am intended to put on the latch.

So I shall stand by the door and wait

For those who seek it.

"I had rather be a door‑keeper . . ."

So I stand by the door.

A Different Spin

This puts a different spin on a familiar text. Try this contemporary version of 1 Cor.13 What might Paul have said in 1999?

If I speak with the confidence of Rush Limbaugh and sing with the ease of Celine Dion but don't have love, my words are like scraping fingernails on a frozen windshield.

If I can program NASA's mainframe computer and outsmart my chemistry professor, if I can memorize the Psalms and read Leviticus without dozing, or if I can even predict the future but have not love, my value is equal to a pitcher of warm spit. If I give my Tommy Hilfiger wardrobe to Goodwill and let my little sister rummage through my closet, if I go to the stake and fry as a martyr, or if I donate a gallon of blood every hour but don't have love, my

offerings are useless.

Love is Patient--even if it means skipping a trip to 31 Flavors in order to tutor an immigrant.

Love is Kind--it doesn't stoop to Polish jokes, Whitey jibes, slanty-eye stories, or jokes about Jews.

Love does not envy the basketball team captain, the National Merit finalist, the class president, or even the blonde who sports the most even tan.

Love doesn't get a swelled head over straight As or a scholarship to Princeton. Love isn't snooty about a new Corvette or a season pass to the world's premiere ski resort. Love never jeers at the fat kid who hangs out of his/her T-shirt in PE.

Love smiles when getting cut off on the interstate. Love submits an honest tax return. Love doesn't whine about the referee's bad call.

Love believes that God always provides the best stuff in life. Love hangs on to hope when the family is splitting apart.

Love does not change like hemlines and hairdos. Love is like the Energizer bunny. It lasts and lasts and keeps on going. In the end only three things will remain: faith, hope, and love.

But the greatest of these is love.

Murphy's Church Laws

Film projectors always work before the class meeting begins.

The probability of the preacher tripping over the mike cord is greater on "Bring A Friend" Sunday than any other week.

The largest Bible Class will show up when the teacher feels his/her worst.

No matter how many bulletins you print, you'll always need one more.

A member living 15 miles aways will be 15 minutes early; Members living two blocks will be 15 minutes late.

Saying "Let us Pray" or singing "Just as I Am" causses babies to cry.

The shorter the agenda, the longer the business meeting.

Business meetings ALWAYS last at least 15 minutes longer than they should.

(So do some sermons--kt)

Church committees should be made up of three members, two of whom should be

absent at every meeting. (William Spurgeon)

When you answer the Bible teacher's questiom right, nobody remembers; when

you are wrong, nobody forgets.

The longest Scripture readings always come with the longest sermons.

The furnace only fails when the outside temperature is more than 20 degrees

below zero.The air conditioner only fails when the outside temperature is 90

degrees or above.

When the preacher misspeaks in a sermon, at least half of those taking notes

will write the remark down as an important thought from the sermon.

Copied from Garden City Church of Christ Bulletin.