Living in Harmony
After I wrote that title, I started to think about how I'd like to teach the world to sing in perfect harmony. But what does it take to bring harmony to even our own little part of the world? That's what we talked about today at MCC - getting our instruction through Pastor Henry from I Peter 3:8-15. Here we learn that to live in harmony, we should be humble, sympathetic, compassionate, and loving to one another.
We talked about barriers which prevent us from living this way:
fear of what others think
time
fear of rejection
selfishness
ignorance
prejudice
status concerns
lack of energy
low self worth
mixture of messages
lack of preparedness
assumptions about people or their intentions
lack of confidence
anger
not believing who we are in Christ
unfair expectations
apathy
leaning on our own understanding
But with God's spirit we can overcome these barriers so we can invade people's lives with grace, mercy, love and compassion. Who will harm us if we are eager to do good?
Where can I bring some harmony this week? And what barriers can I break down in order to do so?
I was thinking about how sometimes what breaks down the peace is miscommunication and how any of the reasons listed above can contribute to this. In the coming week, I need to take the time to listen to people and look for opportunities to bring grace, mercy, love, or compassion.
Labels: 1 Peter
posted by Jewels @ 1:03 PM
1 Comments:
Pastor Henry reminded us that I Peter 1 :23 told us who we are: we have been born again...through the living and enduring word of God. He reminded us that we were blessed to be a blessing. I thought that tied into the theme of being in the church bubble and how are we to get out of that bubble. I Peter 3:8-15 tells us how we should live, in harmony. Then the question, what is the barrier to living as those who have been born again and blessed to be a blessing? I thought later that perhaps one answer we didn't give was disobedience. When we fail to live in harmony, to be a blessing, we are disobedient. And we found plenty of excuses that build barriers.
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