Getting serious about God

Hi

Our cell should be a real cell, rather than a time to meet and talk, which is a totally different thing. I think we realise that meeting each week just to talk in general is playing religion. We all have no time to play religion.

Some ground rules to make our cell a real cell:

a. no talking about house, car or other material goods, unless it is a huge decision that requires corporate prayer;
b. no talking about job, good or bad, unless it will clearly edify the group or requires corporate prayer; and
c. no talking about children or other family stuff unless, again, it will clearly edify the group or requires corporate prayer.

Well, what else is there to talk about if we don't talk about these things? Going by our past experience, not much, because that's often all we talk about. That can't be right.

Why do I say we should stop talking about house, car, job, children? Because they are all inherently selfish things. Why haven't we been talking about other people instead? Isn't that the whole purpose of the cell? Other people!

Related to this point is that talking about these things makes us think more about those things, which should not be the case. Worse it makes another member of the group think about the same (ultimately irrelevant) thing you are thinking about e.g. Member A has a great job, member B starts thinking why shouldn't I have a great job too? Or Member C has very clever children, then Member D starts thinking what about me? This sidetracks all members from the real issue. Again - other people.

The reason why we never grow is because we keep talking about ourselves. Think about that.

Will that make cell more challenging, less comfortable? Of course - that's why we meet and that's why we need to encourage each other to keep meeting (Heb 10:24-25 And let us consider how we may spur (or challenge) one another on toward love and good deeds. Let us not give up meeting together, as some are in habit of doing, but let us encourage one another - and all the more as you see the Day approaching). Would we rather look back 5 years from now and see all we did was mumble about our own little lives and pretend that we attended cell like good Christians?

For God so loved the world that He gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. John 3:16

At the same time, let's not be discouraged by our state now. All of us have experienced the power and work of God in our lives at some point in the past. Bringing people to Christ, being totally on fire for Him, seeing signs and wonders. God is able to to renew that! Are we ready? It's never too soon to start (or in our case, re-start) something so challenging, no, impossible! But with God, all things are possible!

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Bullying? Stand up!

Image
When I was a kid, I remember being bullied a fair bit.  I was small for my age, bespectacled, shy.    The teachers didn't help by putting a target on my back by making me Vice Head Prefect.  I would get my stuff just taken away from me by bigger kids, dragged out into the field to be tickled until I collapsed (much less fun than it sounds), and pushed into the storm drains.  Not all the kids were full-blown bullies of course.  But I remember some of them standing by, and politely holding my spectacles (so they wouldn't be broken) while the bullies did their work on me. Most of this stopped when I got to secondary school, where a much larger proportion of my fellow students were now just as nerdy!  And of course I grew up too.  I don't really look back on those days with any kind of animosity, because I think it never occurred to me that it was unusual.  But I do think my experience made me a bit more sympathetic about people around me who...
Read more

Life as a pie chart

Image
Someone told me recently about a "life exercise" in which one compiles all the stuff that makes up your life, and puts it in a pie chart.  So let's say for me, something like this. The idea is to visually demonstrate to myself that, in the event I lose one of these things, then I can see that, hey life is not so bad, that wasn't such a big deal.  Say for example, if I suffered a blown ACL, and couldn't run or play basketball any more, like this: At first blush - I'd say, hey, I still have my wife, children, parents, career, church life - so, chin up, things are not so bad.  Pretty good life visualisation tool to bring some optimism back into play! ... But what if, a month later, something happens at work, and boom, career gets sidetracked, I lose my job, or get put in cold storage somewhere, like this: Oops, now only half my life is left!  With only half of life's meaning left to me, what do I do? And what if something happens to...
Read more

Family AND Team

Image
I heard an interesting viewpoint this weekend. A family is not inherently a team. Hmm.  Sometimes at work, often in church, and most of the time at home, you hear people say to each other that we are family. And often, we really are. We care for each other above and beyond transactional matters.  It matters to me when my colleagues and cell group members (and of course my actual family members) go through illnesses or family issues or work challenges. I root for their success at presentations and projects and relationships. I care about what they care about, even if it has little direct impact on my own life. In a way, a family is sort of an amalgam of people who support each other in pursuit of each member's personal goals. For example, as a father, I support my children in their academic, career and ministry goals. But where they go to school, the grades they get, and the careers and ministries they build - they're really their goals, not mine.  Ditto for my role as a c...
Read more