10.30.2005

Deeper Life Weekend

The Deeper Life weekend with the Gillingham’s was beautiful. It wasn’t an extreme, in your face, cut to the heart, fall on your face, everyone is prophetic time. They spoke on mercy and Social Justice. Something the Salvation Army should be and was created to be well equipped to do. We spent some time with them Saturday morning listening to them teach on the mercy that Jesus portrayed and how he met the needs when he saw them. We took action with the Micah 6:8 commission to “do Justice and love mercy and walk humbly with our God”. We went into the Soup Kitchen that the corps is running and served lunch and ministered to the people that came in. Elaine brought up an interesting point about the soup kitchen, she said, “Everyone always talks about getting people here to the corps and doing something to bring people inside when in fact it’s happening every day in the kitchen. The people are always coming in to the corps and we need to be there to bring the Gospel to them.” It couldn’t be any easier than that. We then of course had a debrief those are always fun and we had some time to pray for each other and listen to what God wants to do in our hearts. What he wants to see change in order for us to have a heart that breaks for the lost and hurting people in our city. To have a heart that wants to see a change. We should want to feel what Christ feels when he sees his children so we can see the need and need and then take action to meet that need.

On Sunday Elaine took the preaching position. She spoke in the covenant that all the soldiers signed when we became Soldiers of The Salvation Army. She asked us to recite some of the standards we agreed to live by when we signed the Covenant. No one could, except the agreement to abstain form alcohol and drugs. There is so much more to our covenant, but it seems most people don't really think about it. We may think that other church members don't know that I'm not living up to my covenant. They shouldn't care; it's not a covenant between you and the other soldiers, or you and the church, it's a covenant between you and God. We've all grown accustomed to thinking that being a christian is easy because we've taken the easy route our whole lives. We think that because The Slavation Army as a whole is doing great things we personally are living up to our covenant. To me it seems if you're not striving and working to live like a covenanted soldier then you may not be living like one. Elaine alsom mentioned that as solider we are in a community it should be our job to fight alongside our commrades and keep each other accountable to living up to our covenant. We live in a community as soldiers, and that community should be living up to covenant that it agreed to rather than just part of it. We are a covenanted community lets live like it.

Back in the day God killed people for breaking a covenant with him.

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