Sunday Morning Home Fellowship Live 2/11/2018
We restart our home fellowship tomorrow at 10am and will continue in the book of Romans which we are close to finishing. Our next study will be the book of Galatians. Watch our live study beginning after we finish our fellowship breakfast. You can interact through email (mail@tanc.online) or call into the radio program
(1-929-477-2696). We are broadcasting simultaneously on BOXCAST and Blog Talk Radio.
How Much?
The Bible never states how much love fulfills the whole law. I think this is deliberate because only law asks, “How much?” The classic law mindset doesn’t rejoice in every act of love, but drags every act of love into the Protestant court of “The righteous demands of the law.”
— Paul M. Dohse (@PaulMDohse) February 9, 2018
The Power of Patience and Weakness of Law
The key to good relationships, especially marriage, is love-thinking rather than law-thinking. Law-thinking saturates Western culture; both secular and religious. Love-thinking has several key elements, but this post primarily addresses patience.
Patience and perseverance are closely related, but not exactly the same. Perseverance is a process that finds victory through the middle. In other words, perseverance does not run away from a problem, but finds a solution that rectifies the problem. Nor does perseverance find a shortcut for purposes of a temporary solution. Perseverance is what we do in order to endure a trial of some sort. This is how we are strengthened by trials; because trials increase our wisdom and make us more efficient in living. This is because trials force us to be solution oriented which makes us better at living life overall.
Patience is a reserved, or even loving response to something that is personally annoying. It is an immense power that every believer possesses, but the irreligious are not lacking in this capability either. Patience is always a choice.
Christians have a long way to go in teaching themselves love-thinking because we have been conditioned from generation to generation to see reality from a law prism. Remember, law is good, but the application of law determines whether it is law or love. That is, the law of sin, condemnation, and death, or the love application. Hence, every challenge or problem of life should be used to evaluate law-thinking versus love-thinking. Something to keep in mind: love-thinking always possesses hope. Anything among the living that logically calls for a hopeless conclusion isn’t true.
As I have mentioned before, I am a task oriented person who has a laser focus on the task at hand. When I wake up in the morning, my mental faculties are focused on the big agenda for that day whatever it might be. With Susan, not so much. Susan is a big-picture thinker unlimited by time and world population. While I am focused on the big task of the day, Susan may want to discuss the details of a vacation we are going on two years from now as one of several other discussions on her mind.
Of course I am exaggerating to clarify the point, but this drives me absolutely bonkers. However, this is also indicative of how two companions compliment each other with different gifts and different personality traits. This could be the first point in where we fail to have patience. The focus is the interference with an agenda rather than acknowledging that the other person should be free to be who they are, and the virtues thereof. What is good about who they are isn’t the focus, the distraction from the passion is the focus. The other person is then condemned for being annoying. And, the annoyed one is in-turn condemned for being unloving and indifferent. Let the downward cycle of condemnation begin. All too often, the suggested cure is more condemnation, or if you will, more law.
Secondly, being annoyed is the trumpet call for patience, and this takes faith. Patience is a powerful force made possible by love, and we have a choice as to whether we exercise that gift or not. We never “lose patience,” we simply choose not to find it. If we believe that, and choose not to believe a lie, we will have patience in that situation. Of course, we are weak and will often choose to be annoyed, but it is nevertheless a choice. This will mean we will be quick to listen and slow to speak, and enter conversationally into the other person’s agenda when possible.
Thirdly, patience acknowledges that the other person may never change in regard to a particular characteristic, and excepts that without condemning the other person. Love assumes that the other born-again loving person is always pondering ways of change, and doesn’t need us to be judge, jury, and executioner. Love assumes that the other person is always self-judging and doesn’t need us to pile on. Most change comes from people deciding to follow a certain example. Think about this for a moment: do married couples have a tendency to adapt each other’s mannerisms for better or worse? Yes, so remember, this dynamic is already at work for our advantage.
Another thing that paves the way for patience is preparing our minds for action, as the apostle Peter stated it. You would think that after seven years of marriage, I would go to bed at night saying to myself, “Now, when I wakeup in the morning I am going to be focused on cutting trees down in the backyard, but Susan is probably going to be starting conversations about grandchildren etc., you know, things that can’t cut down trees. I need to put aside trees for an hour and enter into her good desires. That’s love. Patience is a powerful force that doesn’t need planning, but in our weakness it helps us to implement it. Nevertheless, remember, impatience is condemnation and when impatience is assumed to be indifference, or disrespect, that can become a condemnation free-for-all.
Look out for our propensity to be Protestants in these situations with all of the church talking points following: “You need to change in regard to this problem.” “We need to hold each other accountable.” “We need to…”
…excuse me, do we not have enough to do already? We need to evaluate, not legislate. How did law-thinking get us here? What is more legislation going to do? It is going to further restrain our time to love and try to fix condemnation with more condemnation while subtracting from love. Love assumes the other person cares and no legislation is needed; maybe some good ideas, but not more law.
Faults are interconnected. Focusing on faults only leads to revelations about more faults until the person is totally disparaged in the eyes of others. Fault-finding assumes the other person is not motivated by love. Granted, if ill motives are involved, law may be needed, but love assumes that the other person is motivated by love overall.
In my first marriage, I owned a construction company and our forte was not really tree cutting. But times were slow, and in an endeavor to sufficiently support my family, I decided to take a job that involved cutting down three medium sized trees on a flat terrain. For the price, it looked like a no-brainer. However, I forget what kind of trees they were, but the limbs are tightly interwoven within each other and as you cut the trees apart, they unfold into more and more limbs. In other words, each tree was easily five times the work they appeared to be. Well, I was unmercifully condemned by my first wife for making a “foolish business decision.” See, this is what law does; my motive for love wasn’t even on the radar screen of her mind. Moreover, every business decision I made after that was called into question accordingly (which robs one of confidence, an essential element of success). This is what law does; and this is why the Bible calls it “the law of sin and death.” In this worldview, you either sin, or you don’t break “the law” which also includes laws dictated by the sinful desires of others to control you because that’s what sin does to begin with.
Jesus died to buy our freedom from the law, and enslave us to love.
Always continue to set the example of love for others you are in relationships with, and assume that their motive is love. People change when they want to, and how they want to, and you are not going to change that. Keep setting the right example, and learn from their examples, and share ideas about using the law for love applications, not law applications, and most of all, use the patience granted to you by the new birth.
For we are under grace and not law.
paul
Will the Real Home Fellowship Movement Please Stand Up?
By all indications, if you search for the information, “house churches” are growing in number. In fact, words like “exploding” are being used to describe the rate of growth. Church leadership remains coy in responding to the movement because the movement doesn’t represent a significant threat to the institutional church. Addressing a belief or a movement only empowers it and gives it credibility as an argument having enough validity to be addressed.
Besides, most house churches are just that; church, along with the same orthodoxy, in a house. Most mega-churches hold mid-week “services” in the private homes of members anyway. Furthermore, many of these house churches are looking to “grow” into having their own purpose builds as well. Unfortunately, this probably makes up the bulk of the movement and poses no threat whatsoever to the institutional church. Hence, the issue is barely on the radar screen.
Then you have home fellowships that focus on practical method, or a model that’s not a “business model.” And, the doctrine being implemented within that model is anyone’s guess. In the vast majority of cases leftover from everyday church in a house, it’s mysticism.
How are we different? Our method of meeting together flows from doctrine. Meeting in a home is a statement about our gospel. We function as a body, and our membership is fellowship.
We meet in homes because families meet in homes, and we are a “household of faith.” This is a statement in regard to the new birth which justifies us. We function as a body with Christ as the head. We are guided by the “mind of Christ” and our unity is determined by agreement on that one mind. Agreement comes through persuasion, not authority.
Members make up the body, and the members are defined by gifts granted by the Spirit in the new birth. To the degree that each member functions according to gifts, the body is healthy. The like-minded members who fellowship with the body are the members by virtue of their participation, not some legal contract. Like the human body, we function according to a cooperative effort towards the same goal, and again, not authority.
We don’t meet in homes because it’s an anti-business model or the best model for other practical reasons which are, in fact, many, we meet in homes because of the doctrine of new birth justification. We also meet in homes because all of life is worship, not just when we assemble together. We don’t “Enter to Worship, and Leave to Serve” as posted above many “sanctuary” doors, we enter to serve each other so we can better worship when we leave.
paul
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