1 Corinthians 15:33
"Be not deceived: evil communications corrupt good manners."
Proverbs 13:20-25 MSG
"Become wise by walking with the wise; hang out with fools and watch your life fall to pieces.
Disaster entraps sinners, but God-loyal people get a good life.
A good life gets passed on to the grandchildren; ill-gotten wealth ends up with good people.
Banks foreclose on the farms of the poor, or else the poor lose their shirts to crooked lawyers.
A refusal to correct is a refusal to love; love your children by disciplining them.
An appetite for good brings much satisfaction, but the belly of the wicked always wants more."
"Be not deceived: evil communications corrupt good manners."
Proverbs 13:20-25 MSG
"Become wise by walking with the wise; hang out with fools and watch your life fall to pieces.
Disaster entraps sinners, but God-loyal people get a good life.
A good life gets passed on to the grandchildren; ill-gotten wealth ends up with good people.
Banks foreclose on the farms of the poor, or else the poor lose their shirts to crooked lawyers.
A refusal to correct is a refusal to love; love your children by disciplining them.
An appetite for good brings much satisfaction, but the belly of the wicked always wants more."
In the animated movie Ice Age, when saber-tooth tigers attack a tribe of nomads, a mother and her baby attempt to outrun the man-eating beasts but are cornered at a raging waterfall. The little boy is discovered by a wooly mammoth named Manfred, a sloth name Sid, and a saber-tooth tiger named Diego. These three unlikely companions unite on a common mission to return the baby to his father.
As the trio treks through a mountainous terrain of ice and snow carrying the baby, at one point the mammoth, sloth, and tiger realize they're on an erupting volcano. The heat of the lava melts the glacier bridges atop the ice fields, separating Diego from the others. Isolated on a quickly melting island of ice, Diego jumps to reach the others, but falls short. Dangling from the edge of the ice field, his grip falters, and he falls. Manfred, unwilling to let Diego perish, leaps into a chasm after him and tosses the tiger upwards to safety. Diego, realizing the danger involved in the rescue, is moved by Manfred's compassion, courage, and sacrifice.
"Why did you do that?" he asks. "You could have died trying to save me."
Humbly, the mammoth responds, "That's what you do when you're part of a herd. You look after each other." Amazed at the convergence of circumstances that has brought these three together, Sid muses aloud. "I don't know about you guys, but we are one strange herd."
One strange herd! Don’t you feel like that’s a great description of the church sometimes? A mix of people with different personalities, different backgrounds, different ideas sometimes, who might never hang out together— except for the one thing that we have in common: we love Jesus. And in one way or another, we have been transformed by His amazing love and mercy. Because of that, we hang out together. But even more than that, as the film illustrates in a cute way, as a “herd” of Christ followers, we look after each other—even if we might look a little strange at times.
When the church is working right, it becomes a place where our old nature and our old instincts begin to die and we start thinking completely different about the people around us. People who we might never have associated with before, or people who we never would have thought we would befriend, suddenly become our brothers and sisters. And we find ourselves wanting to bring in more and more of those who might not belong anywhere else—we find a place for them. And our herd, our community, becomes a place of love and service; a place where people experience the transforming power of Jesus as work in their lives.
Join me again tomorrow as we dive into this a little deeper.
If video doesn't show up here below view in Browser of click here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0LXiiqm5LbY
As the trio treks through a mountainous terrain of ice and snow carrying the baby, at one point the mammoth, sloth, and tiger realize they're on an erupting volcano. The heat of the lava melts the glacier bridges atop the ice fields, separating Diego from the others. Isolated on a quickly melting island of ice, Diego jumps to reach the others, but falls short. Dangling from the edge of the ice field, his grip falters, and he falls. Manfred, unwilling to let Diego perish, leaps into a chasm after him and tosses the tiger upwards to safety. Diego, realizing the danger involved in the rescue, is moved by Manfred's compassion, courage, and sacrifice.
"Why did you do that?" he asks. "You could have died trying to save me."
Humbly, the mammoth responds, "That's what you do when you're part of a herd. You look after each other." Amazed at the convergence of circumstances that has brought these three together, Sid muses aloud. "I don't know about you guys, but we are one strange herd."
One strange herd! Don’t you feel like that’s a great description of the church sometimes? A mix of people with different personalities, different backgrounds, different ideas sometimes, who might never hang out together— except for the one thing that we have in common: we love Jesus. And in one way or another, we have been transformed by His amazing love and mercy. Because of that, we hang out together. But even more than that, as the film illustrates in a cute way, as a “herd” of Christ followers, we look after each other—even if we might look a little strange at times.
When the church is working right, it becomes a place where our old nature and our old instincts begin to die and we start thinking completely different about the people around us. People who we might never have associated with before, or people who we never would have thought we would befriend, suddenly become our brothers and sisters. And we find ourselves wanting to bring in more and more of those who might not belong anywhere else—we find a place for them. And our herd, our community, becomes a place of love and service; a place where people experience the transforming power of Jesus as work in their lives.
Join me again tomorrow as we dive into this a little deeper.
If video doesn't show up here below view in Browser of click here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0LXiiqm5LbY
ACTION STEP: You get to chose who you hang out with. Choose carefully. Memorize the scriptures above. Love yourself enough to develop yourself into someone you like being with. Learn about what interest you enough, that someone else wants to hear what you have to say, as much as you want to share it; to make others lives better. Be who you are looking for. Find a community going in the God direction, and be apart of the community, by bringing all you are to that community and watch yourself grow.
I believe in you and you need to believe in yourself.
I believe in you and you need to believe in yourself.
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