Session Notes

Don’t Ask, Appropriate! – Grace Walk Ministries:::Sharing the Love & Life of Christ:

“Do you need wisdom? That’s Him. Do you need righteousness? That’s Him. Holiness? That’s Him, too. Do you need sanctification, guidance, strength? It’s all Him. What do you need today? His name is IAM. I AM what? Anything you need. All the fullness of I AM is in Jesus. ‘For it was the Father’s good pleasure for all the fullness to dwell in Him’ (Col.1:19). All the fullness of Jesus is in you. Don’t pray for what you already have. Just appropriate the sufficiency of the Christ who is living in you. You don’t have to struggle or beg for what you think you need. You already have it. Just let Jesus be Jesus in and through you. “

This is an excellent article on just resting in the grace of understanding/knowing that we have everything of Christ in us now. May it be so.

Rearing Teenagers – Grace Walk Ministries:::Sharing the Love & Life of Christ:

“Teens are crying out to know, ‘Who am I? Do I have value? Am I lovable?’ Don’t undermine a person’s basic identity by striking a blow at who they are. Deal instead with the behavior. ‘You lied to me and that stands in contradiction to everything I know to be true about you!’ is a better response than calling your child a liar. 2. Allow your teen to see the authenticity of your own relationship to Christ.”

This is a great article defining a relationship with Christ. May it be so for us, our family, friends, clients, our kids schools, and the world. However it still has a focus on sin that Jesus dealt with on the cross so it needn’t be a focus. It does allude to looking at the need/feeling that caused it.

Ways To Say Good Job To Your Child, How To Say Good Job:

“75 Ways To Say ‘Good Job!’”

Excellent article!

Living Peaceably Together – Grace Walk Ministries:::Sharing the Love & Life of Christ:

“When you find it difficult to get along with somebody, there are a few things you might do which could help you navigate through stressful moments. 1. Pray a quick prayer for the person. Ask Jesus to express love to them through you. When we react to the bad mood of others with a negative response, we have allowed them to control us. Why let somebody else cause you to get in a bad mood? You can choose to express love to them and not allow the circumstance to rob you of your own joy. 2. Remember that people who are hard to get along with almost always have conflict going on within themselves. A sales clerk in a store once acted like a jerk to me. My first impulse was to react the same way (I can act like a jerk with the best of them), but instead I paused, looked at the lady and sincerely asked, ‘Are you having a bad day?’ To my amazement, she began to pour out the details of her personal life that were causing trouble for her. I was so glad that I hadn’t acted on my first impulse. Her demeanor instantly softened when I asked that question. (The question I asked could be asked in an accusatory way and add to the problem.) It was one of those ‘God-moments’ when He allowed me to see the importance of responding in love and not reacting impulsively. 3. Recognize the fact that the problem may be within you and not the other person. There have been times when I’ve found myself irritated several times by other people before it finally dawned on me – ‘They aren’t doing anything wrong. I’m just in a bad mood today!’ Maybe the quality in another person that irritates you isn’t a bad quality. Maybe that person reminds you of somebody else that you’ve had trouble with in your past. Or maybe you’re just in a bad mood yourself. When you find yourself feeling irritable toward somebody else, ask the Holy Spirit this question, ‘Lord, is it me?’ You might be surprised to find out that the problem isn’t with the other person at all. Paul determined to look beyond human characteristics and see Jesus in every Christian. Mother Teresa was once asked about her work with the lepers – ‘Do you imagine that it is Jesus ministering to them when you serve them?’ ‘No,’ she answered. ‘When I look at them, I see the face of Jesus.’”

This is a good simple article on allowing Jesus/love/His peace respond through us. The are some parts where it is a little confused. I don’t think we are controlled by another, but it can feel like it at times. Either we are new creations because we are open to the fact that Jesus took the sin of the world away or we are not at this time. May it be so for our family, friends, clients, and the world.

When God Rolls By – Grace Walk Ministries:::Sharing the Love & Life of Christ:

“Don’t allow the circumstances of your life to be what you use to determine how your Father feels about you. Circumstances can’t tell you that. If you want to know how He feels toward you, look beyond the temporal situations of life and see the cross. At the cross, you will find an expression of His divine love for you. He loves you so much that He paid the highest price to ensure that you were His for all eternity. Sometimes He shouts His love in large letters. At others times, he gently whispers His love in the recesses of our hearts. In whatever ways He chooses to speak into your life, you can be assured that you are loved. He does care . . . and nothing is ever going to change that. Listen for Him to speak to you this week and you will hear the words, ‘I love you.’ “

This is a fantastic article of encouragement when crisises happen in our lives which cause us to feel that God doesn’t love us. I pray we are all reminded by His grace at every moment that Jesus death/risenness on the cross is all we will every need to believe/experience it.

I remember Henri Nouwen, the marvelous spiritual author, once telling me personally, “Richard, if I had to describe what we mean by original sin, I believe it is humanity’s endless capacity for self-loathing.”

We were given the absolutely most magnificent gift of therapy (if I could call it that) in the Mystery of the Incarnation. If we could really believe that objectively, metaphysically we are the temple of the Holy Spirit, we are the place where the Divine dwells, and that the Holy is not out there, we could save thousands of dollars in therapy and avoid years of self-doubt.

But what did we do? We made Christianity largely into what I’ve always called a worthiness contest, a moral achievement contest, at which nobody wins. All we can do is pretend. Inside of such a system, religious people are almost programmed for hypocrisy, even with the best of intentions.

Some quotes just stand on their own.