Once you were not a people, but now you are the people of God 1 Peter 2:10a
This month two years ago, two families started meeting in the New Tampa area to share life and faith together. After a year of meeting together God slowly added new individuals, families, believers and seekers to form a community of faith. One relationship at a time we have been cobbled into a family. Things have not gone how we expected, but it has been an incredible journey. We have felt the call to start another home church just north of New Tampa, in Wesley Chapel, as part of the movement of Living Stones. We are preparing for an exciting step, as our family continues to grow.
Thursday, February 19, 2009
Thursday, February 5, 2009
Who is on your heart?
Not a week goes by that someone doesn’t capture my attention for at least for one moment. It might be the veteran holding the sign at the highway off ramp, a young lady skirting across the Bearrs Ave with groceries and infant in arms, children pouring out of an urban elementary school, or George, who sells me a Sunday paper from the roadside median.
It is easy to let these bearers of God’s image leave our minds as quickly as they entered. But Jesus normally had a different compassion for people—a compassion that led to action. And we too are blessed to be a blessing to others…
This month we are collecting clothes (specially medium, small and children’s) for Burmese refugees. Many of these individuals left Myanmar and moved here from refugee camps. And they found their way into the heart of Sergei, a member of the Living Stones family. That is where we feel mission comes from: the compassion God lays upon our hearts. And so we as a church rally around Sergei to help him to be faithful to the task God has put on his heart. It’s that same ethos that found us scooping ice cream on Christmas day.
It is too easy to allow fleeting thoughts of compassion, charity, truth and justice to be whisked away by the busyness of life around us. We have to prayerfully allow these yearnings of the heart to ignite our sense of mission—and then act on them! Who’s on your heart today? What bearer of the image of the King has God put in your path? How is God asking you to show his love, mercy and justice?
It is easy to let these bearers of God’s image leave our minds as quickly as they entered. But Jesus normally had a different compassion for people—a compassion that led to action. And we too are blessed to be a blessing to others…
This month we are collecting clothes (specially medium, small and children’s) for Burmese refugees. Many of these individuals left Myanmar and moved here from refugee camps. And they found their way into the heart of Sergei, a member of the Living Stones family. That is where we feel mission comes from: the compassion God lays upon our hearts. And so we as a church rally around Sergei to help him to be faithful to the task God has put on his heart. It’s that same ethos that found us scooping ice cream on Christmas day.
It is too easy to allow fleeting thoughts of compassion, charity, truth and justice to be whisked away by the busyness of life around us. We have to prayerfully allow these yearnings of the heart to ignite our sense of mission—and then act on them! Who’s on your heart today? What bearer of the image of the King has God put in your path? How is God asking you to show his love, mercy and justice?
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