Discipleship and Breastfeeding

There continues to be a lot of discussion in the world of Christianity about the idea of discipleship and how can we as followers of Christ do a better job of investing in people's lives. There are tons of books and resources out there that have provided myself and others some valuable insight into this quandary. With this abundance of resources I think many of us have gotten away from studying (with a specific guidebook) what God's word has to say on this issue. Today I would like to share with you some ideas that are a result of my mind pondering on just a few verses from 1 Peter 2.

The verses from this chapter that really seem to struck a cord were verses 1-3 and even more specifically verse 2. From this verse I began to wonder about the parallels of breastfeeding and discipleship. Here are some of thoughts that come from those wanderings.

• Someone must be willing and able to provide the milk. Not all mothers want to breastfeed and not all mothers can breastfeed. We also know that women who are not the biological mother can produce milk for an infant. The same is true in discipleship. Not everyone is williing to do it (though we should be just like I personally think all mom's should be willing to do it) and not all of us are best wired to do it.
• Not always on a set schedule. Infants do not always eat on a set schedule though some do develop an eating schedule. Many of us have tried to make disciplining someone something that happens when we want it to as opposed to when it needs to (infants eat when they need to not necessarily when we want them to).
• Breastfeeding passes the health and strength from one generation to the next. Breastfeeding typically gives an infant a stronger immune system sooner. The same is true of discipleship. The "older" generation passes it's knowledge and experiences to the "younger" generation. This should allow the "younger" generation to develop a deeper understanding of God sooner than the previous generation.
• Each child is different when it comes to being ready to move on from breastfeeding. As a discipler we must see each person different and understand that some people will take more time to "get it" than others.
• Sometime there does come a point when the mother must be the one to initiate the end of breastfeeding. Many times we must be the ones who sort of force the younger ones to move on to someone else to get their spiritual development. There can be a variety of reasons for this.
• Breastfeeding is mutually beneficial. Mothers bond with their babies through the process and babies receive a variety of incredible benefits. Discipleship relationships are the same way. Each person will benefit and both will be better long term for the relationship.

I hope these all made sense. What do you think? Have any more thoughts on this, if so please share them with all of us.

Ligaments for life

Many people have heard that love is the greatest of all those things that we must seek to find and live with. We see this all over the worldly cultures. We have countless stories of people who are willing to sacrifice anything for love (think Romeo and Juliet). I believe this desire for love is a God given desire and something that He has hard wired in to us, as His creation. Unfortunately, love is like the various other gifts God has given us in that we, through our sin, have developed some screwy concepts about how love is suppossed to be. In many ways we have made love more complicated than it was created to be.

The Bible gives some pretty clear direction on love. We must love God first. We show Him our love for Him by following His commandments. So how do we follow his commandments? I think it begins with living our lives as the incredibly wonderful creations He has made us to be. A major part of this is using those gifts He has given us (1 Corinthians 12). We must use these gifts to their maximum potential and ability. We must also allow others in the church to do the same thing. When we are all doing this then we will act as a single body that accomplishes great things. This body though is not that far different from our own bodies in that it's joints are held together by a series of ligaments.

Ligaments are those strands of fibers that literally hold our joints together. They prevent our joints from bending in ways that would be detrimental to our bodies. The body of Christ is no different. The ligaments (translated unity) that hold us together is our love (Colossians 3:14) for one another. I believe this principle can be applied to our other relationships.

So this Father's Day I would encourage you to show your love for the Heavenly Father by following His commandments. Be willing to follow Him to the ends of the earth and do whatever He wants you to do no matter the cost.

How to best love someone

Have you ever been in that place where you really wanted to be able to show someone that you love them but you just could not figure out the best way to do that?

I know I have been in that place many times. Usually when I started thinking like that my mind goes to thoughts about who that person is and what might appeal to them. This though is really the wrong approach. Our first approach really needs to be a focus on God and His commands (2 John 5,6). This does not mean and that we do consider who this person is and how they receive love but it does mean that we need to always make sure that our hearts are set towards God so that our love for Him and His love for us will overflow into our love for others.

Some may say that many people love with being saved and to a certain extent this is true. We are all create with a certain capacity to love and a desire to be loved. I believe this a reflection of being created in the image of God who is Love. In all reality though it is only when we are madly in love with our Savior that we can truly and fully love someone else.

Today hope you are able to truly love someone.

Do you love food?

Do you love food? Are there certain tastes that just are beyond your ability to truly describe? I really have two foods that I just love to eat. They are my wife's tater tot caserole and my mom's chicken and rice. Did you know that God has this same kind of love for you and me? I know it may sound weird but you can check it out for yourself at Malachi 1:2. So what does this mean for us. Well, I think this gives us hope as we struggle with our intense desire for things. Ths hope comes from the fact that the intense desire itself is not a bad thing but it is where we place that desire that becomes sinful for us. In fact the desire it is a aprt of how God has wired us. So the key becomes focussing that desire on God and the things He desires us to focus on.

I think for so long we have beaten ourselves up for having intense desires for things of this world and our solution has been to try and eliminate our ability to long after anything. Or if we decided we could keep these longs we could only have them for God alone. Neither of these solutions are totally correct. First of all God has wired us to be passionate creatures. Second, while it is true that we should focus a lot of attention on God Himself I am not so sure that it all needs to be focussed on the person of God. I think that if focus entirely on Him then we can easily miss that which He is doing. We must learn to also focus on God's activity here on earth.

I hope that today is a day where we can all learn to focus our "love of food" on God and His work and a little less on the fleating things of this world.