investment

just a quick thought...

its been close to 2 months since I left my congregation. I haven't found another one yet. I have however been enjoying the blessing of visiting and experiencing different fellowships.

something dawned on me just now, and it came from an email dialogue started by someone I know who expressed his displeasure with the lack of love shown across the net amongst believers, a woman responded to him with this.

Y'shua said we are His disciples IF

John 13:35
"By this all men will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another."


IF we LOVE one another.

And what is LOVE my friends? A few warm words typed across the net? I am sorry but that is not LOVE.

Love is giving up your desires to see that your brothers and sisters are cared for. Love is serving each other by making meals for each other, fixing up each others houses, helping meet your brother and sisters needs, homeschooling together, having Shabbat together, studying together....it is living day to day together.

I sit in my house EVERY DAY with a toddler and no one to talk to because I am supposed to be a keeper of the home. I spend EVERY SHABBAT with a crazy toddler running around with no one to play with. IS THAT THE ABUNDANT LIFE Y'SHUA CAME TO GIVE US? no! There are Acts 2 and 4 communities all over the world experiencing Life by being true brothers and sisters. What brothers and sisters ever lived across the net anyway?

so to reiterate, something dawned on me when I read this a moment ago, well two things dawned on me. The first thing was the fact that in my past congregation I knew first hand and experienced the "true love" of Christ in the scriptures, the love where we rebuked, corrected, and admonished one another in self examining honesty. We had a real since of community amongst ourselves, we each thought of one another's needs before our own, and money was not an issue when it came to taking care of things for one another.

the second thing I think about is how, now that I don't have that congregation anymore, and now that I am alone, in my heart I know I need a congregation because no man is an island and I truly believe that we as human beings are communal by nature and are made for fellowship. And as I am convicted of these things, I have; (since leaving my congregation) been searching for where the Father would have me be.
I have come across some wonderful places....yet I each time I struggle with certain things that I feel may be reasons for me not to be there, (rather founded or unfounded I am not entirely sure in some cases)

I think about these things and reflect on the admonishment of a speaker at a conference that I went to recently who said simply, " find a place of fellowship and invest yourself there".....

and that is what I must do...because, I know that no place of fellowship, no congregation is "perfect" or has it all.....and I by no means am searching for that "perfect place" because it does not exist and the world of true believers is composed of sick people who are sincerely seeking to be healed by the only One who can heal them, the very one who came and died for them...

we are all trying to make it, no one has made it, ...i know as well that out of all of the doctrinal and ideological issues of man, the scriptures are consistent and true, and man will ever be searching and wading through the waters of it.....

and the end result is all about the heart...and the change that the Heavenly Father desires to see within each of us...

anyway, those are just my thoughts...

shalom to whomever reads this...