Loving More than Just your Neighbor

Today, as a sort of follow up to last week's discussion on Loving God, we discussed the importance of loving your neighbor, and equally as importantly, your enemies. This naturally follows a discussion on Loving God, because one of the best ways to show our love for God is through loving our neighbors.
Naturally, we discussed the parable of the Good Samaritan- and how, regardless of what our gut reaction is towards someone in need, it is always right to help them. Of course, in modern days, we don't often encounter people lying on the side of the road, and so it becomes harder to find those enemies, or even just neighbors, in need of assistance.

So what is loving your enemy?

There's two important things we can take away from our discussion on that, at least. First of all, love is an action. It's not a feeling; it's something we should be able to do whether we find ourselves willing, or only doing it because we know it's what God wants us to do. Also, the best way of doing this, especially with someone you can't easily help day-to-day- is to pray for them. That always works, and often, it opens the door to restorations of friendship and healing of wounds.

Finally, we ended with a challenge- Do it! Try, with God's help, to live the life He wants you to, by loving even those who want to harm you, or don't care about you. That's the only way things can change. For better guidelines on what love is and how to love, read Romans 12:9-21. Memorize it too. It's always true.

Loving God

Today in TLC, we talked about loving God. We sat in our usual circle and discussed what love is. After discussing for a few minutes, we came to the conclusion that  "we love because he first loved us." (1 John 4:19) So then, what is God's love and how did he show it to us? While we were his enemies, he dies for us on the cross. Isn't that amazing? Jesus dying on the cross isn't something that just happened 2000 years ago. He is alive and pours his love over us each day. We just have to recognize what he does for us. So, most of us shared how God has shown us his love and answered our prayers. Think about all that God has done for you - all the little and big things and give him thanks! We have received so much from God. His love, grace, mercy, peace, answered prayers, etc. Let's love him back by obeying him and giving him our whole heart. We challenged you guys to love God this week, but we did not get to really discuss how to do that. However, we can love God by obeying him, spending time with him (quiet time & prayer), loving others, or whatever you can come up with. (:

Go love him with your whole heart & be blessed while you take your midterms!


Don't forget - we'll see you at the flag pole at 7:30 on Jan 24th!

What is Trusting God?

Hi Guys! I hope the new year is going well. Today we had our veteran leaders, Jimmy and David, come back and visit and lead us in discussion, and also lead us in a short time of worship. (stay tuned on this- we may be trying to do it more ourselves, as soon as we can come up with the instrument.)

Anyway, the main idea of today was to be an encouragement- more specifically, an encouragement to trust in God in our daily lives. It's very easy to say we trust in God, and maybe even think it, but too often, actually doing it becomes very difficult. So it's an encouragement to think about what it means to trust God, and look at how that fits into life. (or, more importantly, how our lives can fit into a framework that relies on, trusts, and has faith in God.)

It's hard to do, especially in a society and a school that pushes us to be independent, and in which we often have to be independent- homework, scheduling, making time for TLC, etc. But in the end, trusting God is worth it. After all, He alone knows what really matters- so let him lead you through life. And that test tomorrow.

New Year!

Today we sat in our usual circle and discussed these questions:

Name one highlight of this past year.
Name a lesson you learned this past year.
How have you grown this year?
What are you hoping to get out of this year?
Any new year resolutions?

A lot of us shared, but I doubt that we really had time to think deeply about each question. I challenge you guys to go deeper and really think about 2011 and write it out. No one has to see it, but feel free to share it if you want on the facebook group page! (:

Have a good week & see you guys next week!
We'll be having a guest speaker next week. It'll be a good opportunity to bring your friends.

Christmas Party!

Hey guys!

Today we had our Christmas party. Thanks for everyone who brought food to share! It went really well. We also took a group picture (possible that it may be in the yearbook).Check out the pictures on the TLC facebook group! :)

After we got our food and ate, we read Luke 2 and enacted the Christmas story. If you want to read it, it's here http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Luke%202&version=NIV1984

It's amazing how God sent Jesus humbly to us as a child. As Christmas time comes around again, we want you to really think about the real meaning of Christmas. That sounded really cliche, but just spend half an hour really thinking about what it means to you and the world. People waited for the Messiah, Jesus, for hundreds of years and he finally came as a baby. He came so humbly. Let's praise him for it!

Just think about it.

Have a fantastic week! Only one week to go 'till break. Merry Christmas & Happy New year! See you guys next year. By the way, we will not be having TLC next week.

Congratulations to the winners of the baking competition!

Jered, Hannah, and Olushola!

Philippians 3

So today we talked about purpose. I started off by asking everyone what they wanted to be. Most people answered with a career or just "I don't know". We then talked about what purpose is. Purpose is a direction that we want our life to go. It is not attainable; it is meant to give us something to strive for. We then looked into the bible, specifically Philippians 3, to see what it had to say. Paul talks about his previous life and how he put his confidence in the "flesh", his status and achievements. He gives his brief testimony to tell us what not to do. He then encourages us to place our value in knowing Christ and pursuing a relationship with Him. Knowing Christ is of so much value to Paul that everything else was worthless. His old life focused on himself; gaining God's favor by following the law. However, he realized that he has to get righteousness not in the law but through faith in God. Only then can we be right before God. His purpose changed from gaining God's favor in his own efforts to knowing Christ. Paul reminds us that he has not yet attained the prize of full knowledge of Christ but that he presses on to reach it. He further encourages us to not set our minds on earthly things but reminds us that our citizenship is in heaven. I hope that I was able to get you all thinking about what your purpose is and what you want to do with the rest of your life. Hopefully we all will realize that knowing God is the only purpose worth striving after, the only direction that can lead us to God, and the only thing that has value.

Operation Christmas Child

Thank you to guys who brought boxes and presents today! We really need to thank God for providing us with so much today. There were a lot of boxes, toys, and stuffed animals from Ms. Wagner. As we talked about it two weeks ago, today was a day give back the love we receive from God. God gave us so much - John 3:16 says "For God so loved the world he gave his one and only son that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life" and this was our small way of giving back. :) It was really fun, but this is just one way to love others! Continue to love others.

announcements:

1. The Walk for the Homeless is still this Saturday November 19th -contact Grace if you're interested
2. T-shirt money will be due the next time we meet! November 30th.
3. So there is no TLC next week because of Thanksgiving break. :) Have a good Thanksgiving!