Wednesday in the Word

Hello! This is your first Wednesday in the Word of the 2019 year! How is everyone doing?

I hope this post finds every one well. Have you been keeping up with your New Year's resolutions? To be completely honest, it has been a little hard for me, despite just having one actual resolution. I'm horrible, I know.

My resolution is to be more courageous, and letting that courage lead me to where God wants me to be. That includes here on this blog, where there may be controversial things said. Some of the things I say may be disagreed upon even by other Chrsitians, which is fine -- Christianity is about each separate personal connection and relationship with Christ.

For one of my first assignments, I am to write a response to Acts 2:42-47. To be completely honest, I am very overwhelmed by my workload, and am trying my very best to balance my work, school, church, blog, and personal life at the moment. It may be a little bit before I figure out how to post regularly, and so I will just copy and paste what I have written for my response:

[As I was going through Acts 2:42-47, the idea that kept jumping out at me was verse 44: "And all who believed were together and had all things in common." Obviously, they aren't all identical, and yet they had "all things in common", after following the apostles (who are following Jesus). There is nothing that can bring this kind of conformity than a people striving to reflect the image of God, wholeheartedly, and together as a church community. The latter verses explain what it is that these people have in common, "And they were selling their possessions and belongings and distributing the proceeds to all, as any had need. And day by day, attending the temple together and breaking bread in their homes, they received their food with glad and generous hearts, praising God and having favor with all the people. And the Lord added to their number day by day those who were being saved." 

For me, this verse illustrates what it is like when the church follows Christ, and I thought: "This must be a glimpse of how Heaven will be like!" Possessions will not have rule over us, and instead the heart for God and for God's people will be genuinely reflected through our actions. In stark contrast to the dog-eat-dog mentality in today's world, I think it is hard to even imagine this kind of lifestyle, as everyone has so much fear of losing out. This shows how faith itself should give us the heart to give, knowing we will receive when we need, because we can rely on God to lead our brothers and sisters to give, too. It becomes an interlocked network promoting Christ, where everyone understands each other's needs and are willing to help provide; rather than the more narcissist nature of today's networking scheme of trying to promote ourselves. As someone who is involved in social media and content creation, this verse challenges me to build a community on my social platforms that reflect Christ, rather than me, and for me to reflect on how that should look like. ]

I hope that all of you are having a great start of the new year, and I will be back (hopefully soon) with a new post! Catch you on the flip side!