Skip to main content

Individuality verses family, pride verses serving.

This morning I had this dream and I want to share some parts of it as I feel it is important to address some of these issues that I saw happening in this dream.

One part I saw a young man come into our home with his food, but someone was already preparing food for the family but this young man came in and brought his own food and cooked for himself.  And to me someone else was already cooking, but he just took over, and he was treating it like a flatting situation instead of a family situation where we all ate together around the table and had fellowship together.  As I went to talk to this young one who came in, he wouldn't listen that we wanted what he brought, but he just stormed out and wouldn't even listen or talk, taking friends with him.

This I believe is quite significant at the moment as many of us come into the house and family of God but once in, see ourselves as individuals and do what we want instead of contributing to the whole and being a part of the whole family.  And when someone may challenge us with it, we won't even listen to what they have to say, but leave with offence taking others with us.

We are called as Christians to be a body, to work together, to be a family who help each other, who care for others needs above our own, who serve one another.  But in this dream it was all about the individual doing what they wanted.  This too is true across the denominations, as we are all still one body, one family, we are not individuals.  Many come into the body of Christ but still consider it is all about them and what they can get out of it rather than how they can be a part of a body that has something to contribute and bring to help the body be a family that functions well together.

The other part of the dream, I was taking a teaching on something and this person had freely given $100 but during the teaching, they didn't want to do what was asked and started complaining that it wasn't value for money and wouldn't submit to what was being asked of them and once again walked out.

I find this really interesting because we will freely give money and think we are freely giving it but when we don't get something in return for our money, we complain.   And I think of the scripture that talks about giving freely not expecting anything in return.

The other part of it was we wont do what people suggest we should do and in not doing it we do not honour the person bringing it and we do not reap what we could have reaped had we honoured what they suggested we do.  But instead we get offended because someone is asking us to do something we don't want to do or are not willing to do.   And in this I think of the Karate Kid movie and how he wanted to learn Karate but his teacher first started him doing what seemed like meaningless housekeeping jobs, but in the end it all came together and proved invaluable.  During the course of the movie he nearly walked out as he only saw it one way and that was he was doing this mans cleaning, but actually the teacher through those jobs of housecleaning were valuable lessons that was being taught.   Often we complain about doing something but in the end they bring us some very valuable lessons if we don't get upset and walk out. 





Popular posts from this blog

"A man's enemies will be the members of his own household" Matt 10:36

Recently we have been pondering how to deal with situations in our family that don't line up with the word. What action do we need to take?  Are we being too harsh?  Do we accept the behaviour or be considered by those around us as "too radical" or "too black and white"?  "Where is grace in all of this? How do we love the sinner but hate the sin?  What about forgiveness?  What is the role of discipline?   What makes that sin any worse than lying?  What is true love?  And there are a lot more questions going through the mind in how to work through this and know God's will and desire for the situation and the person. And firstly to say we have not come to any conclusions and are growing and learning day by day in this but I want to throw it out there. In Matt 10:34-39 says "Do not suppose that I have come to bring peace to the earth.  I did not come to bring peace, but a sword.  For I have come to turn "a man against his father, ...

"I am ruined for the ordinary"

“I am ruined for the ordinary” A statement that can possibly be to some, come from a place of judgement, or it can be from a place of there is more in the Kingdom of God that I am yet to experience or understand, revelation that I have tasted of something that actually shows me that I have not tasted of anything yet.  A place where there is such a contentment and joy in what I have seen and longed to see and yet a revelation that there is way more "beyond what I think, ask and imagine" (Eph 3:20) and one that spurs me on to seek and discover all the fullness that could be ours in the Kingdom of God. When we as Christians see other Christians going places or experiencing things that we don’t understand or perhaps we have not yet moved in, we can either become jealous of that person and judge and bring them down to our level, exclude them from our lives or we can choose to be excited by what is happening and be encouraged and spurred on in the Lord for the more than ca...

Education changes the fabric of community

Hosea 4:6  "My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge" "Education changes the fabric of community" was a quote by one of the ladies at the gathering of Women that I went to yesterday.  This quote struck me as I had never seen the impact that can be created in what we are are doing in GRM through "Schools of the Spirit" and in "training and equipping", "in preaching and teaching", people in the variety of ways that we do, how we can effect and change communities and societies. In reality that is what we are doing, if only in a little way, it makes a ripple effect that can change so much more than we think or realise, ask or imagine.(Eph 3:30) They shared about what they consider "success" to look like and they defined it as people who: Had courage Tenacity and Resilience Integrity and humility Creativity Ambition - "Say Yes" Respect This was a gathering of very influential women of society and bus...

Obedience and Commitment are big things in Gods Kingdom

Reading in Acts 7 this morning the story through Stephen of Abraham being told by God to " Leave your country and your people and go the the land I will show you"   So he left the land of the Chaldeans and settled in Haran. After the death of his father, God sent him to this land where you are now living.  He gave him no inheritance here, not even a foot of ground.  But God promised him that he and his descendants after him would possess the land, even though at that time Abraham had no child." As I reflected on this and the journey of Abraham stepping out in faith into a land that he received no inheritance in but a promise of what was to come for his descendants of which we live in the fruit of that, I thought of todays generations in which often is only doing things that we want to do or that will benefit us personally as we live for 'today' not worrying about tomorrow.  A sense of if it feels good then do it, if it doesn't then we will move on -  perhap...

Distraction or Traction?

Our most value asset is:  TIME I don't know about you but I find it is easy to get distracted and drawn away from what I was intending to do or where my focus needed to be. I often find myself getting 'entangled in civilian affairs' as it says in the scripture above.  But the discernment is knowing if that is God's interruption for the day or a distraction that takes me away from the purpose and plan that God would have me walk in. I think we can often miss those God opportunities and God calls on our life because of distractions. " A distraction is something we do that moves us away  from what we really want." Distractions bring confusion, feeling like you are in a muddle, not knowing where you are going, often feeling like you are busy but probably not really achieving a great deal. The opposite of distraction is TRACTION. Traction is an action that moves us toward what we really want.  Momentum and movement toward the desires of the heart.  But often we don...
I shared last night about 1 Cor 15:36 "What you sow does not come to life unless it dies. When you sow, you do not plant the body that will be, but just a seed, perhaps of wheat or of something else. But God gives it a body as he has determined, and to each kind of seed he gives its own body..." I was preaching on it last night and it will come up in video form later in the week on the GRM sight, mainly reflecting on we can sow things one way, but God raises it up as HE determines how it should look. But this morning I got more revelation which will be quite obvious to some, but to me it struck me afresh. When we sow something it get's buried, it cannot be pulled back up. It no longer has 'connection' with 'me' if you like. It gets 'covered over' unable to be pulled up. And yet I recognise in my own life how we can sow something but there are still 'strings attached' as such as we often are still determining or expecting it be rai...