FINISHED

It's hard to believe we began our study into Wes Yoder's book ' BOND OF BROTHERS'  more than a year ago.  Sunday, we finished sharing our favorite passage from Chapter Twelve of the book.  What continues to amaze me is how the Holy Spirit arranges the shared passages so that a theme develops for that morning. The first Sunday, the theme was forgiveness.  The second Sunday we focused on dealing with failure, The third Sunday, we dealt with Tact, and this week we ended with how God gives us grace to be ourselves.

One of the greatest struggles for any religion is the struggle to focus people in on what you believe, while giving them the ability to be themselves.  It is human nature to want people to join you in your belief system.  It validates you, you validate them, and the validation solidifies your belief. It doesn't matter how far-fetched your belief is, if someone else believes with you, it makes it harder to shake your confidence.  At the extreme end of that belief, is the temptation to enforce your belief system on someone else.  As one of the Brothers pointed out, imposing our will on others is not what Christ intended.  Actually, we pretty much all agree that our Creator enjoys the diversity, creativity, and individuality of His creation.  It was never His intention to form us into mindless robots, serving out of programming instead of desire.  Actually, it is proof of his love for us, that we have the free will to believe in Him.

We came to the same conclusion as Bro. Yoder, God is not afraid of our creativity, and He doesn't destroy our individuality.  He incorporates our unique qualities (warts and all) into a wonderful work of art, called life.  A life of faith is not the imposition of belief, but submission, honor, and respect for the unique person that is the Christ-Man.  Our elder brother Jesus, showed us what he hoped for the Church to look like, by taking twelve men, and making them His followers.  He never once condemned them for their individuality, nor did he choose them because they were all of the same profession.  Among them were hot-heads, pragmatists, conformists, liberals, brawlers, conservatives, thieves, and even one traitor.  He didn't even ask them to believe before He asked them to follow Him.

God celebrates our uniqueness!  The brush strokes, chisel marks, and colors that are us, bring HIM pleasure.  The scriptures tell us we were created for his pleasure.  We weren't created for His use, but for his pleasure.  It is because He takes pleasure in us, that we submit to Him, and seek to be used of Him.  Those who have a genuine relationship with Christ, through the power of the Holy Spirit, know that they're a joy to the One they've chosen to follow.

Finally, for my part, I want to thank Wes Yoder for writing a fantastic book.  Your prose, and story were just what our men needed.  As for me, my favorite passage was actually in Chapter Eleven.  When I die, I don't want a bunch of uncircumcised Philistines burying me either.  Since I want to be cremated, take a pair of post hole diggers, dig me a hole about three or four feet down, put my ashes in the empty coffee can I've decorated, drop it in the hole, and cover me up.

Our Homework for the next week is for the men to write down what they learned from the book, and how we can implement that in our own body.   I can't wait to see what everyone says.