UPDATE – This is the edited version of my last one, lots of changes, just to let you know
Okay I’m just warning you now, i’m going to do a bit of rambling in this post.
I usually have a lot of thoughts going on in my head. I think that we, as the body of Christ at Cornell, need to start listening to Jesus and DO WHAT HE TOLD US TO DO, LOVE.
I was to a certain degree a part in the damned bubble that’s mentioned in the title. I’ve been a part of a fellowship in high school, and to a certain degree, there are a lot of similarities that I see now here on campus that I saw in high school. Now that I look back on those days, I’m like, did we actually accomplish anything? We actually just wasted a lot of time bumming around and busying ourselves with programs and events and stuff without truly focusing on our relationship with God and loving our friends. I love my high school fellowship though, some of my best friends I met in this fellowship and it was definitely where I started to take a change in my relationship with Christ. A lot of it was because of the people that I met in there, but I don’t know if the events itself helped me to grow. They were true encouragements to me, even some of the first people who I thought really loved Jesus and walked with Him.
I’ve now entered college and there are still fellowships, and they all do things differently. This is good and commendable. No one’s supposed to be exactly alike. We’re supposed to be different part of the body of Christ at Cornell. We’re supposed to encourage each other in our efforts and spur one another on to further God’s Kingdom here on earth, especially here at Cornell, since we’re all here now. But the more I read the Bible the more I see how much we do a lot of the time is not in alignment with anything in the Bible and they don’t exactly work in the most efficient of ways either.
Why do I think this bubble is “damned”? There are two definitions of “damn” on dictionary.com. The first one means “to declare something to be bad, unfit, invalid or illegal.” When we place ourselves in this bubble, we kind of lock ourselves in our own little world from what’s going on around us, which includes our friends and what’s going on in their lives. We can’t really love people when this is happening can we? That’s why I think it’s bad, unfit, invalid, or illegal. The second definition is “to condemn as a failure.” Lol I actually kind of chuckled when I read that because when you find yourself in a bubble, you find yourself to be in kind of a failed situation when it comes to trying to obey Jesus’ command.
For the whole law is fulfilled in one word: “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.”
(Galatians 5:14 ESV)
The purpose of this post is to point out some things that we can all focus on in the future so that the body of Christ at Cornell can be furthered efficiently and in His power and Spirit.
Sometimes Christian groups are amazing at welcoming people and getting them plugged in and creating this family atmosphere. This can probably be been in all fellowships and all churches. But sometimes this even goes to an extreme where this family becomes a bubble, to a point where you’re suffocated and can’t even breathe in enough air to even carry out God’s will. Community is essential in the Christian’s life. A Christian will die spiritually if they don’t get into a good community that will be accountable to them to help them to grow and challenge and encourage them to grow in love. BUT once again, you don’t want a bubble. God called us to make disciples, and in my mind, I just don’t see how anyone can make new disciples out of people who have yet to encounter Christ IF WE DON’T KNOW ANY. I just don’t think it’s possible. God has explicitly called us out and told us to go into the world. He has decided to use US and we huddle in our corners believing that God told Himself and not us to go reach people. We are not taking up the honor that God has called us to.
And Jesus came and said to them, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age.”
(Matthew 28:18-20 ESV)
It’s like the football game analogy. We Christians, like the huddle, and huddling’s not bad at all. It’s in the huddle where the game plan is set, the vision given, the excitement and passion occurs. But we huddle too much, sometimes even disillusioning ourselves into believing it’s the game. We need to have good huddles, and get out there and pull off the plays and win the game!
I’m blessed to know that fellowships are reaching inwards to the body of believers, but they sometimes forget that as Christians we’re called to be missionaries loving people with the love of Christ, everywhere we are.
“Every Christian is either a missionary or an imposter.” – Charles Spurgeon (I know this isn’t a Bible verse)
Christians are supposed to spend out time with the people we love or loving people who we don’t love. We’re supposed to be lights to the world, shining the light of Christ upon people. The way we do it, though, sometimes is a bit confusing. We want to show everyone how much we love Jesus and how He’s changed our lives but we’re too afraid to actually tell people in our everyday normal conversations, so we come up with these events to do it. We try extra hard to make it enticing and attractive for our friends to come to. We spend months going off into a corner somewhere with other believers preparing for some “outreach event.” In the mean time our friends ask us if they can hang out, go play, eat dinner, or just talk sometime and the we say, “oh sorry, I gotta go meet my christian group to prepare for this outreach event that is for you.” Then by the time our fellowship finishes preparing for this event, we try to go out to find people to come, and the people we ask are the same people who asked us to play, eat, and chill, but we’re not friends any more, they’re just acquaintances now, because we didn’t spend any time with them, we’re just strangers to each other. Why do our friends have any reason to come to our outreach events when we didn’t spend any time with them when they asked us to. It’s like expecting something in return for not giving anything in return. It’s crazy and makes no logical sense.
When I read the Bible, especially the gospels, and I’m going through Matthew and John simultaneously right now, I just don’t see any instance where Jesus and his disciples go into the desert for an extended amount of time preparing for some “outreach event” and coming back after they’ve finished and asking people to come. I believe that logically, no one would come. I mean, of course some people would go, cuz its Jesus, lol. But I believe that no one would go because no one would know who Jesus was. Why would they come to some event held by some guy they know nothing about? It just doesn’t make any sense to go. Sure disciples can say to people, “come and you’ll find out all about who I am.” But honestly all you have to do to accomplish that is spend some time with your friends. They are already extending their friendship to you, it doesn’t get any easier than that. Jesus lived his life with the people he wanted to reach and love.
“And as Jesus reclined at table in the house, behold, many tax collectors and sinners came and were reclining with Jesus and his disciples.” ( Matthew 9:10)
Breakfast, lunch, dinner, and all the time in between too. With both believers and non believers in His presence. Jesus accepted every invitation He got to go to a party because it was an event already created where He could just walk in, make friends, and share what He came here to do. I believe wholeheartedly that we are to follow in Jesus’ example. I just don’t understand why we continue to do stuff that’s not founded on the Bible.
It’s like God’s saying, “here’s my foolproof plan, just do it like Jesus. Love people, spend time with them, show them My Love.” and we’re like “nah, no thanks God, I think I got something better in mind, I think you’ll like it. I like it a lot.” Please tell me if that doesn’t sound crazy to you. Or how about instead of spending this extended time preparing for these events, use the time to prepare and train Christians in how to reach out to their friends through conversation and just daily living and dying of self to Christ? I think that this would have much larger long term benefits, and would provide training that the Christian can use in their entire lifetime.
We should just be spending time with people who want to hang and chill with us, who want to know us, who would actually be willing to know what we believe in. We should in the same way, be interested in other people’s lives, loving them, learning about their families, their friends, their hardships, how we as friends can help. Let’s live out that compassion that Jesus was so well known for.
Sometimes we’re good at organizing events for Christians and what happens is we kind of end up basically organizing an army of Christians for an event just for us. WHAT THE…? Sure people have given me reasons like: it’s to unite the fellowship. I mean, sure, fellowship is awesome, but why not organize the army of Christians to go out and serve the community? Have a 100 -200 Christians go out into Ithaca to serve the poor, volunteer in the soup kitchen, hang out with underprivileged children in schools, LOVE PEOPLE. We have the organizational power and manpower to do the largest Christian service day at Cornell. You grow in battle and through service, that’s where the real growth and bonding happens. Iron can’t sharpen iron if you don’t use the stupid sword. I mean, that’s just one thing you could do with an organized army of Christians. OR Why not use this organized army of Christians to REACH THE CAMPUS AND SPREAD THE GOSPEL? ORR…Let’s get a line of Christians on Ho Plaza and just give hugs!
I think we need to know how to wisely use our time because our time is limited and precious for the use of the kingdom of God. We should use it by spending time with God, with other believers, and with the people that God’s called us to reach and love. Time spent in training people in the furthering of the gospel in life is also a worthy cause.
“No wonder that sinners are given to slumber when saints sleep as they do. No wonder that the unconverted think hell a fiction when we live as if it were so. No wonder that they imagine heaven to be a romance, when we act as if it were so little a reality. Oh Lord, awake us, even if it be by thunder claps! Oh God, for Jesus Christ’s sake, bring us out of the dry and thirsty land.”
— Charles Spurgeon, A Wilderness Cry, delivered August 4, 1878
POP THE DAMNED BUBBLE PLEASE
Pop The Damned Bubble Please [Updated]
UPDATE – This is the edited version of my last one, lots of changes, just to let you know
Okay I’m just warning you now, i’m going to do a bit of rambling in this post.
I usually have a lot of thoughts going on in my head. I think that we, as the body of Christ at Cornell, need to start listening to Jesus and DO WHAT HE TOLD US TO DO, LOVE.
I was to a certain degree a part in the damned bubble that’s mentioned in the title. I’ve been a part of a fellowship in high school, and to a certain degree, there are a lot of similarities that I see now here on campus that I saw in high school. Now that I look back on those days, I’m like, did we actually accomplish anything? We actually just wasted a lot of time bumming around and busying ourselves with programs and events and stuff without truly focusing on our relationship with God and loving our friends. I love my high school fellowship though, some of my best friends I met in this fellowship and it was definitely where I started to take a change in my relationship with Christ. A lot of it was because of the people that I met in there, but I don’t know if the events itself helped me to grow. They were true encouragements to me, even some of the first people who I thought really loved Jesus and walked with Him.
I’ve now entered college and there are still fellowships, and they all do things differently. This is good and commendable. No one’s supposed to be exactly alike. We’re supposed to be different part of the body of Christ at Cornell. We’re supposed to encourage each other in our efforts and spur one another on to further God’s Kingdom here on earth, especially here at Cornell, since we’re all here now. But the more I read the Bible the more I see how much we do a lot of the time is not in alignment with anything in the Bible and they don’t exactly work in the most efficient of ways either.
Why do I think this bubble is “damned”? There are two definitions of “damn” on dictionary.com. The first one means “to declare something to be bad, unfit, invalid or illegal.” When we place ourselves in this bubble, we kind of lock ourselves in our own little world from what’s going on around us, which includes our friends and what’s going on in their lives. We can’t really love people when this is happening can we? That’s why I think it’s bad, unfit, invalid, or illegal. The second definition is “to condemn as a failure.” Lol I actually kind of chuckled when I read that because when you find yourself in a bubble, you find yourself to be in kind of a failed situation when it comes to trying to obey Jesus’ command.
The purpose of this post is to point out some things that we can all focus on in the future so that the body of Christ at Cornell can be furthered efficiently and in His power and Spirit.
Sometimes Christian groups are amazing at welcoming people and getting them plugged in and creating this family atmosphere. This can probably be been in all fellowships and all churches. But sometimes this even goes to an extreme where this family becomes a bubble, to a point where you’re suffocated and can’t even breathe in enough air to even carry out God’s will. Community is essential in the Christian’s life. A Christian will die spiritually if they don’t get into a good community that will be accountable to them to help them to grow and challenge and encourage them to grow in love. BUT once again, you don’t want a bubble. God called us to make disciples, and in my mind, I just don’t see how anyone can make new disciples out of people who have yet to encounter Christ IF WE DON’T KNOW ANY. I just don’t think it’s possible. God has explicitly called us out and told us to go into the world. He has decided to use US and we huddle in our corners believing that God told Himself and not us to go reach people. We are not taking up the honor that God has called us to.
It’s like the football game analogy. We Christians, like the huddle, and huddling’s not bad at all. It’s in the huddle where the game plan is set, the vision given, the excitement and passion occurs. But we huddle too much, sometimes even disillusioning ourselves into believing it’s the game. We need to have good huddles, and get out there and pull off the plays and win the game!
I’m blessed to know that fellowships are reaching inwards to the body of believers, but they sometimes forget that as Christians we’re called to be missionaries loving people with the love of Christ, everywhere we are.
Christians are supposed to spend out time with the people we love or loving people who we don’t love. We’re supposed to be lights to the world, shining the light of Christ upon people. The way we do it, though, sometimes is a bit confusing. We want to show everyone how much we love Jesus and how He’s changed our lives but we’re too afraid to actually tell people in our everyday normal conversations, so we come up with these events to do it. We try extra hard to make it enticing and attractive for our friends to come to. We spend months going off into a corner somewhere with other believers preparing for some “outreach event.” In the mean time our friends ask us if they can hang out, go play, eat dinner, or just talk sometime and the we say, “oh sorry, I gotta go meet my christian group to prepare for this outreach event that is for you.” Then by the time our fellowship finishes preparing for this event, we try to go out to find people to come, and the people we ask are the same people who asked us to play, eat, and chill, but we’re not friends any more, they’re just acquaintances now, because we didn’t spend any time with them, we’re just strangers to each other. Why do our friends have any reason to come to our outreach events when we didn’t spend any time with them when they asked us to. It’s like expecting something in return for not giving anything in return. It’s crazy and makes no logical sense.
When I read the Bible, especially the gospels, and I’m going through Matthew and John simultaneously right now, I just don’t see any instance where Jesus and his disciples go into the desert for an extended amount of time preparing for some “outreach event” and coming back after they’ve finished and asking people to come. I believe that logically, no one would come. I mean, of course some people would go, cuz its Jesus, lol. But I believe that no one would go because no one would know who Jesus was. Why would they come to some event held by some guy they know nothing about? It just doesn’t make any sense to go. Sure disciples can say to people, “come and you’ll find out all about who I am.” But honestly all you have to do to accomplish that is spend some time with your friends. They are already extending their friendship to you, it doesn’t get any easier than that. Jesus lived his life with the people he wanted to reach and love.
Breakfast, lunch, dinner, and all the time in between too. With both believers and non believers in His presence. Jesus accepted every invitation He got to go to a party because it was an event already created where He could just walk in, make friends, and share what He came here to do. I believe wholeheartedly that we are to follow in Jesus’ example. I just don’t understand why we continue to do stuff that’s not founded on the Bible.
It’s like God’s saying, “here’s my foolproof plan, just do it like Jesus. Love people, spend time with them, show them My Love.” and we’re like “nah, no thanks God, I think I got something better in mind, I think you’ll like it. I like it a lot.” Please tell me if that doesn’t sound crazy to you. Or how about instead of spending this extended time preparing for these events, use the time to prepare and train Christians in how to reach out to their friends through conversation and just daily living and dying of self to Christ? I think that this would have much larger long term benefits, and would provide training that the Christian can use in their entire lifetime.
We should just be spending time with people who want to hang and chill with us, who want to know us, who would actually be willing to know what we believe in. We should in the same way, be interested in other people’s lives, loving them, learning about their families, their friends, their hardships, how we as friends can help. Let’s live out that compassion that Jesus was so well known for.
Sometimes we’re good at organizing events for Christians and what happens is we kind of end up basically organizing an army of Christians for an event just for us. WHAT THE…? Sure people have given me reasons like: it’s to unite the fellowship. I mean, sure, fellowship is awesome, but why not organize the army of Christians to go out and serve the community? Have a 100 -200 Christians go out into Ithaca to serve the poor, volunteer in the soup kitchen, hang out with underprivileged children in schools, LOVE PEOPLE. We have the organizational power and manpower to do the largest Christian service day at Cornell. You grow in battle and through service, that’s where the real growth and bonding happens. Iron can’t sharpen iron if you don’t use the stupid sword. I mean, that’s just one thing you could do with an organized army of Christians. OR Why not use this organized army of Christians to REACH THE CAMPUS AND SPREAD THE GOSPEL? ORR…Let’s get a line of Christians on Ho Plaza and just give hugs!
I think we need to know how to wisely use our time because our time is limited and precious for the use of the kingdom of God. We should use it by spending time with God, with other believers, and with the people that God’s called us to reach and love. Time spent in training people in the furthering of the gospel in life is also a worthy cause.
POP THE DAMNED BUBBLE PLEASE
Share this: