Thank you for joining us in prayer. This week...
...ask God to demolish strongholds (any worldview or cultural value that in contrary to the good news of our King Jesus) and invite his truth into our neighborhoods and netoworks.
...ask our Father to strengthen and encourage our community of seniors at the rec center in East Price Hill, and pray for the seniors in your life.
...ask God to protect, provide for, and delight over the students in Bloc Ministries after school program who are practicing the life-rhythms of Jesus and pray for the students in your life.
This week in our Learning Community, we read and discussed Matthew 20:20-28 when a mother asks Jesus if her son's can get the important seats next to his throne.
We talked about selfish ambition vs. holy ambition.
Here's some quotes and passages for continued reflection...
The ruin that the fall brought upon the soul of man consists very much in his losing the nobler and more benevolent principles of his nature, and falling wholly under the power and government of self-love. Before, and as God created him, he was exalted, and noble, and generous; but now he is debased, and ignoble, and selfish. Immediately upon the fall, the mind of man shrank from its primitive greatness and expandedness, to an exceeding smallness and contractedness – Jonathan Edwards, The Spirit of Love the Opposite of a Selfish Spirit
1 Thessalonians 4
9 Now about your love for one another we do not need to write to you, for you yourselves have been taught by God to love each other. 10 And in fact, you do love all of God’s family throughout Macedonia. Yet we urge you, brothers and sisters, to do so more and more, 11 and to make it your ambition to lead a quiet life: You should mind your own business and work with your hands, just as we told you, 12 so that your daily life may win the respect of outsiders and so that you will not be dependent on anybody.
Philippians 2
2 Therefore if you have any encouragement from being united with Christ, if any comfort from his love, if any common sharing in the Spirit, if any tenderness and compassion, 2 then make my joy complete by being like-minded, having the same love, being one in spirit and of one mind. 3 Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit. Rather, in humility value others above yourselves, 4 not looking to your own interests but each of you to the interests of the others.
5 In your relationships with one another, have the same mindset as Christ Jesus:
6 Who, being in very nature[a] God, did not consider equality with God something to be used to his own advantage; 7 rather, he made himself nothing by taking the very nature[b] of a servant, being made in human likeness. 8 And being found in appearance as a man, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to death— even death on a cross!
9 Therefore God exalted him to the highest place and gave him the name that is above every name, 10 that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, 11 and every tongue acknowledge that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.
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