I fellowshipped with my family for the first time in almost two months. My sister in law had been away to Europe for a couple of weeks, then I was sick with a chronic migraine, and finally I was out of commission because of a back pain. But at long last we got together to intentionally seek to live out Christ with one another, as a family.
I like to say we are seeking to live Christ’s Kingdom in our Living Room.
I went over a part of the book of Acts, Chapter 27, where Paul is on the ship being delivered to the Roman Emperor. The significant part of this passage had to do with Paul first telling the Captain, his soldiers, the sailors, and the other prisoners and slaves that all would be saved, no life would be lost. Only the ship would be lost.
He was led by the Holy Spirit, an Angel, in this case, who told him God had proclaimed it so. The ship would be lost but all the lives of the people on board would be saved.
Yet not long after that, the crew of the ship, the sailors, were making an effort to sneak off the ship and escape. Paul boldly went to the Centurion, the man in charge of the soldiers, and told him he could not let the sailors go off the ship, for if he did, everyone would die. This illustrates the perfect balance between being led first and foremost by God, the Holy Spirit, and on the other hand how the Holy Spirit leads us to intentionality and deliberateness. On that score, I then proceeded to introduce our Disciple Building Standards. I told my family I wanted to share this with them and at the end I would ask them a question.
The fellowship time was great. My sister in law shared a lot about her faith and how she was living it out. She took a real leadership role, I call it stewardship, not ownership, in what I was presenting and gave some very good recommendations for some changes we might consider in the first part of our Disciple Building Standards.
At the end of the presentation, during which my Mother in law, my wife, and my sister in law added much and shared their faith in relation to what we talked about (these are the basic tenets of our shared faith and a call to be able to deliberately share them with others), I asked everyone if they would like to continue with me in the journey to build one another up as disciples who can also make disciples.
Much to my delight, my family didn’t just agree, but did so with excitement and enthusiasm. I told them of my dream to one day be serving in the fields together with my family and they seemed to like that possibility. Afterwards, my sister in law shared a lot about her personal experiences living Christ in all the travels she goes on around the world. If you want to hear more, look me up, if you are one reading this who lives in one of my communities, Bethlehem or Tioga County.
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