Demand #45- Do this in Remembrance of me, for I will build my church

God provides for us during the time he left from when he will return... THROUGH
1) Holy Spirit
-We need the Spirit to fully grasp all His teachings.
-"He would be critical of any who try to separate the word and the Spirit"
2) Apostles
-They share the authority as the one who sent them
- Foundation for the church

We are his flock





Chrissy <3

Demand #9 - Willene

Love God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength

"To love God we must know him...If love does not come from knowing God, there is no point in calling it love for God."

• We can't truly love God unless we truly know Him. Just as a love for any other person, you love that person because you got to know them. So it is with God. Until we actually know Him ourselves (not what other people say), then we can say that we truly love Him for who He is.

"for true love for God will always bring about love for people...This means that the behaviors of love towards others are not the essential meaning of loving God. They are the overflow or fruit of loving God."

• So when we learn to truly love God, we can learn to also truly love people. We can't love God and not love other people. It says that love for people is the overflow/fruit of our love for God. So if we aren't really loving other people, are we even really loving God in the first place?

"every faculty and every capacity of our being should express the fullness of our affection for God - the fullness of all the ways that we treasure him."

• Simply put, if we love God, it should just show outside of us; in everything we do, say, and think. It shouldn't be hard to show our love for God if we really do love Him.

Demand #34 - Belle

Jesus does not give an answer to his question, "Who is my neighbor?" Instead, he says in effect, go become a new kind of person. Go get a compassionate heart. (p. 266)

We need to have a new heart to really love our neighbors. Sometimes we get too selfish on who we love. We need a new heart; a heart like one that God cries out to.

When Jesus died he purchased for sinners like us everything needed for us to find our joy in God. (p. 268)

Our ultimate joy is found in GOD. The best part is that, Christ's death bought everything for us so we can find that joy. That is amazing! We can be full of joy because Christ already paid what needed to be paid just so we can be joyful. AMAZING!!!

Demand # 34 - Chrissy

Important commandment: Love our Neighbors as Ourselves
Important realization: Model Jesus' Love for us

-Jesus death is both guild-bearing and guidance-giving
-When Luke asked "Who is my neighbor?" He was scolded by Jesus for not considering "What kind of person he is"
- Instead of wondering, who is worth of my love, ask yourself, "How can I be more compassionate?"

At times where we don't get along with anybody, or there is just that one person that annoys you with anything he/she does. Remember that we were worst in God's eyes, we were the lowest of the lowest: annoying, disobedient, rebellious, sinful, dirty, worthless, selfish, etc. But He still loved us!

Demand #33 - Chrissy

Loving God is invisible, NOT:
-It is an outward manifestation, the way you treat others will be evidence.

The reason some people are scared to commit their lives to God, is because they are afraid.
- It not due to a lack of belief, but the fear that they will erase self-love, because they will have to give up some of the things they like doing.
- But.. on the contrary, when you give your life to Jesus, you truly find self-love because of God's love for yourself.
Self-love is wanting to diminish pain, and achieve happiness
- Eventually, one realizes that self-love is a result of God's love
- Suicide is one's attempt to escape the intolerable and is a "misguided act of self-love"
The root of sin:
- Bring prideful -> not seeing God as the root of joy, desire to be happy without God.

The book clarified that it is not that self-love is bad, just keep in mind that we should use our self-love to focus on Him.

Demand #33 - Belle

Love Your Neighbor With the same Commitment You Have To Your Own Well-Being


I just wanted to write a few quotes from the reading:

"Even suicide is pursued out of this principle of self-love."

"..'So even if I don't know what I will gain through death, I do know what I will escape.' And so suicide is an attempt to escape the intolerable. It is a misguided act of self love."

"My love for him is the form of my self-love. That is, all the longings that would satisfy me (self-love) I direct to him and find satisfied in him. That is what my self-love now is. It is my love for God."

Some points I got this from reading:

• Even to the point of death, man has expressed outwardly his self-love.
• Self-seeking must become the measure of self-giving.
• What we want for our selves must be the same measure for what we want for others - that's what it truly means to love our neighbor.
  

Demand #8 - Willene

Take Up Your Cross And Follow Me

• Following Christ is denying ourselves, letting go of our own wants and desires, and doing His will, His wants and desires instead
  
• "[Jesus] did not die to make this life easy for us or prosperous. He died to remove every obstacle to our everlasting joy in making much of him."
• Following Christ isn't easy, but God has placed an everlasting joy inside of us that will look past the struggles and trials; that no matter how hard it gets, we have joy knowing that we are in Christ and are doing what He wills

This chapter taught me to endure. To keep going even when things get hard. To keep going even if it hurts. Because God has given us this joy that nothing and no one can ever take away.