Memorization

We started the men’s workout with a recitation of Matthew 5:11-16 from memory. Memorization is helpful for meditation on the verses and accountability.

Pastor Dan then proceeded to highlight some aspects of the structure of the verses. This included two instances of imagery – salt and light, ending with an imperative to let your light shine before men. Memorization is helpful for mediation.

After the recitation of the verses, the group reflected on the verses. Some highlights applications that stood out included:

Letting your light shine before men – guiding conversations at work towards God
Ridicule and insults gives us a reason to rejoice, it’s the grace of God that we can be compared to the prophets
There’s an intrinsic quality – salt is salty and lamp provides light. There’s a rebuke for us we aren’t acting as so.
Doesn’t mean we’re living a perfectly salty or brilliant life, but the overall pattern should exhibit this. None of us are perfect, so there is a measure of grace here. Part of this is that we need to continually repent and go back to God. This is not sinless perfection, but recognition and confession of sin
Emphasis on the glory of your Father – this is not incidental, but intentional.

We then reviewed the new set of verses for memorization, Matthew 5:17-20. Pastor Dan reviewed some key aspects of the structure

The connectors of “for,” “then,” and “for” between the respective verses
The parallelism between “annuls and teaches” and “keeps and teaches”
The point of verse 21 is that you do not exhibit the hypocrisy of scribes/Pharisees. This doesn’t mean that you don’t ever act hypocritically, but you confess them and live in a different manner of their life.
This is all a part of what Jesus taught: we are poor in spirit (5:3) and we mourn (5:4) and we ask for forgiveness (6:12).

Children’s verses

We went over the children’s verses for Genesis 1, days 1-7, with the accompanying hand motions. Even if you don’t have kids, you can do these with your nieces/nephews or other kids. Please see the stick figure illustrations (coming soon!) for a rendition of the motions.

Notes for the adults / really smart kids:

the light was not sun/moon/stars, it was a glowing light
plants – created fully mature – trees with fruit and seed in them
stars – you can draw stars randomly, or being creative and do constellations
sea creatures – also created fully mature, with capacity to multiply
animals – let the kids be creative and pick their own animal
male and female he created them – this is so vital in our culture
God rested – make sure you don’t do a sleeping motion, because God did not get tired.
do this as a dialogue – you can ask “what did God do on the first day” and the kids can respond
great for babysitting

Ministry forum

We reviewed any feedback for the ministries in general, with the emphasis that this is our church. The one feedback was encouragement to arrive 15 minutes early for Thursday Bible Study and Sunday worship, with the heart to ask to help with any setup. This also helps everyone arrive to service on time.

Devotions

We continued the practice of “impromptu leadership.” The structure was 1) sing, 2) read, 3) observe: proposition + implication, 4) pray. Propositions can be started with the phrase “this text shows us that…” – to help lead you towards the obvious observations. Implications can be started with the phrase “Therefore…” which leads us to the impact and changes on our lives.

Eric led the first devotion.

Hymnal 126 – Behold our God
Luke 1:1-4
- Pastor Dan emphasized that propositions should be short and sweet, capturing the essences of the observations.
- Some propositions that were observed:
  - Scripture is the truth
  - Scripture was written not only through revelation, but also investigation
  - Scripture includes historical narrative
  - Scripture has many genres – i.e. visions, but also accurate, historical accounts
  - There are other accounts that are true
  - Luke wrote with a purpose for the audience to know the truth.

Side note: There will always be things that we don’t understand, but have an attitude of trusting God that there is an answer/explanation, even though we don’t understand it yet, and focus on what’s obvious during the devotion. This can also be conveyed during the devotion

John Tang led the second devotion.

Hymnal 107 – Fairest Lord Jesus
Revelation 1:1-3
- Some propositions that were observed:
  - This is the revelation of Jesus Christ
  - We are blessed when we not only read, but heed what’s written
  - God’s sense of timing is different from ours
- Application:
  - I need to know what are the things to come because my Lord says so
  - This is revelation that God wanted to give to us, it’s significant that when he speaks these words