This week I spent a total of 3.5 hours doing my practicum between Sunday school class (1 hour), posts (30 minutes), church services (1.5 hours), and worship practice (30 minutes).
Stuff in class:
We primarily went through the faith chapter in Hebrews (chapter 11 and a little into chapter 12) for our discussion. For this discussion, we continued talking about persecution. With this chapter, we saw that the main characters of the OT were persecuted for their faith, but they keep their loyalty and faith with God. As a result, we determined as a class that persecution is a possible result of following God. But the main theological principle that stuck with us was that we need to keep following God by faith even if we suffer from persecution.
Questions:
1) What do you guys think about following God even if you have to suffer for it? Is that something you personally are willing to do?
2) When you read Hebrews chapters 11 and 12, do you see the theme of following Christ by faith even through persecution?
Having studied this for multiple weeks, I have been seeing the pattern of suffering for God. So many times this is through the willingness of the sufferee. I think that we should follow God, even if it means suffering. I hate being critical, that’s probably not the right word for it, anyways, but we get too comfortable. Its like putting God in a box and saying “this is how I’m going to live, and I am going to be happy and feel good about myself.” The end result is not to feel good about ourselves, or for any self righteous matter at all. It is to sacrifice our lives in service to God. I think that living where we do, we don’t see the persecution that people (for instance) in other countries go through, so it is easy to say, “of course I would suffer for Christ.” But then when the chance comes around, do we really mean it? With that said, I am willing to suffer for Christ, but I have never really been in a situation where I had to. So I guess until it truly happens, I will pray for the strength to say yes when the time comes. As for ? 2, yes, I do see the theme of following Christ through persecution. Our faith should be able to withstand anything, that said, if we are not willing to suffer, where is our faith? One thing I do notice in biblical examples as well is the support system. Christians supported each other in their suffering, whether that meant suffering along side them or not. I think we should have the same attitude, being willing to suffer, and also be encouraging/supporting/praying etc. for those who are. Maybe we should be putting ourselves in the way of persecution… maybe it would get us out of our comfort zones… maybe we would have more depth to our faith if we did suffer more for it… Like I said before, these are experiences I have never had, and questions I have yet to answer.
ReplyDeleteKara
nice job Kara
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