AT THE CHURCH
Today was a great day at Madiba Bay. In the midst of my ongoing battle with the language God is allowing me to experience some victories. As of last week I have begun preparing and preaching my messages without meeting with Lubabalo before Sunday to make corrections. Well… it seems as if things are going good and the Word is being successfully communicated without the help of Lubabalo’s corrections beforehand. Now I will begin asking him to be more careful to note my mistakes while preaching and we will go over them during the week.
Four young men trusted Christ as their personal Saviour in the evening service which is real exciting and I believe they are friends of the some of the other young men that have recently trusted Christ.
In the morning service I preached one more message on how to live in freedom from sin out of Romans chapter six and in the evening I continued through the book of I Timothy. We we studying verse 15 of chapter three where Paul calls the church by three different names - 1. The House of God -2. The Church of the Living God - 3. The Pillar and Ground of Truth - In Xhosa it is 1. Indlu KaThixo - 2. Ibandla likaThixo Ophilileyo - 3. Intsika Nesiseko senyaniso.
Just for a short overview if you are still reading this blog. I asked the people if they would go into someone else’s house and rearrange and decorate it the way they wanted. The answer was obviously no. Then I showed them how their bodies are the Temple or House of God - and that God doesn’t take kindly to people coming into His house and rearranging it.
Secondly, on the Church of the Living God - I talked about how we serve a risen God, Jesus Christ and that means that we should live as if He is alive. We should give Him His rightful place in our lives as the Living God. I also tied this in with how many Xhosa people, even those who claim to be Christian still practice ancestor worship. We looked at Deuteronomy 18:10-12 to see what the true living God thinks of this practise.
Thirdly we looked at the Pillar and Ground of Truth - Here I gave an illustration and had several young men come forward, one sat in a chair and the others lifted him up over their heads. Thus showing the people that Christ is the foundation and we as the pillars should do our job of lifting the truth (Jn. 14:6) up so that all the world can get a good look at it.
Anyways that was just some nuggets that God gave me today. Maybe you can take it and do something better with it.