{"id":610,"date":"2007-01-24T19:34:29","date_gmt":"2007-01-24T19:34:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/salguod.net\/blog\/2007\/01\/midweek_lesson_2.shtml"},"modified":"2021-05-29T02:45:35","modified_gmt":"2021-05-29T02:45:35","slug":"midweek_lesson_2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/salguod.net\/blog\/2007\/01\/midweek_lesson_2.shtml","title":{"rendered":"Midweek Lesson"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><em>An expansion on Doug Geyer&#8217;s Sunday sermon (<a href=\"http:\/\/www.columbuschurchofchrist.com\/sermonstore\/20070122082926.mp3\">download MP3 file<\/a> or visit <a href=\"http:\/\/www.columbuschurchofchrist.com\/sermons\/index.aspx\">the CCOC sermons page<\/a>) intended to spark thought and dialog at our midweek service.<\/em><br \/>\nChristians have a thing about blessings.  On the extreme, people consider Christianity to be all about receiving material blessings.  Joel Osteen tells you that with God you can have Your Best Life Now, Norman Vincent Peale and Robert Schuler told us over the years about the Power of Positive Thinking to change our lives, to bring us blessings.  Televangelists call on us to put our hands on the TV, pray (and send in our check) and we will blessed by God.<br \/>\nEven more mainstream, everyday folks talk about the blessings that God has brought them.  &#8220;God blessed me with a new Job.&#8221;  &#8220;I&#8217;ve been blessed with good friends.&#8221;  I&#8217;m blessed to have healthy kids.&#8221;<br \/>\nCertainly God blesses people with Earthly things.  Satan accuses God of blessing Job with so much wealth &#038; prosperity that there&#8217;s no way he&#8217;d turn his back on God.  Joseph, through God, ends up the Pharaoh&#8217;s right hand man, overseeing his kingdom.  And Abraham, as we saw in Sunday&#8217;s lesson, had more than enough gold, silver, livestock and family.  In fact, he and his nephew lot had so much they couldn&#8217;t live together anymore.<br \/>\nSo god gives us blessings.  Let&#8217;s talk about blessings for a minute.<br \/>\n<strong>Q &#8211; What sort of blessings has God given you?<\/strong><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Good jobs<\/li>\n<li>Loving spouse<\/li>\n<li>Healthy kids<\/li>\n<li>Friends<\/li>\n<li>Church<\/li>\n<li>house, car, etc.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>God is good to us, he provides for our earthly needs.  Yet, in spite of that, we sometimes only see what is lacking.  Not enough money, old car, not married.<br \/>\nGenesis 15:1-5<br \/>\nEven Abram, who had every material blessing, and after hearing from God Himself that he was his shield, told God that more blessings didn&#8217;t matter, since he had no son.  God had promised him earlier (Genesis 12:1-3) that he&#8217;d be made great, he&#8217;s have his back and the whole world would be blessed through him.  In spite all that, Abram complains that he has no son to take care of his stuff.  And God listens, taking him outside, clarifying the promise already made (that he&#8217;d be a great nation) and promises him a son.<br \/>\nAbram, surrounded by blessings, missed the blesser here, didn&#8217;t he?  God says &#8220;I&#8217;m your reward.&#8221; or &#8220;I&#8217;m your blessing.&#8221; and Abram instead was thinking of the blessings he&#8217;d not received.<br \/>\nSo, both a focus on material blessings and a missing blessing can take our eyes off of the blesser.<br \/>\n<strong>Q- How does that manifest itself in our lives?<\/strong><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Slaves to our possessions, or our striving for them<\/li>\n<li>Our family becomes our God &#8211; kids activities eat up our schedule, pushing out church and relationships.<\/li>\n<li>We only see what we do not have  &#8211; If only my marriage was ____, then I&#8217;d _____.  If I only had my bills paid, I&#8217;d ____.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Our blessings or our lack of blessings distract us from the blesser.  God know this to be the case, and he longs for us to turn our eyes to him.  What did God do for Abram in these situations?  Let&#8217;s look:<br \/>\nGenesis 12:1-3<br \/>\nGenesis 22:1-2<br \/>\n<strong>Q- What did God do in each of these situations, one at the beginning of Abram&#8217;s walk with him, one nearer to the end?<\/strong><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>He pulled him out of his comfort zone.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>In Genesis 12 it was the homeland and family.  get off on your own where it will be just Me and you.  In Genesis 22, it was to the mountain.  He couldn&#8217;t bring his silver and gold, Sarah would not be there.  It was only Abraham, Isaac, God and that knife.<br \/>\nGod called him away, into a place where he had room to work with him.  Where there were no distractions crowding God out.  Either the distractions of blessings received, or blessings longed for.<br \/>\n<strong>Q &#8211; What familiar surroundings do you think God might be calling you out of so he can work with you?  What blessings or missing blessings might be keeping you from seeing Gd and following him completely?<\/strong><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Schedule &#8211; too busy, or too predictable.<\/li>\n<li>Family &#8211; Too focused on having the perfect family, too many activities.<\/li>\n<li>Leisure &#8211; pursuing our hobbies with fervor, leaving little room for God<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>The thing is, Abram was changed when he followed God out of his comfort zone, when he made room for God to work with him.<br \/>\nMy comfort zone is in my home in front of the TV, on the computer or with a car magazine in my hand.  I prefer email to the phone, because it&#8217;s easier to choose my words carefully and it just feels safer.  I&#8217;m blessed to have a nice comfortable home, cable TV, high speed Internet, my own blog and a comfy recliner.<br \/>\nBut I don&#8217;t meet God in those places as much as I do when I pick up the phone just to talk, have someone over for dinner or go out to meet family and friends.  There, in the interaction between people, sharing my heart and listening to theirs, sharing victories and hurts, pain and joy &#8211; there I meet God.  There I find Him working through me in ways I couldn&#8217;t have imagined sitting at home.<br \/>\nIt&#8217;s less comfortable, less &#8216;safe&#8217;, more vulnerable.  But just like with Abram, if I don&#8217;t step into that zone, there&#8217;s not enough room for God to work with me like He wants to.<br \/>\nAre you willing to push the &#8216;blessings&#8217; aside to make room for the blesser?<br \/>\nHow will you do that this week?<br \/>\nWho here can help you get out of the comfort zone and meet God in the open where there&#8217;s room for Him to use you?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>An expansion on Doug Geyer&#8217;s Sunday sermon (download MP3 file or visit the CCOC sermons page) intended to spark thought and dialog at our midweek service. Christians have a thing<a href=\"https:\/\/salguod.net\/blog\/2007\/01\/midweek_lesson_2.shtml\" class=\"more-link\">Read More <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Midweek Lesson<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[8],"tags":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v21.8.1 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Midweek Lesson - salguod.net<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/salguod.net\/blog\/2007\/01\/midweek_lesson_2.shtml\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Midweek Lesson - salguod.net\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"An expansion on Doug Geyer&#8217;s Sunday sermon (download MP3 file or visit the CCOC sermons page) intended to spark thought and dialog at our midweek service. 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Here's a snippet:What can I say\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;Just Like Jesus&quot;","block_context":{"text":"Just Like Jesus","link":"https:\/\/salguod.net\/blog\/just-like-jesus"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":929,"url":"https:\/\/salguod.net\/blog\/2009\/03\/nehmiah_10_-_re-commitment_to_the_covenant.shtml","url_meta":{"origin":610,"position":3},"title":"Nehmiah 10 &#8211; Re-commitment to the Covenant","author":"Doug Schaefer","date":"March 24, 2009","format":false,"excerpt":"Nehemiah 10:1-27 - Quite a few familiar names in this list of people who sealed the covenant: Nehemiah, Jeremiah, Obadiah, Daniel, Hezekiah - Are all of these the folks we are familiar with? Nehemiah 10:28-39 - A re-commitment to the covenant tha God made with Israel, to return to the\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;Quiet Time Journal&quot;","block_context":{"text":"Quiet Time Journal","link":"https:\/\/salguod.net\/blog\/quiet-time-journal"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":636,"url":"https:\/\/salguod.net\/blog\/2007\/03\/ezekiel_chapter_6.shtml","url_meta":{"origin":610,"position":4},"title":"Ezekiel &#8211; Chapter 7","author":"Doug Schaefer","date":"March 14, 2007","format":false,"excerpt":"Ezekiel 7:4 - \"Then you will know that I am the Lord.\" God had tried over the years through the evidence of creation, the blessings of being His people and the history of the nation and God's interaction with Abraham, Moses, David, etc to show them that he was God.\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;Quiet Time Journal&quot;","block_context":{"text":"Quiet Time Journal","link":"https:\/\/salguod.net\/blog\/quiet-time-journal"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1128,"url":"https:\/\/salguod.net\/blog\/2012\/02\/farewell_george.shtml","url_meta":{"origin":610,"position":5},"title":"Farewell, George","author":"Doug Schaefer","date":"February 15, 2012","format":false,"excerpt":"I found out on yesterday that a dear friend, George Wolfe passed away of complications from a fall. The news rocked my world. I've known George for over 20 years. My first memory of George was from college, the summer I lived in a rented 3 story house with 14-16\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;Family and Friends&quot;","block_context":{"text":"Family and Friends","link":"https:\/\/salguod.net\/blog\/family-and-friends"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/salguod.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/610"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/salguod.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/salguod.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/salguod.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/salguod.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=610"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/salguod.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/610\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1666,"href":"https:\/\/salguod.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/610\/revisions\/1666"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/salguod.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=610"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/salguod.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=610"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/salguod.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=610"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}