{{2010_05_07_t1.jpg}} {{2010_05_07_t2.jpg}} {{2010_05_07_t3.jpg}} [[http://www.jesusnetwork.eu/de/doku.php/jn_de_2010_05_07|Deutsche Version]] [[Start|| Wiki Start]] [[topics_collection_ii|| Topics Collection ii ]] ======Family 3 - How to move on? ...====== Friday, May 7, 2010. We have talked about God's family, and what it can be. How do we move on? How do we develop God's family? How is God developing it in and through us? {{2010_05_07.jpg }} **We are responsible** We are responsible parts of God's family. God is not the big dictator, who would tell us step by step what we need to do. God's family is not a hierarchical system, where God or Jesus commands all details of our life. No, guidance is carried out in a different way in God's kingdom and God's family. Clearly Jesus is the Lord. He wants to guide us. But his guidance tries to shape our heart and our mind. He wants us to understand love and truth. He wants us to understand salvation, God's will to save and his wish to find what is lost. He guides by example. He guides by truth and love. He guides by justice. Of course, he also guides by power, but his power is not the power which we know from human regimes, but the power of freedom and grace of the eternal Lord. God wants us to play an active role in his family. We are asked to work on shaping it. If we do not act, things are not done. If we do not love, there is love missing. If we do not pray for our fellow believers, then things will not be given or done. God is developing his family, but we are also developing it. We are a part of his leadership team. The apostle Paul once phrased it into the sentence: "we and the Holy Spirit have decided". Please get me right, it is not us who would command the Lord. He is and remains the Lord and it is crucial for us to give him the role he deserves. But in this relationship he leads us to freedom and responsibility. {{ 2010_05_07_2.jpg}} **Pray, Love, Help** How to move on? Let us do what Jesus told us to do. Let us love one another. Let us pray for one another. Let us help one another. To develop God's family, we do not need static institutions, which try to build a facade. We do not need to have big church walls, which do not admit their mistakes nor clean up their mess. Friends and fellow believers: there is a special arrogance and pride within our churches, which does not fit the spirit of Jesus. It is everywhere, in the catholic or orthodox institutions as well as in the evangelical or charismatic environments. Let us put down our pride and start to live the love, truth and humility of Jesus, day by day. God's family is a jewel. It is the group of people in which the Holy Spirit has taken ownership, where HE lives. Let us reflect the purity of his spirit in our thoughts, our emotions and our actions. Let us let it grow into our life! Let us clean up our mess day by day. He wants us to grow, and with this growth the family of God will grow ... this is the day the Lord has made for you and for me, to be his family. [[http://www.jesusnetwork.eu/en/doku.php/topics_collection_ii|... more texts]]