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-====== Servants ... ======
+====== Princes and Servants ... ======
-Thursday, March 28, 2019.
+Thursday, March 28, 2019. There is a lot of struggle in politics. But there is a lot of struggle
+as well if you work in a company, or if you want to achieve something in any other community.
+Where ever humans are together, they have different character, different preferences, different
+talents and abilities, different capability to endure ... a lot of different things.
+How do we work together? Sometimes it is just working. If the right characters come to a table,
+they might easily find a way to collaborate, to invest their personal strength and do great
+things! But it can also be different ...
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-**  ... **
+** Jealousy ... **
+Sometimes you find a lot of struggle in relationships you cannot avoid. It would be great if you
+could just leave all those in peace, which seem to have different ideas from yours how to work
+together. But it is not always possible. Often, we are bound together either by our job or in
+our church or somewhere else. What to do?
+The apostle Paul, in his first letter to the Korinthians, writes about struggle in church:
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+But I, brothers,1 could not address you as spiritual people, but as people of the flesh, as infants in Christ. 2 I fed you with milk, not solid food, for you were not ready for it. And even now you are not yet ready, 3 for you are still of the flesh. For while there is jealousy and strife among you, are you not of the flesh and behaving only in a human way? 4 For when one says, “I follow Paul,” and another, “I follow Apollos,” are you not being merely human? 5 What then is Apollos? What is Paul? Servants through whom you believed, as the Lord assigned to each. 6 I planted, Apollos watered, but God gave the growth. 7 So neither he who plants nor he who waters is anything, but only God who gives the growth.
 </color> (from 1 Kor 3)
+How do we get into a state where we work together and live together in peace? After years of
+work both in churches, Christian projects and with small and large groups in my job I would
+say that is a challenge and will remain a challenge. Humans are just very different! But there
+are some basic point which can help you personally a lot ...
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+** Be a servant  ... **
-** ...  ... **
+Have a look at Jesus. He is said to be God, who be came human. He understood himself as a servant.
+Of course, he was the master - he also communicated this to his disciples. But as a master, he
+acted as a servant. He even called his disciples 'friends'. He tried to establish a new kind
+of relationship, by giving himself as an example.
+As humans, and in particular as believers, we are sons and daughters of God through faith in Jesus.
+We are lifted up to a very valued position: sons and daughters of the most high. We are told that
+the holy spirit enables us to know the truth, and to act in truth, to live in the truth. At the
+same time, we are called to follow Jesus. We are called to become servants as he chose to become
+a servant. We are called to make our own choices, to make this reality in our life.
+The balance between being prince and being servant at the same time bears a deep and fantastic
+miracle. As servant, we can give all others full priority. As prince and princess we can realize
+and accept the unbelievable value which God puts into our own life and existence, as he does
+with all other princes and princesses, all other humans! The holy spirit is there to guide
+us through this practically day by day ...
 (Roland Potthast)
 [[http://www.jesusnetwork.eu/en/topics_collection_ix|... further texts]]