Jesus as a man

This week we have been watching the first part of a film about Jesus' life. The film is called Jesus and is part of the Time Life series on the Bible. See here for more info. See here to buy.

This first part of the film focuses on Jesus and his family before he starts his time in ministry, while he is still at home. During this Jesus dad Joseph died. We see Jesus grieving his dads death. In the Bible it doesn't say that Joseph died but he is also not mentioned in Jesus later life. So it could be assumed that he does die some where along the line. It brought home how much Jesus was a man from a family with friends and commitments around him. It made us think about how Jesus though being the son of God was also a man with struggles like other people.

The film also depicted Mary (sister of Martha) having a crush on Jesus and how he had to tell her that he could not be with her because God was calling him, and his life was not his own. It also made us think of the weight that would have been on his shoulders seeing how the Romans were treating the Jews but having to wait to know when to act. In the film he did not have any brothers or sisters and so was leaving his mother on her own when he left, which was hard for him. In the Bible it seems to show that Jesus did have brothers and sisters but as the oldest his mother would be his responsibility.

Please add your thoughts on this!

The image of gold and the fiery furnace

We looked at the story in Daniel 3 about three God geezers surviving a mega hot fiery furnace. They were put in a fiery furnace because they did not obey the King when he asked them to bow down to a big statue. This is alot like what we were thinking about yesterday. In fact in North Korea there is a statue today that people have to bow down to. But Christians don't and they are killed for their faith.

This makes me feel well sad/bad. Why can't people just accept other peoples beliefs.

What do you think?

People who suffer for their beliefs

On Sunday night their was a service run in a local church by a guy from Open Doors about people around the world who are persecuted for being Christians.

So for our Bible study this week we are praying for the persecuted church!

So here is abit of info about what we were praying about, (taken from OpenDoors Frontline magazine, Jan 09).

More Christians have been killed in the 20th century, than had been killed for the whole of the previous history of the Christianity (0 AD to 1900).

60% of those killed are children.

200 million suffer per year for the Christian faith.

India: Orissa

Since August at least 60 Christians have been murdered - some say up to 500; 18,000 injured; 4500 houses ad churches destroyed;more than 50,000 people forced out of their homes, with an estimated 15,000 people remaining in refugee camps. The EU has described it as a 'massacre' of Christians. The Prime Minister of India, Dr. Manmohan Singh, called it a 'National Shame'.

We then spent some time praying for these issues and suggest that you do the same!!!

Feel free to add comments with info about other areas of the world for prayer.

Serving others

We looked at Mark 10 v 35 - 45 where James and John were asking Jesus if they could have places of honour sitting on Jesus left and right, when he is on his throne of glory.

Jesus then says that those who are leaders must be servants, those who want to be first must serve everyone else.

We then looked at the following questions:

1. What are James and John's motives for their question?
2. Do we have similar motives?
3. What does Jesus mean by 'drink from my bitter cup and be baptized with my baptism of suffering'?
4. How will James and John share in it?
5. If you were one of the other disciples how would you feel?
6. What does it mean to be the slave of all?

Results from discussion:

1. Some thought that the brothers were being egotistical and wanted the most reward. Others thought maybe they wanted to be close to Jesus.
2. Sometimes we can try to do good things because we want to be rewarded.
3. Jesus knows he will be killed and that those who follow will also suffer. He was telling them what lay in store for them which they did not really understand. When they talked about wanting to be on his left and right, those that actually were with him when he was dying where those being crucified either side of him.
4. They would have suffered persecution and would probably have been killed, certainly many of the disciples were martyred.
5. Annoyed because they were trying to put themselves before you and say they were more important. Maybe worried that there was going to be suffering in my future as well.
6. Difficult to serve so many people when there is just one of you who is serving for everybody else. Would be a humbling experience. Would mean you had to be leading with everyone elses benfit in mind.

What is this all about?!

This is our first blog, we will be trying to add blogs regularly written by a mix of our young people and our team. We will be adding blogs about different spiritual relfections and welcome your comments and insights.

Ben Hyde
GYFC