No Greater Love Than This...Day 4

I managed to be on time again this morning, AND the church was unlocked! I am really getting good at this! This morning we the talked again about community and love, but today we were able to interview a couple people who are involved with the Blackfalds community. We interviewed the lady who runs the food bank in town and then two people from Neighborhood place. It was really cool to hear what they had to say about community and Blackfalds and their idea's on how you can change it. The verse we read before we went out at interviewed them was John 15:9-15 the key verses in this are verse 12-13
12 "This is my commandment, that you love one another, just as I have loved you. 13 Greater love has no one than this, that one lay down your life for his friend."
It was great to just spend sometime hearing their stories and such! We also talked a bit about it as a group, how it would look for us to lay down our lives for others. I mean it could as simple as just listening to someone, or letting them "win" the argument. It kinda ties in with the relinquishing your rights that we talked about yesterday. Sometimes all people need is a listening ear, or a honest "how are you?" I mean how many times have you asked someone that question and really wanted an answer? or even waited around for one? One of the ladies said "A lot of the problems with the youth in our community comes from them not being respected as people (this goes for adults as well). If you want respect you have to give respect." That really got me thinking, a lot of the times we just label people and judge them by their outer appearance. If we don't treat them like humans of course they aren't gonna act like them! They are just gonna act the way we treat them. It just really got me thinking, even a smile can make a difference!
This afternoon was bible study...haha that was great! today wasn't to much of bible studying as more of a teaching the approach that we are learning for studying. It is called the Inductive approach. There are four steps to this approach
1) Observation - What does the text say?
2) Interpretation - What did the text mean to the original readers?
3) Application - What does the text mean to me?
4) Proclamation - How can this be shared with others?
We started with Colossians. So we are working through it just color coding it and such, just really digging into the book, there is so much in it, it's amazing!
We also just started by talking about why we study the bible, and we read part of psalm 119, we each took 20 verses, one of the verses that really stuck out to me was Psalm 119:92 "If thy law had not been my delight, Then I would have perished in my affliction." That just really jumped out at me. It made me think of the song "Keep your eyes upon Jesus, look full in his wonderful face, and the things of earth will grow strangely dim. In the light of his glory and grace." I have a lot to think on tonight and a lot of homework...and I need sleep