Fellowship Report - 3/11/2025

Welcome back to The Fellowship Team blog for another week. As we embark on our first missionary trip to Pasadena, California, here are some thoughts and lessons the Lord is highlighting for us.

Hello, Jenifer here. This week, I'll be quoting the book "Live to Love" by Norm Wakefield, where we're learning about the change of mind and heart dedicated to living to love others, loving others with Jesus and for Jesus.

Now, we find ourselves in the second part of the book Pull the Weed, focusing on idolatry and how it's very easy to fall into idolizing someone or something. I used to believe everything my parents said about me, whether good or bad. It's easy for me to put relationships as my source of joy. However, I now understand that when I put anything or anyone in the place of God, nothing will go right. It's corrupting the first and greatest commandment.

Matthew 22:37 says: "You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind."

This instruction is not something I wish not to do. It's a duty; I long to do it because the reality is that nothing and no one will satisfy my heart and soul the way my relationship with God does. I long to know Him more every day and fall in love with His way of loving and accepting me, without conditions, without perfection. HE loves me better than anyone.

Hey, y'all, this is Caleb. I hope you are doing well.  One of the many books we are reading during our time in this program is Revolution Within by Dwight Edwards. This book does a very good job of explaining how God replaces our old sinful heart at the moment of conversion with a new one that desires to serve God for His glory. It then describes that sanctification is falling in line with the new design that God gave us. Sanctification is a continual process of unveiling the Godly characteristics that have been installed in us.

One of the chapters we read this past week talked about how God views us as opposed to how many believers see themselves in a different, untrue way. They slip into a different mindset without noticing how their thinking does not align with what the Bible says is true of them. By referencing Romans 5-8 and 1 John 3, this chapter explains that God no longer views us as sinners when we're saved. Instead, He sees Jesus, who died and was resurrected to cleanse us of all past, present, and future sins.

Here is an amazing analogy. Imagine you bring your car into the mechanic shop for engine repair. Many Christians see themselves as a broken car that needs its engine fixed. However, that's not what God does; He removes the old engine and puts in the best brand-new one. I want to add to this analogy; also, imagine that even before your engine swap, though it was your car, sin was in the driver's seat, taking you around wherever it wanted to go. After God's complete engine replacement, He is in the driver's seat with you as the passenger and sin in the back seat. Sin will still try to reach over God's shoulder and take control of the steering wheel, but now, with the strength of the Holy Spirit, he can be prevented from doing so. The difference is that before Christ, sin controlled your life. Whether you liked it or not, there was no choice. However, after he has saved us, we have the choice and opportunity to reject temptation and sin.

Hey everyone, Rob here. This week, we finished up Leviticus. As always, there were many interesting topics we read and discussed. What piqued my interest was the first mention of the year of Jubilee. The year of Jubilee takes place every fifty years. The best way to describe it is a year of reset. In Leviticus 25, God commands Israel to celebrate and observe the year of Jubilee. God then instructed Israel to return to their homelands and return any property bought. This concept is mostly foreign to us. Lands and properties were valued based on the time between that year and the next year of Jubilee when it would be returned to the original owner. When an Israelite bought a piece of property, if they were buying it a year or two after the year of Jubilee, the property would be worth its maximum value. Likewise, if the property were being sold a couple of years before the next year of Jubilee, it would be worth much less since the property would not be able to be used for long.

This concept is almost entirely foreign to us today; the only thing that resembles this is that older store items have reduced prices if they have been sitting for a while and are not sold. This topic was very interesting because today, our value-based system completely differs from the Israelites'.