{"id":2322,"date":"2007-04-11T07:26:55","date_gmt":"2007-04-11T13:26:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.casadeblundell.com\/jonathan\/?p=2322"},"modified":"2007-04-11T07:26:55","modified_gmt":"2007-04-11T13:26:55","slug":"come-alongside-me","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/casadeblundell.com\/jonathan\/come-alongside-me\/","title":{"rendered":"Come alongside me"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I&#8217;ve subscribed to several newsletters from <a href=\"http:\/\/www.smallgroups.com\">Smallgroups.com<\/a> and their e-mail from yesterday caught my eye.<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Has anyone ever told you to &#8220;mind your own business?&#8221; Ironically, the New Testament asks us to mind each other&#8217;s business. And in a small group we have the chance to do just that; to encourage one another, to bear one another&#8217;s burdens, to weep with those who weep and to mourn with those who mourn&#8230; yes, even to &#8220;admonish one another.&#8221; After all, if my friends in Christ won&#8217;t help me recognize where I am slipping or cheer me on to obedience, who will? And how can I grow to maturity if no one helps me?<br \/>\n<em>Hebrews 10:24 says &#8220;let us consider how we may spur one another on toward love and good deeds.&#8221; That was written not just to pastors, but to all believers!<br \/>\n<\/em><br \/>\nTaken from Small Group Dynamics ezine article: &#8220;Who Says So&#8221; by Steve Cordle,  March, 2007.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Last night we finished up our study of Philippians&#8217;s and Paul mentions several things to the church of Philippi that I thought were very applicable to this same concept, idea.<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>I&#8217;m glad in God, far happier than you would ever guess\u00e2\u20ac\u201dhappy that you&#8217;re again showing such strong concern for me. Not that you ever quit praying and thinking about me. You just had no chance to show it.<\/li>\n<li><strong>It was a beautiful thing that you came alongside me in my troubles.<\/strong><\/li>\n<li>You Philippians well know, and you can be sure I&#8217;ll never forget it, that when I first left Macedonia province, venturing out with the Message, not one church helped out in the give-and-take of this work except you. You were the only one.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>The church at Philippi shared in Paul&#8217;s burdens. They helped him when no one else would. They showed concerned and came alongside him in his troubles. They were in Paul&#8217;s business and ultimately God&#8217;s business.<br \/>\nIf we as the church are going to be about God&#8217;s business we better be ready to get in the business of others.<br \/>\nWe must be willing to help the needy on each and every street corner and in every pew and seat of our church.<br \/>\n&#8220;For they will know that we are Christians by our <del datetime=\"2007-04-11T13:16:00+00:00\">t-shirts<\/del> love.&#8221;<br \/>\nWe also better be slow to say, &#8220;Mind your own bees wax&#8221; and be quick to say, &#8220;I&#8217;m struggling. I need some help.&#8221;<br \/>\nWe have to be ready and willing to admit our own failings and leave pride behind.<br \/>\nWhy is this such a hard concept for the you and\/or the church of today?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I&#8217;ve subscribed to several newsletters from Smallgroups.com and their e-mail from yesterday caught my eye. Has anyone ever told you to &#8220;mind your own business?&#8221; Ironically, the New Testament asks us to mind each other&#8217;s business. And in a small group we have the chance to do just that; to encourage one another, to bear &hellip; <a href=\"http:\/\/casadeblundell.com\/jonathan\/come-alongside-me\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Come alongside me<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":84,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[18,19],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2322","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-faith","category-reflections"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pEnSo-Bs","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/casadeblundell.com\/jonathan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2322","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/casadeblundell.com\/jonathan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/casadeblundell.com\/jonathan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/casadeblundell.com\/jonathan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/84"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/casadeblundell.com\/jonathan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2322"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/casadeblundell.com\/jonathan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2322\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/casadeblundell.com\/jonathan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2322"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/casadeblundell.com\/jonathan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2322"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/casadeblundell.com\/jonathan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2322"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}