Romans 16

That was a cool story wasn't it...

In the beginning, it has a whole bunch of verses regarding greetings~
Let's greet the people who are new to the church, people who have been going for a while now~ let them feel welcome. We are the greeters of God's home. I realized yesterday, that I only say hi to a selective few.. like the pt members and people in my ohana group... Im personally going to try and do this and become closer with others i dont really know well right now

17My friends, I beg you to watch out for anyone who causes trouble and divides the church by refusing to do what all of you were taught. Stay away from them! 18They want to serve themselves and not Christ the Lord. Their flattery and fancy talk fool people who don't know any better. 19I am glad that everyone knows how well you obey the Lord. But still, I want you to understand what is good and not have anything to do with evil. 20Then God, who gives peace, will soon crush Satan under your feet. I pray that our Lord Jesus will be kind to you.
It's sad and scary to think that there are people in churches who can cause such trouble for the church..
but this is something that i find VERY important as a member of a church, and a Christ based community.
satan will look for any opening; a point of weakness to try and break a church apart. But that is why we must stay strong! Why we must try to be positive and love everyone, and we must also love God unfailingly!!!! If we do not build our church on a strong and firm foundation, then it will crumble.
Without Jesus as the corner stone... we have no chance.
But if we do our best to build a proper community with the right building blocks, then God will take care of it all, and will crush satan under our feet, just like it says in the bible~

be safe, stay strong, and God bless <3
have fun back at school tomorrow !

no kevin.

I think this chapter was focused mostly on greeting from verses 3 to 16.
What i think we should take from this is to GREET people into our MINISTRYYYY!!!! WE DONT DO THATTT!
wherever i look, i always see the younger kids sitting by themselves or being really quiet. We should go and talk to them or introduce them to others so that they feel more comfortable in the ministry. When Sam was here, if we didnt, he would. But since we dont have someone to do that for us anymore, we should stand up and do it ourselves. When I entered Hi-C there were many people to greet me and i was comfortable after a week or two. Also i had Jacob, everyone knew that i was jacobs brother, so it was easier for me to make friends.
Some kids in our ministry doesnt have siblings in the ministry so it would be best for US to help them just the way others helped us.

Come on, Kevin... that was rather disappointing of a story.

Romans 16 basically sums up (as most of you have written) as to greet others in the ministry as it has been done before. However, I guess I'll add on to a little bit - Verse 17 to 19 really made me think a little bit more than just the idea of greeting:

I urge you, brothers, to watch out for those who cause divisions and put obstacles in your way that are contrary to the teaching you have learned, Keep away from them. For such people are not serving our Lord Christ, but their own appetites. By smooth talk and flattery they deceive the minds of naive people. Everyone has heard about your obedience, so I am full of joy over you; but I want you to be wise about what is good, and innocent about what is evil.

I felt this at first once we started leading praise for quite a while - aren't we being REALLY distant from everyone else? Like Joseph pointed out, we never really talk to the younger ones, especially the grade sevens... we really need to step it up and consider being closer with them. Yes, they aren't in the same grade, but we should be role models, since WE'RE the ones who seem to cause the divisions... and really, when we say we want to serve the congregation, are we really doing everything out of love? We already KNOW what to do - all that's left is to simply apply all of that material. God can do so much with all of us - I remember always talking to some of the older guys like 5 or so years ago, making me feel comfortable.

I guess my prayer for today is that we all consider doing the greeting that needs to take place; not because we have to do it by any means, but rather that we do everything out of love - that in itself is offering ourselves to God as part of worship. There's SO MUCH that can take place - and we need to be the ones who set the fire.

- Julian.

I pretty much got what Joseph and Julian mentioned in this chapter. We really do need to take the time to interact with others in our ministry. Just because we're on praise team, it doesn't mean we can't take the time to sit or talk with the other kids. We always say, we're a community. But if there is no communication, how can that be?

Sorry guys, I'm REALLY tired.. Just came back from blue mountain ahahah
Gnight