Wow, another great night of worship discussion. We began the evening by re-capping from part I characters in the bible that choose poorly and looked at what/why they did what they did and looked at the consequences of their actions.
The meat and potatoes of the night was looking at the life of Jesus; more specifically the character traits that He possessed. We started off by looking at the younger years of Jesus. Ellen White provided us with some clues as to how he led his life. We saw that Jesus honored his mom and dad, he showed spiritual excellence, He took pride in doing the best job He was able to do, He was purpose driven. He also showed cheerfulness in daily living. Jesus was noted to work in His father’s carpenter shop and took time to hone his skill in all activities.
We looked at Matt 19:13-15 when Jesus bid the children to come. Here we were shown compassion, open mindedness, inclusiveness with all peoples, love, validity, and sense of worth.
We also looked at Matt 4:1-11 were we see Jesus being tempted by the devil. Jesus showed faith, courage, focus, humility, obedience, knowledge of the word, spirit led.
Jesus was noted to use lots of parables to teach the people. We gathered that the use of parables was how Jesus was able to relate to the people the principles of kingdom living. He taught us the spirit of understanding the people around us who we interact with. Patience was another trait seen during Jesus’ ministry.
John 2:13-17 was an interesting verse in which we saw a side of Jesus we did not expect: anger. Here we discussed that anger is an emotional response and in itself not a bad response. We then determined that Jesus used this anger in a specific way to show the importance of keeping His Father’s house in a holy way (John 2:17). We learned that anger is not wrong but the actions can be. Anger can be used to cause change in a positive way and not destructive to us or others.
Finally we looked at Luke 22:39-46 the prayer at gethsemane. Here we Jesus showing perseverance, faith, communication, surrender, obedience. However we also noted that Jesus was showing signs of fear or more specially separation anxiety from God. Jesus at this moment has never felt separation from God before. It is here that we saw something major: Jesus was so connected to God that he could feel physically, emotionally, spiritually distant from God in His last moments. This was mainly due because of the close/intimate relationship that He nurtured.
In the end we determined to gain these character traits that Jesus had we need a relationship with the Trinity. Its only through an intimate relationship that we can grow and develop these traits in our lives.
