Bearing one another's burdens

I made mention on my "secular" blog-WIXY's Gone Bananas, that I wanted my readers to pray for me. I've been dealing with depression for several months now. This got a response from my good friend Danny, who posts on message boards as BoredOp0930. We then exchanged e-mails, each mentioning personal problems. Danny shared on the comment section of WGB about his ex-fiance who had betrayed his trust.

Sitting at my desk at break time this morning, I got to thinking about the book of James, a book that I think Christians should read often, and I will apologize to my KJV only friends right now. They should read the book in several translations.

The main thought I get out of the book of James is that "Faith without works is dead". I've noticed in the past several years that churches say that they have a missionary thrust, but with their lives they pretty much say "bless us four and no more"

Case in point: about 10 years ago, we changed churches after a long painful decision on our part. My wife had grown up in that church, but doctrinal differences between the pastor and her dad had caused a split within the church. We settled in a church where we had thought the people shown love one towards another. The problem was it was a family church. We had about how much people were quick to visit the sick and support those in need.

Fast forward about 3 1/2 years. I was in the hospital having knee replacement surgery. The stay in the hospital was five days. You want to know how many come to the hospital to visit, besides the pastor? Uh, none. One member told my daughter that "Cliff needed his rest".Funny though some time later the assistant pastor's wife was in the hospital having a baby(by c-section). She wrote in the church newsletter about the stay, and commented that "crowd control was needed" when she mentioned about her visitors. I guess that someone who just had a baby didn't need her rest.

Galatians 6:2 says "Bear ye one another's burdens, and so fulfil the law of Christ" KJV

Prayer request time comes and we are told to keep it brief when we present our requests. In keeping our worship time in the neat little package we forget that some people are hurting and maybe the Lord wants us to know it. Keeping it brief sometimes only stifles those who are being attacked in a big way by the adversary.

Bearing some body's burden means more than saying "Wonder how so and so is doing?" without actually seeing them and praying for them.

Next time you are in church and you hear a prayer request for the umpteenth time and you are tired hearing about remember our Lord spent nine hours on a cross after being spit upon and beat almost to death for that person(and you too) to give that request. Take note of that request. Turn their burden into your burden. Pray as hard for it as you would pray for your self, and maybe you can shout the victory with that person.

Keeping it simple

As I was in church this morning, we had a man get up to sing. His name is Issac Sipple, known around town as Brother Sipple. He is 89 years old and goes around from church to church, always carrying his guitar in with him. It seems that everyone is always blessed to hear him, because intead of him coming in and complaining about all his aches and pains, he always talks about how good the Lord has been to him.

Our church has a really good sound system with a CD player, cassette player, and mini disc player. We have several musicians playing guitars, drums, piano and keyboard. But simply this morning it was an "old boy", as Brother Sipple likes to call himself, an acoustic guitar, and a voice which for many years has gone from place to place praising the Lord.