The Lamp of the Body

Another week gone by! its so sad when i look at my yearly calender and see that im like 1 1/Th through my Pais year! this month has gone so quickly!!! so this week i have been doing a few things! Saturday night i went down and watch a IONA concert down in Bolton! and if you have never heard them or seen then i recommend it! there some of the most talented musicians ive ever seen! this week i also started helping at Life Kids! which is the young peoples group At Life Church! (like Fusion in Oswestry) was very hectic but fun so looking forward to that this week again :D  I also lead the young peoples Sunday school this week again which was awesome! decided just to have a chat with the young people and was just cool getting to know them all more personally! schools went well.. in our hard school we decided to go for a drama and see how that would work and they responded so so so so well! which was a blessing! and the rough school listened with no interruptions at our talk and was just a very good week! we have now finish our series on Identity with one school and have two weeks left in another, so after this week there will be alot of prep deciding what to do as out next topic!

         So for those of you who read my blog last week i have just started a study on Parables! where im taking on one parable a week looking in depth at it and how it works for me! when i was spending time reading i found that my favorite expression of the parable was in Luke 11v2 in the NIV which calls it 'The Lamp of the Body' now what i didn't know about Luke was that Luke was a Doctor and traveled around with Paul, and he wrote both Luke and Acts, he also gathered all his information from the other gospels and from people who were at the place at the time! he wasn't a Jew but a Gentile and was interested in healings and facts! so that's why his book is more detailed. whats interesting is half off Luke is actually in mark! so he has copied alot! so you now kind of know the background in which this was written, Luke and Paul travelling around Europe together and gathering stories and talking to people to find out more about Jesus and Spread his news! so when he speaks about the Lamp of the Body it is saying 'Your' eyes are the Lamp, so your eyes are the thing which lights your body up so if you let what you see be good then you whole body is good. (this goes back to my blog on Rubbish in Rubbish Out) so let your eyes light your body up by allowing yourself to see good things and not and not bad things! when you search through the other books and what they say about it, it sort of moves on from this message! so Luke is saying make your eyes a lamp and make sure you inside are bright! so then you read that, then you also use what it says is to let your light out, spread your light! so you need to 1) make yourself bright, rubbish in rubbish out, good in good out, Jesus in Jesus out... then you need to 2) let it out... spread what you have inside like it says if you have a lamp why would you hide it, that's not what its there for!  so for me this has been an important message for me... let good into my life.. then proclaim the good to other people... ! what i get out of that as well is in church.... you can go to church every week and receive and receive but then never share what your receiving so there just taking! then you have some people who just give.. its a fact that 20% of a congregation does 80% of the work so you have people who just give give give but never receive! that's not good either you need to have a balance of both! heard a very good preacher at my Church this week and he was saying what harm is there in church in asking if you can help?? the worst that can happen is they say no thank you were OK! if you think you can help, ASK!!!!  maybe the challenge God is giving you is the challenge of asking?   

      If you have any of your own thoughts on this passage please email me on luke.al.thomas@gmail.com or comment underneath! so this week i am studying the next parable on my list which is ' A wise man builds his house on a rock'  which is found in  MATHEW 7V24-27 AND LUKE 6V 47-49 so get reading :D

this week is a hectic week.... alot of work to do, am out every night of the week so no spare time! have the possibility of leading worship on Friday at our once a month youth vent getting around 80 young people... then preparation for when me and my team go down to Blackpool to lead the worship at there 3 day conference with young people! so shall be an exiting but tiring week!

so if you can just pray for that sort of paragraph above.. all my prayer points are in there :D get reading the parable and i hope to hear from you with your thoughts :D