Download THEME: CROSS FIT FINDING YOUR TRIBE Northfield Daily

THEME: CROSS FIT
FINDING YOUR TRIBE
DAY 1 – (week beginning 22 August 2016)
Read: Acts 2:44-47
Bertrand Russell said, “Three passions, simple but
overwhelmingly strong, have governed my life: the
longing for love, the search for knowledge and the
unbearable pity for the suffering of humankind… I
have sought love, first, because it brings ecstasy. I
have sought it, next, because it relieves loneliness.”
This is but one of many voices capturing the voice of
a society in search for “finding a tribe” and authentic
relationships of love.
This search for community challenges the quality of
the church’s fellowship. We proclaim that God is
love, and that Jesus Christ offers true community.
We insist that the church is part of the gospel. God’s
purpose is not merely to save isolated individuals,
and so perpetuate the loneliness, but to build a
church, to create a new society, a new humanity, in
which all barriers between people have been
abolished. Moreover, this new community of Jesus
dares to present itself as the true, pure society. It is a
high sounding claim; a claim of both triumph and of
tragedy.
The tragedy is that the church consistently fails to
live up to this claim, showing little acceptance, care
or supportive love. People searching for community
ought to be pouring into our churches, Instead we
find many a church emptying!
The triumph is that there are communities where
true, sacrificial, serving, supportive love is to be
found. Here, their magnetism is irresistible. While
being bound together by personal loyalty to Jesus,
these communities reaches an intimacy and intensity
unknown elsewhere. Does your “tribe” witness more
to the triumph or the tragedy of the church?
Prayer: God, make the church more like you. Amen.
DAY 2
Read: Acts 16:25-34
Baptism not only gives opportunity to the one being
baptised as a child of God, but to also give
opportunity to the one baptised to join a tribe that
regards themselves as being best understood as the
children of God. It gives community to the one being
baptised, introducing them into the presence of
other children of God.
God is community – Trinity; Father, Son and Holy
Spirit and is best experienced as community. To love
God is to know and experience the fullness of God –
to know and experience God as Father and as Son
and as Holy Spirit and to allow this experience to
draw you more fully into God’s community with Him
and all His creation in love.
Baptism opens this door. Baptising a person is
receiving a person into the community of faith and a
call for us to live as the sons and daughters of God,
belonging together as members of one spiritual
family or tribe – the living body of Christ. It is for this
reason that baptism is inseparably bound to the
gathered church – the moment when the church
most demonstrably lives into this being one Body.
Baptism welcomes people into the family of God and
offers them guidance, support and formation as they
grow to the full maturity of the Christ like life.
Consider your experience of baptism and the
baptism of those you know. What gift has come to
you in entering into community as a member of the
living Body of Christ? What gift do you offer others
entering into community as a member of the living
Body of Christ through baptism?
Prayer: Lord, thank you for my entry into your body
through baptism. Amen
Northfield Daily Devotions
DAY 3
Read: Philippians 2:1-11
To be part of a tribe has many connotations running
across a spectrum from really positive to really
negative. I remember running with the wrong crowd,
without any awareness of how detrimental this was
to me. I also remember the support given to me by
“my tribe” to get me through the darkest days.
Is it not true that community can make us think of a
safe togetherness, shared meals, common goals and
joyful celebrations. It can also conjure up images of
sectarian exclusivity, “in group language”, selfsatisfied isolation, and romantic naiveté. What
separates these two realities? How are we as
children of God’s tribe guided in the direction of our
experience and those who experience us being a
positive one?
It is crucial to remember that the quality of
experience of any tribe is first of all a quality of the
heart. As a tribe of children of God, we are given
wonderful insight into the condition required in our
hearts. We are required to have the same heart that
Jesus head, knowing that we are alive not for
ourselves, but for another. The degree that we have
hearts that have the capacity to make the interests
of others more important than our own is the
degree to which our experience and the others’
experience of us will be a wholesome and life giving
one. In Paul’s words, “in humility regard others as
better than yourselves. Let each of you look not to
your own interests, but to the interests of others. Let
the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus”
(Phil 2:3-5).
The question therefore is not “How can we make
community?” but “How can we develop and nurture
giving hearts?”
Prayer: Father, give us hearts like Jesus. Amen.
Daily Devotions written by: Michelle Saville, Desbe Odendaal, Rev Mike Brown and the Northfield Ministers.
THEME: CROSS FIT
FINDING YOUR TRIBE
DAY 4
Read: Colossians 3:8-14
Frederick Beuchner in a book entitled "Telling the
Truth" reminds us that God is Head of His tribe and
from the beginning chosen people for his tribe,
whether we agree with His choice or not. He
playfully describes God's selection of people for the
purpose of accomplishing his work:
"Who could have predicted that God would choose
not Esau, the honest and reliable, but Jacob the
trickster and heel, that he would put the finger on
Noah who hit the bottle, or on Moses who was
trying to beat the wrap for braining a man in Egypt,
or on the prophets who were a ragged lot, mad as
hatters most of them...
With God, the exception seems to be the rule. The
first humans God created went out and did the only
thing God asked them not to do. The man he chose
to head a new nation known as "God's people" tried
to pawn off his wife on an unsuspecting pharaoh…
Rahab, the prostitute became revered for her great
faith. And Solomon, the wise man broke every
proverb he composed.
Even after Jesus' life, the pattern continued. Two
disciples who actively spread the good news, Peter
and John, were the two Jesus had rebuked most
often for petty squabbles. And the apostle Paul, who
wrote more books than any other Bible writer, was
selected for the task while sniffing out Christians to
torture.
Whatever the difference, all have a place in God’s
tribe. May we co-operate and unite with all whom
God chooses to be part of our tribe.
Prayer: God, teach me to always honour your choice
of who is part of your tribe. Amen
DAY 5
Read: John 15
The image of Jesus being the vine and us being the
branches is a helpful in considering us as being part
of God’s tribe. It reminds us that the life of the tribe
is given by Jesus. Elsewhere in John, we read of Jesus
telling Nicodemus that he must be rebirthed by
God's spirit; we read of Jesus telling his disciples that
he offers life in full abundance – overflowing
amounts. Jesus dies that we might live. Jesus sorts
out all the life defeating and life taking parts of our
lives and plugs us in to life. Jesus is the vine and our
life as branches is given to us by him. In ch 15:16 he
even says, "You did not choose me but I chose you to
be a branch that bears everlasting fruit."
And all we have to do is remain in the vine – remain
connected to the vine. In that connection we will:
 somehow reflect or reveal something of
Jesus;
 visually demonstrate the achievement of
the cross;
 carry the Spirit of God within us and
amongst us.
 become a sign of the kingdom of God; a
demonstration of what human community
looks like when it comes under God's
gracious rule.
Jesus is at the centre of God’s tribe. At Northfield or
wherever else God’s tribe is, Jesus has chosen to give
us life. Do you experience the life Jesus offers? Do
you participate in the life given by Jesus the vine?
Does the life juice of the vine find its way into your
life as a branch? Do you remain connected to the
vine through prayer and reading Scripture and
seeking a life in the presence of other branches
connected to the vine? Hear our tribe leader say,
“Northfield remain in me, and you will bear
everlasting fruit.”
Prayer: Father, may we remain in you. Amen
Northfield Daily Devotions
DAY 6
Read: Hebrews 10:24-25
One reason we worship is to encourage others in the
faith. My presence in worship is to encourage your
faith. Your presence in worship is to encourage the
faith of those who have gathered to worship. Our
presence at worship is to encourage the faith of
those we left at home when we came here. By just
being present when the church gathers, we
encourage the faith of the elderly and the children
and the poor and the tormented and the bereaved
and those who search.
As God’s tribe, we are all challenged to make this
community of faith a central part of our lives by
banding together with people who share the vision
of love, justice, and service. Sharing in such
experiences is an accurate barometer of spiritual life.
And when we commit ourselves to sharing in the
community of faith, amazing things begin to happen
– just look at the early church! Those disciples who
deserted Jesus, those disciples who jostled for
privilege, those disciples who fell asleep at
gatherings, those disciples who time and time again
failed to see the big picture didn't exactly have too
much going for them. Sometimes we may be inclined
to say that our gatherings as God’s tribe can be
described in these terms.
All be that the case, we must remember that the
best thing the early church had going for them was
the promise of Jesus that the God would always be
with them. With that promise alone they set their
course and the rest is history. May we as the local
church here and now, do likewise.
Prayer: God, as we learn to be your tribe here on
earth, may our presence build the faith of
others. Amen.
Daily Devotions written by: Michelle Saville, Desbe Odendaal, Rev Mike Brown and the Northfield Ministers.