Love One Another Well

It has been three weeks since we've opened up the Barn for the 2009-2010 school year, and already God is working in such awesome ways. Not only have a had a bunch of new students attending the Barn, but we have also be able to dive deep into what the Barn is all about with them. For the next eight weeks we will continue our ten week series of discovering the "Five Barn Beams". The five Barn Beams are the essentials of what we strive to teach the students who attend the Barn; the baiscs on how we can really come to love the Lord and love each other:

1. LOVE ONE ANOTHER WELL
2. ENCOURAGE ONE ANOTHER
3. CHALLENGE ONE ANOTHER
4. WORK TOGETHER WELL
5. PRAY FOR ONE ANOTHER

We believe that these 5 things help us as individuals wrap our minds around what it really means to live in relationship with each other based on how we live in relationship with the Lord. When we initiate students into the Barn we do so by telling them that the Barn isn't simply the building, but it is them - as in the same way the church isn't the building, but God's people - and that in order for 'The Barn' to stand firm it must be founded on these five things.

The past two weeks we have looked at what it means to love one another well, and really looked deep at the love that God has for us. As we went through those two night we defined love as, "Seeking another's highest good." This means that we must be people who don't simply live in the security and safety of our own pleasures, but who step out in vulnerability to love one another as Christ loved us. We looked back at the two greatest commandments given by Jesus: "To love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind and strength and to love your neighbor as yourself", and talked about how all the rules that God has created were based some how on these two ideas of Lord.

It was really awesome to see the students begin to open up and to begin to talk about what this meant for them. As they gained a new understanding on the commandments that God gives us they began to be able to see the love of Christ in such a different light. Please be praying that the Lord continues to open wide their hearts and continues to bring them closer to himself and to each other. These next two weeks we will be taking an indepth look at how to Encouage One Another.

Thanks for you your continued prayers for the Barn!

In Christ Jesus,
Jeremiah