Scripture and Inheritance

Ive been thinking for the last couple of days about scripture, the nature of it and how we interpret it, its been part of my changing as Ive moved up to Scotland to re-evaluate me, the church and my relationship to the creator of heaven and earth. This is just a summary to read the rest of this post click here or on "continue reading" Below Firstly I was thinking the other day that Scripture is written often to the church, not to the individual, so often we read scriupture and say "how does that apply to my life" and that is good sometimes but we need to look at the bible as a community and say what implications does this have for church, and community and then in turn how does the mean I have to respond to that. 1 Corinthians 1 (New Living Translation) 2We are writing to the church of God in Corinth, you who have been called by God to be his own holy people. He made you holy by means of Christ Jesus, just as he did all Christians everywhere--whoever calls upon the name of Jesus Christ, our Lord and theirs. Clearly scripture often tells us it is written to the church but we've got stuck in this me centred gospel, and its true when you are broken and lost God cares for the one, the individual but when were looking to build up the church with our lives (which dosen't mean as individuals were sorted out) we need to care about the community of church were in, not so we can be precious about religious structure but so that we can build up the bride of Christ, because thats what God is coming back for. Another thing I heard a guy called Andy Hickford from Soul Survivor in 2004, he mentioned something which I really resonated with, that people in the church get over P.C. (politically correct) about the fact that God calls his people "sons" and people argue this is unfair, un cultural, well it may be but in the same way Women need to learn how to be the sons of God, Guys need to learn how to be the bride of Christ. Both of those have inferrences, the bride of course has obvious attachments, but in the bible Sons are the ones who collect the inheritance from their fathers, and our father in heaven has an awesome inheritance for us and we need to be Men and Women who know who they are in Christ....Sons. A Post I found through Arlens Blog (what a contributer you are to my blog :-) is a post by Trudi Matthews which reminded me of some other things about scripture. The People of God can get really proud especially evangelicals like myself (yeah Im not too bothered about that label for me, I grew up in an evangelical church and so its legacy no doubt still lives on) about their knowledge about scripture, and there holding to the word of God, and their correct theologies (Im not tearing down evangelicals just like I wasnt tearing down Charasmatics the other day). But I have realised recently that its not about me....when I was younger I always wanted to get to 40 and have everything sorted, know the bible, have all my big major sins completly buried etc. But Ive realised I'm never going to fully understand the bible, because Ill never on this earth fully understand God, the fullness and Glory of who he is....and thats part of worship the mystery of it, the wonder. Also this post reminded me that, God says there is nothing new under the sun, and as church and the people of God its not a good thing to despise the past as so many "new moves" can be tempted to be, because most of the time we are just re-learning things from the past, and there are some incredible inheritances to take from past theologians and "heroes of the faith" which we can sell ourselves out of by purely looking to the future. A great quote I will never forget and whenever Im being overly nostalgic or home sick I think of, an original from a hero of the faith John Gillespie "Love the past Live the present and look to future" (I think thats an ever evolving quote actually hehe) But thats what its about Living life and doing/being church, in light of the past and the future.