2010-11-22-Gratitude, Worship, Maturity
Arcadia #296
Contents
• 1 Heading
o 1.1 Topic: Thanksgiving Messages
o 1.2 Group: Arcadia TeaM
• 2 Facilitators
o 2.1 Teacher: JarEl
o 2.2 TR: George B.
• 3 Session
o 3.1 Opening
o 3.2 Lesson
3.2.1 Gratitude, Experience
3.2.2 Worship
3.2.3 Maturity
o 3.3 Dialogue
o 3.4 Closing
o 3.5 Note
Topic: Thanksgiving Messages
Group: Arcadia TeaM
Facilitators
Teacher: JarEl
TR: George B.
Session
Questions: Joe asked if you had any message for him to help him heal?
Opening
Prayer: Larry: Dear Father thank you for this day and for this group. We are very thankful for the blessings you have bestowed on each one of us. Help us to be good stewards of these blessings. We pray for peace in the world and we pray for the healing of our planet and its people. Show us the way that you would have us do your will Father – we want to serve you. And we also pray for Joe. In Michael’s name, Amen.
JAREL: TR, George: Good evening. It is I, your teacher JarEl,
Group: Welcome.
JAREL: It is good to be back again.
Lesson
Gratitude, Experience
JAREL: As you near the time of gathering with your loved ones and families, so do we gather in similar fashion on more than a regular basis with associates and people that we love to mark certain milestones in our lives as we look forward to a more fruitful and progressive future. And to give each other strength in this long enduring adventure we call life. And, yes, we have much to be thankful for, we have a whole lifelong career behind us. It is evidence of a loving God who has graced us with this life and this opportunity to experience his wonderful universe. Though our thankfulness is perhaps a little bit more complex than what you are accustomed to thanking God for, for you do not have this lifelong experience that we have – you have not lived hundreds of thousands of years with a myriad of experiences under your belt.
Your life is somewhat limited to the experiences that most people have on this planet, but even so, your experiences are valuable nonetheless. And when you gather with your families, ponder this – all the more opportunities that life will give you to not only experience joy and happiness, but to experience the grace of God in everything that you do – to know that He is there with you, step by step, as you struggle along this lifelong career, as you meet every challenge with vigor and with poise and as you climb another hill of certainty because God is with you. Ponder all those things when you are thankful for He will always be with you no matter what you do and no matter where you are.
Worship
And thankfulness is just another word for worshiping for we all do worship the one true center of us all. He is within us and He is without and He carries us through in all occasions, in all struggles and all conflicts. And we put our trust in Him for we know that he is a sure anchor that is steady and stable and shall never leave us adrift. And even though you meet the struggles of this life and deal with its vicissitudes, there are a lot of things that you should be thankful for – for perhaps you do not realize all the gifts that you have and you might not even be aware of these gifts until you’ve crossed over.
Maturity
There perhaps is a level of gratitude that must be reached at every juncture in your lifelong career. As you mature and grow you realize that there are certain things that have always been there for you and then you become appreciative of those things. You will be like a child who grows up and becomes a parent as well and then becomes thankful for their own parents and for the way they were raised. For now they know why they did the things they did. And so shall you grow up in the grace of God and realize that there was a certain wisdom behind all that happened to you. And now you are just realizing it.
But all these things that do happen to us, they are there to mold us, to shape us, to help us grow and mature – and to what end, you may ask. Well that is for you to discover for the end is never in sight, the adventure continues forever. And you shall grow and grow beyond anything you can imagine. I do not presume to tell you what to be thankful for. But I will tell you that I am thankful for that, for this grand opportunity to experience this enormous universe and to be a part of it – to be part of God, for He is part of me. Are there any questions here tonight?
Dialogue
Larry: Joe, who has been here before, wanted me to relay a personal message to you JarEl. His message was that he is sorry for everything. Joe is going through a stressful period in his life right now and he just wondered if you had any message for him to help him to heal himself, to get better?
JAREL:: TR, George: Tell him he has nothing to be sorry about for neither has he ever insulted me or crossed me in such a way that I would be angry at him. I understand what he has to go through and there is nothing that he can say or do that would make me think less of him.
This life that he has is a struggle for him and he must overcome all these struggles with sheer determination. But know that God is always with you in your struggles and lean on Him when you find yourself weak and helpless. He is always there for anything that you need. But you must be open to Him and accept His gifts as they come.
Life will not always be this difficult. But the problems that you have will seem less as you grow and then you will come up against new problems to deal with which may seem overwhelming. But as you mature, those problems too will become less and less, will be diminished. This will be the pattern of your life, problem after problem.
But the experiences that you will gather from all this problem-solving will be invaluable for your life and for the lives to come. Do not fret for the challenges that you have are there to shape and mold you and to help you become who you are meant to be. That is all.
Larry: Thank you.
JAREL:: TR, George: Are there any other questions?
Closing
JAREL: Very well, I do enjoy coming down to greet all of you and I do appreciate the fact that you take the time and effort to transcribe this meeting for the benefit of others who are not fortunate enough to be here. Your effort is invaluable to them whether they know it or not. But I suppose it helps that I say it – either way, thank you and goodnight.
All: Thank you JarEl, goodnight.
