Member Relationships

Member Relationships
(Psalm 42-43; Romans 12)
Sunday, June 23, 2013, Windsor UBC, J G White

RELATIONSHIPS WITH OTHER MEMBERS

We commit ourselves to watch over one another in brotherly love, to pray for one another, to aid one another in sickness and distress and to foster a fellowship which is centered in Christ and characterized by encouragement, concern, openness, honesty and the spirit of reconciliation. Thus, we will seek to avoid all gossip, slander, bitterness and an unforgiving spirit. (Romans 12:6-8; Eph. 4:11-16; 1 Cor. 12 & 13; Matthew 5:43, 44).

Examples of Christian Camping ministry websites...  Kingswood, Arrowhead, Bayside.
Many kids get to experience  a different fellowship, different relationships, different communication and teamwork than they do back home. (Aside from being introduced to Jesus and His disciples.)
Could our local church offer the same experience to people?  Year round?  In gatherings like this, in small groups, in choir, Merry Marthas, and so forth?
I used some of Romans 12 at a funeral the other morning.  Talked about the deceased and how he had some of these “marks of a true Christian.”  ...
What elements of Christianity do we display, as a Church Family?  Our unused covenant calls upon us to 'live together' in such ways. 
Churches today are critiqued harshly for our failures – unfairly and fairly criticized. 
And look at how many people drift away from our pews, or into our pews from other local congregations.  How do we stay together? 
Illustrations: Furniture being held together by wire instead of glue.  Duct tape in a pants pocket sealing the hole, instead of having it sown. 
Sometimes, the things holding people together in a church are not the main things.  We sometimes fall into relying upon other things to “bind us together.”
Charismatic leader/preacher
Dictatorial leadership (David's predecessor in Regina)
Traditions of worship, teaching, child and youth ministry, senior ministry.
Power structures (those who say “I have my say, I get my way” and others who say “Things are in good hands.”)
a Building...  I wonder if, in our age, Church buildings are often too powerful, too influential.  Does our building have too much power in our psyche, are we too attached to this, does it take far too much of our attention?  Maybe only when we let go of our building and say goodbye to it can we develop in such a way that we will then need a big building!
I relate it to Sharon and me, with our house.  I've felt that all our financial attention has been on paying for it, not other things.  We don't even use the property well – don't have people over a lot in all the space we have – don't plant and grow lots of things.  If we are not using it nearly to its potential, why have it?  If we are not studying or traveling or giving money because of our house, why keep it?  So, it's for sale. 
What else could be the cords that bind us together?
What about LOVE?  Is how we lovingly conduct ourselves based on our Covenant, which is simply rooted in texts like Romans 12?
You may know this song...
There is only one God, there is only one King,
there is only one body, that is why we sing:
Bind us together, Lord, bind us together
with cords that cannot be broken;
Bind us together, Lord, bind us together, Lord,
bind us together with love. 
If we pay attention to the beginning words of Romans 12, it's possible we see how better fellowship is possible with Christ than on any other basis.  The loving mercy of God...
I appeal to you, brethren, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship. 
It is as a living sacrifice, not a dead one, that we put ourselves in the Lord's hands, and get to go on living in new and wonderful ways.  The temptation of the 'living sacrifice' is not to stay there, but crawl off the altar!  We put other things, bits and pieces of our life there, when the whole of our lives is to be there. 
This is the same message as in famed Micah 6 (6&8).  With what shall I come before the LORD, and bow myself before God on high?  Shall I come before Him with burnt offerings, with calves a year old? 
He has told you, O mortal, what is good; and what does the LORD require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God? 
Some of the details of what this kind of life looks like are spelled out in Romans 12.  They are described in our Covenant – how we live together. 
It is a beautiful picture here.  But our real life today may not be so beautiful. Some friends aren't friends anymore in the “church family.”  Some committees are strongly criticized for their work.  Some worshippers quit our fellowship, dissatisfied. Sometimes it's depressing! Do the words of Psalm 42 and 43 now speak the prayer of our heart? 
My heart breaks when I remember the past,
when I went with the crowds to the house of God,
and led them as they walked along,
a happy crowd, singing and shouting praise.
    Why am I so sad?  Why am I troubled?
    I will put my hope in God,
    and once again will I praise Him
    my Saviour and my God.
This whole song – both Psalms together – calls for the Lord to restore the singers to the fellowship.  It's not just about getting right with God, even if other people won't like me and get along.  “Jesus and me got our own thing goin”?  No, it's about the Lord bringing the singer back into fellowship, into right member relationships. 
    Send me Your light and Your truth;
    may they lead me and bring me back to Your sacred hill,
    and to Your temple... 
There is healing to seek in the fellowship; there always is. 
At the heart of church as a healthy family becoming more and more our reality is that injunction from Romans 12: Do not be conformed to this world [age], but be transformed by the renewing of your minds, so that you may discern what is the will of God – what is good and acceptable and perfect. 
To be transformed by God is to be different.  To be different people.  Our behaviour, the things listed here, come out of the new me and the new you, on the inside.  Heart and mind – our soul.  Redeemed – set free, renewed. 
So our priorities change, in the congregation, when we want to be a church family, a family of God, a community of redeeming love.  Listen to the vision of life together in Romans 12.  Keep these words ringing in your ears.  The Holy Spirit will speak into our hearts, and we can be transformed. 
Here is our Windsor Baptist Website... still looking for a webmaster, er, webservant or two. 
Can this describe a devoted fellowship, a committed community, a membership that relates in God's ways to one another? 
Do we want to be all about providing the place for people to have fellowship that is better than any available elsewhere?  Not for the sake of being better; because people need better community life than can be provided in this world.  Like the child, the teen, going to summer camp:  a greater experience of relationships than was known back home.  We get to take the Kingdom of God into our home community.  This is what we are here for today. 
This is who Jesus died for – for His 'bride,' the Church.

Be Saved

Be Saved

(Ephesians 2:4-10; John 3:1-21)

7 pm, Sunday, June 23, 2013; Drive-In Service; J G White

(copied/edited from March 18, 2012)

It is interesting what people will say about Jesus and Christianity. I've heard a few wild ideas through the years. There is a book out now called “Jesus Is _____.” The authors have a website set up, which says: Everyone has an opinion of who Jesus is. That's why this website exists: as a platform for people to express who Jesus is to them. There are a lot of concepts about Jesus, and what His message of salvation really is.

I remember a memorial service reception a year ago, where a young woman spoke about her grandmother-in-law, who had then been dead for about four weeks. The young woman got tearful when she sort of pleaded that the ashes be buried so the deceased would not have to wander purgatory, but would rest in peace.

To me, it would be a strange world if all you needed to do to get into heaven was have your body or ashes buried. Might make the undertakers and the cemeteries happy!

Today, it is not clear what the message of Jesus is. Is it clear what Salvation is?

How does one get saved?

How does one enter the Kingdom of God?

How does one inherit eternal life?

I remember once, a woman spoke to a church member of her deceased mother, and hoped both she and her late mother would be in heaven together one day. “How do I get to heaven?” the person asked. The church member said: “Well, you need to be a good person and do what God wants...” Or something like that.

Wrong answer again, eh? Am I right? Be a good person and get to heaven is the wrong answer, in our Faith. Rely upon our good God and trust in the Saviour, that is the better answer.

Of course, it's not completely as simple as that, is it. We have in Matthew 25 a parable of Jesus Himself, that speaks of the final judgment. He talks of those feeding the hungry, quenching the thirsty, welcoming the stranger, clothing the naked, caring for the sick, visiting the prisoner. “Just as you did it to one of the least of these my brethren, you did it to me,” says the King in the story, representing Jesus. And then, to others, “Just as you did not do it to the least of these, you did it not unto me. And these will go away into eternal punishment, but the righteous into eternal life.”

We tend to emphasize that right living flows out of a right relationship with God, which God makes possible by the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus, the Son of God. To be saved one must rely upon the Saviour.

To Be Saved is a key, a linchpin, a big idea and main idea of our Faith. Without salvation from Jesus Christ, our spirituality and our religion are lost, and mere shadows of the real thing. In our evangelical tradition, we have often spoken of being saved as something that happens at a certain, definite point in a person's life. I got saved on such-and-such an occasion. Being saved is the starting point. “You must be born again,” as Jesus tells Nicodemus the Jewish religious expert, one special night long ago. To be connected with our own personal Faith we stay in touch with our beginning – how God reached us, and how we responded to Him. How we were saved.

Yet is it just the beginning of the race of life, that can be run victoriously as we rely upon Christ for our salvation.

We can recite quite a litany about salvation just from a few richly-packed verses from Ephesians 2. (Do you have a car Bible, like I do?) Turn there if you like. Notice...

Salvation is by grace.

Salvation is through faith.

Salvation is not of your own doing.

Salvation is the gift of God.

Salvation is not the result of works.

Salvation is not for us to boast about.

So... we are what God has made us.

We are created in Christ Jesus.

We are created for good works.

Good works are prepared for us beforehand.

Good works are to be our way of life.

For those initiated into the language and ideas of the Bible, these words are profound and meaningful. To those outside of Faith in Christ, they are not understood the same way. The words we use for our Faith, the Bible we quote, might be almost a different language form some people. It might as well be Greek.

Example of jargon... I was on a field trip a week ago, and in the woods we found an interesting and rare species. The opposite blades were sessile, the red calyxes also sessile, in small whorls, with inferior ovaries, and five pointed green and red sepals. A very exciting find; I'd never seen it before! It was Triosteum aurianticum, of the Caprifoliaceae family.

Did you understand me? It was a rare wildflower – Feverwort, or Horse Gentian, of the Honeysuckle family of plants. If I spoke your language – your words and terms you use everyday – you might understand me. So too when we explain Jesus. We must reach people who need Him in their terms.

We all have people in our lives whom we would say are “not saved.” They are not Christians, they have not taken basic steps to put their lives in God's hands, or they have rejected the commitment they once made or the things the Lord did for them. These people are in our homes, in our families, down our hallway or street. They are our co-workers, our fellow students, our facebook friends. They are also perfect strangers: the faces we pass by each week but don't know the names, and the chance encounters around town.

We want to know how to reach them. How to pray for their salvation. How to speak with them. How to show them Christ is real in us. Who to introduce them to to guide them. What book or movie or event or blog to recommend to them. What church event to invite them to and bring them.

Sometimes the results of our attempts have been mediocre. In many cases, we are deeply concerned for a few certain people, some very close to us, whom we want be saved and find new life in Christ. Some seem like tough customers.

This seems hard today. I know it is. The days of the revival tent meetings, the tracts handed out, the door-to-door visits of lay evangelists are over. I think that even the days of invitations to church services, or evangelistic “crusades” or to watch television religion are over. Most of this is rejected; people are inoculated against it. Much of it is ineffective today.

This is the day of social media. It is a day of Christianity being one minority among many. It is a day when people will meet Christ when they meet Christians, where they work, where they shop, where they learn, where they play, where they retire.

It is at the grass-roots that people will find and be found by the Lord, and get saved, and become disciples of Jesus. Our programs, of the Churches, must equip us to be the evangelists, the missionaries, the personal spiritual trainers of others. It happens out there.

So we must learn to speak of salvation in ways that will be understood by those who hear. And they must see the example and evidence of our saved lives. When salvation is real, it will attract & impact.

There is more than one ministry group out there that I've heard claiming to be “making a certain sound.” The point is that they are not making an uncertain sound, not giving an unclear message. You might want to turn to 1 Corinthians 14:7-8.

A year or so ago I traveled down to Clyde River to buy a rusty, musty musical instrument. It is painted purple. It weighs maybe 100 pounds. It is a stringed instrument. Can you guess what it is? It is a simple harpsichord. It looks like a small piano, with 57 keys. It had but a few, rusty strings in it. I started putting new strings on the harpsichord, but they were not tuned, and the bits that pluck the strings are in bad shape. My harpsichord is still making very uncertain sounds.

While writing about the spiritual use of prophecy and speaking in tongues, Paul says: It is the same way with lifeless instruments that produce sound, such as the flute or the harp. If they do not give distinct notes, how will anyone know what is being played? And if the bugle gives an indistinct sound, who will get ready for battle? Paul's point then is that our speaking about the Lord together needs to be clear and understandable.

We might feel led to go beyond this teaching and see that our messages to people in West Hants today need to be clear and true, not uncertain or confusing.

We can't speak in King James language anymore and expect to be respected for the spiritual sound we maketh. I still see signs along the road that say “Prepare To Meet Thy God.” I saw a sign outside a Church that announced Sunday service, and also: “Compline.” I bet there are Anglican Christians who don't know what that is, not to mention passers-by.

We cannot speak with allusions to scripture and expect the general population to know our shibboleths. Good Friday is about Jesus Christ being executed? Easter is about Jesus coming back to life after three days in a tomb? We cannot assume that everyone in our neighbourhoods knows such facts. Fewer are aware of who Paul was, or Moses, or Lydia. So we meet people with a clean slate, ready to explain the most basic things, and not think them dumb.

We cannot speak with an attitude of superiority to those who do not have much time for traditional religious forms. As sure as we may sometimes feel about how right we are about the Lord and His saving work in Jesus Christ, we need to be sure to love and care for those who don't make the same claims. Remember Jesus, who once, seeing a great crowd, had great compassion for them, because they were like sheep without a shepherd.

We cannot speak with judgment about right and wrong, in moral or spiritual issues, when those listening will reject such thinking from people who are clearly not living perfect lives. We've visited the Ten Commandments a couple times already this winter. What would you do if it became known that I, the Senior Pastor, had committed murder last week? Or had been stealing, lately? Or was having some affairs this year? The skids would be put under me, eh! Those commandments are just four or five words each in Exodus 20. But what if I said, “Whew, I haven't had a day off in a month.” I'd get applauded. Yet the command to keep the Sabbath holy goes on for sentences: about 80 words. No one can approach others with an air of judgment.

And it is so important for us to be very clear about what salvation is, in our day and age, for the sake of those around us. It is time for a new clarity about this key concept in our Faith. It is a priority for us to live the saved life, and we must speak the language of our neighbours when we are witnesses of what the Lord has done. Our words can be clearer, and our actions, our lives. Jesus is _____. What do you say?

Saying this well is our mission. Let us pray.

Lordship of Christ, or, How to Withhold the Storm

Lordship of Christ, or,

How to Withhold the Storm

(Romans 10:5-13; Luke 6:46-49)

10:30 am,  Sunday, June 9, 2013, Windsor UBC, J G White

The rain came down and the floods came up,

And the house on the rock stood firm!

Been thinking about flooding this past week.  For a few reasons. Had a crack in our basement wall sealed.  Flooding in Europe is terrible and incredible now.

Do you remember this?  July 1996 flooding in Saguenay, PQ.  

Here is The Little White House; it survived.  Now it is a museum and a symbol of standing firm against the flood.

Jesus sums up his teaching (Luke 6) with the paragraph Claire just read.  “Don’t call me “Lord, Lord” if you won’t do as I say.”  The one who listens to Jesus’ teaching and does it is like a wise builder, whose house will withstand the flood.  I do like the spin Eugene Peterson puts on Jesus conclusion.  

“Why are you so polite with me, always saying ‘Yes, sir,’ and ‘That’s right, sir,’ but never doing a thing I tell you? These words I speak to you are not mere additions to your life, homeowner improvements to your standard of living. They are foundation words, words to build a life on.

“If you work the words into your life, you are like a smart carpenter who dug deep and laid the foundation of his house on bedrock. When the river burst its banks and crashed against the house, nothing could shake it; it was built to last.

Last week we worshipped by singing

On Christ the solid rock I stand,

All other ground is sinking sand.

Many gospels hymns weave this teaching in.

Rock of Ages

O Safe to the Rock that is Higher than I

He Hideth My Soul in the Cleft of the Rock

A Shelter in the Time of Storm

So, to be with Jesus, to be saved, is not simply to believe in Jesus.  Or even to believe what he taught.  Don’t just have the words; do the words.  Don’t just have the Rock; build on the Rock.  Cling to the rock, as the victorian images suggest.

The other day downshore I saw a little home, a mobile home.  In the yard was a poured concrete foundation.  Empty, nothing on it.  To have the words of Jesus, the face of Jesus on your wall, but not follow, obey, have Him as Lord of life, is like having a foundation your house is not even using.

Build life on the teachings of Jesus.

Bill Hybels tells of once giving, and I quote, a six-week sermon series about the cost of following Christ, including a no-holds-barred teaching about the requirements of discipleship.  I wanted the whole congregation to understand what “full commitment to Jesus Christ” really meant.  It was during this time that I coined the expression: “Ninety-five percent commitment to Christ is 5 percent short.”  (When Leadership and Discipleship Collide, p. 33)

How do we get from 95 to 100%.  Or, for me, from, say, 50% to 55%, and upward?  

ONE.  Act on what you know from Jesus, what you already know.  This takes time.  Progress is ongoing.

Heard of Red Letter Christians?  Tony Campolo... remember him?  “God’s Kingdom is a Party”  Shane Claiborne.  In “Red Letter Revolution” Shane speaks of becoming honest Christians, honest about still being imperfect sinners... (pp. 28-29, re: Rich Mullins (“Awesome God”)

Act on what you know from Jesus.

One day, the finale will come.  We will be complete.

Theme verse of the whole book of Revelation?  11:15.  The Kingdom of the world has become the kingdom of our Lord and of his Messiah, and he will reign forever and ever.  

TWO.  Rely on God’s promises now, in normal moments, and thus be better prepared to rely on Him in the crisis, or bigger challenges and opportunities.  Act on God’s promises.  Pray with God’s promises.

As Richard Foster taught about prayer.  How can you jump to praying for healing from cancer if you have not learned to pray when facing the common cold?  There’s no cure for it either!

Or overcoming lying.  Take small steps, steps you can see.  

Jesus as Lord of the little things in life helps get you to Him as Lord over the bigger bits.  

THREE.  Build together, not alone.  

Just consider all the wisdom Christ offers in His sermons and parables. All things about life TOGETHER.  Love your enemies.  Give to everyone who begs from you.  Do not judge.  Take the log out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to take the speck out of your neighbour’s eye.  

These words He still speaks to us, in love.  These lessons will keep us amid the challenges of our lives.  These paths can be trusted.

Our LORD, Jesus, is, of course, unlike other lords, masters, kings, prime ministers, mayors, and so forth.  

Nineteenth-century Danish philosopher Soren Kiekegaard wrote, “The first form of rulers in the world were the tyrants, the last will be the martyrs.  Between a tyrant and a martyr there is of course an enormous difference, although they both have one thing in common: the power to compel.  The tyrant, himself ambitious to dominate, compels people through his power; the martyr, himself unconditionally obedient to God, compels others through his suffering.  The tyrant dies and his rule is over; the martyr dies and his rule begins.”  

The storms of life can be faced when we are building our lives upon Christ.  This is a matter of doing what he said, not simply believing what He said.  But this must be rooted in our faith in Jesus.  We must trust Him, and trust ourselves to Him, in order to build life on Him.  

So I want to close with a few of  those amazing phrases from Romans 10 that we heard half and hour ago.  And perhaps some of these words will call you to a new step of faith today.  Perhaps some turn of phrase you will take with you, because it is just what your neighbour, your family member, your co-worker needs to know.  

Let’s hear them again for the first time, from Peterson’s The Message version of the Bible. (Rom. 10:5-13)

The word that saves is right here,

as near as the tongue in your mouth,

as close as the heart in your chest.

It’s the word of faith that welcomes God to go to work and set things right for us. This is the core of our preaching. Say the welcoming word to God—“Jesus is my Master”—embracing, body and soul, God’s work of doing in us what he did in raising Jesus from the dead. That’s it. You’re not “doing” anything; you’re simply calling out to God, trusting him to do it for you. That’s salvation. With your whole being you embrace God setting things right, and then you say it, right out loud: “God has set everything right between him and me!”

Scripture reassures us, “No one who trusts God like this—heart and soul—will ever regret it.” It’s exactly the same no matter what a person’s religious background may be: the same God for all of us, acting the same incredibly generous way to everyone who calls out for help. “Everyone who calls, ‘Help, God!’ gets help.”

Covenant Community

Covenant Community

(Hebrews 8:6-12)

10:30 am,  Sunday, June 2, 2013, Windsor UBC, J G White

We are putting our house up for sale.  People wonder why?!

1: to spend less on where we live and more on things like study and travel. We plan to go back to renting around here.  

2: We now have full responsibility for a cottage property, about 50 kms from here.  We might want to invest more in that, and it become our retirement home. And keep the lawn mowed!

3:  It was mortgage time anyway; time to think over all our options.  And it’s nice to try selling when you don’t have to sell.

Financial matters are not my forte, but I see a Mortgage as a contract, an agreement, a covenant of sorts.  If we sell, agreements need to be made and contracts need to be signed.  

Covenant = ?  An agreement between two parties.  Terms of the agreement.  

Old Testament Covenants: Noah, Abraham, Moses, etc.

New Testament Covenant = Jesus Christ, cross & blood

As a community, a family, a body, the New Covenant is at the heart of our fellowship.

Hebrews 8 and 9 - all manner of convoluted covenant stuff.

Our theme scripture for this season, 8:6.  

Jesus has been given a greater work to do for God.

He is the go-between for the new covenant.

That covenant is better than the old one.

It is based on better promises.

There are covenants between people and God. There are also agreements among people, among God’s people. So we have a Church Covenant, an agreement among us, under God.

A vital part of Baptist congregations through our history.

Our own church history tell us we were founded with articles of faith and a covenant.  1819.

Our covenant has changed through the years.

Our present Covenant has this as its introduction...

Because God’s love compels us to love, serve and obey Him and because Christ desires His church to be holy and without blemish, we the membership of the Windsor United Baptist Church, do, before God and one another, cheerfully ascribe to and voluntarily agree to the following Biblical guidelines for Christian conduct.

God’s love compels us to love. 1 John 4:7 says: Beloved, let us love one another, because love is from God; everyone who loves is born of God and knows God.  It is incredible to know that even when we are not capable of - or willing to - love everyone around here, God does.  Our Lord is the source of our love.  Rooted in Him, we can love others better than we can do this on our own. This is a bit of wonderful grace, eh?  Let us love one another, because love is from God.  We can do it because love is from God.

God’s love compels us to serve and obey Him.  Jesus said to his disciples, If you love me you will keep my commandments. (John 14:15)  He loved us enough to die for us, in our stead.  Today we remember His actual human body and blood, wrecked for our sakes. As it says back again in 1 John 4, In this is love, not that we loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the atoning sacrifice for our sins. (10)

So our agreement with one another, to be a family of God, is rooted in the love of God for us, most powerful in Jesus, and in the obedience this can bring in our lives.  

Our Covenant can be useful, good for something.

A Church Covenant can be the basis of a good life together.  Making a commitment together helps us all.

Elected leaders in trouble... in a sense, their covenant with the public seems to have been broken.  Senators.  Mayors.  Bank CEO salaries!  Breaking an unwritten covenant?

In the Old Testament, the people often complained about their leaders, yet they had been just as much the covenant breakers.  How many times did the children of Israel try to reject Moses’ leadership, or simply reject Moses?  Read Exodus, read Numbers, and find out the repeating story.  The people had the tablets of the Ten Commandments, kept in the Ark of the Covenant.  Again and again they did not keep the agreement; again and again they were brought back to the good life with the Lord. Worshipping only the LORD, living right with each other.

Even we who know Jesus keeps looking for the good life.  We can read books like Your Best Life Now - by Joel Osteen, or The Life you’ve Always Wanted - by John Ortberg, or Life Without Limits: Inspiration for a Ridiculously Good Life - by

Nick Vujicic.  And many more.

It is a ridiculously good kind of life Jesus lived, and that we can live because of Him.  But remember - all of his story, the whole thing, is ridiculously good.  Our agreement together is based upon the New Covenant in His blood.  And as the book of Hebrews teaches, Jesus covenant is the greatest.  It surpasses all the went before, it completes them.

A Church Covenant can be the basis of Church discipline.

So taught Bill Brackney, in a session a few years ago with our Deacons at the time.

The basis of our restoration of people in fellowship is the New Covenant in His blood.

Way back in our history, people were disfellowshipped, with a view to restoring them.  Again and again in the minute book we can read this sort of thing.

Would we dare do this today?  But does membership here mean very little if very little is required?  No covenant need be kept, apparently.  I’ve grown up with this, you have too.  Shall the be a new age of meaningful membership in the local church?  

As Elton Trueblood wrote, 50 years ago, we, Church, can be the Company of the Committed. And, committed to a special way of living this life with the Lord, others see and come to understand.  

So our Church Covenant can be the basis of a good reputation.  If life really is better in our fellowship than outside it, what do you suppose those outside will do?

We can take a cue from 1 Thessalonians 5.  We CAN do this... if the Lord tells us to, we can, with Him.

Therefore encourage one another and build up each other, as indeed you are doing. ...Be at peace among yourselves.

And we urge you, beloved, to admonish the idlers,

encourage the fainthearted, help the weak,

be patient with all of them.

See that none of you repays evil for evil,

but always seek to do good to one another and to all.

Rejoice always, pray without ceasing,

give thanks in all circumstances;

for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you.

Do not quench the Spirit.

Do not despise the words of prophets, but test everything;

hold fast to what is good; abstain from every form of evil.

When this happens among us, what will others see and say?  The good life is available; it comes from Jesus.

Yesterday I was paying tribute to an old, deceased friend, who was a big football fan, so this story is appropriate now.

A football game was being played in Badger Stadium in 1982 in Madison, Wisconsin with more than 60,000 fans in attendance. The home team was losing. But out of the blue during time outs, when play was a at stop, the fans would jump up and roar with excitement. Why?

Many of those in the stadiums were listening to a game being broadcast on the radio from 70 miles down the road. What they were listening to was the Milwaukee Brewers beating the St. Louis Cardinals in game three of the 1982 World Series. Their team on the field was losing, but they were turned into something better down the road.

The Christian life is like that for us today. Our circumstances are bad at times but we must be tuned into something better down the road. We must place our hopes not in this world but in Jesus Kingdom that is breaking into this world!  Do we seem to others like those who know something greater is going on than they know about?  God is up to something, really good!

This is the hope that shines in us for others.  

Small group Bible study... song we used to sing...

Written in the Word, In the good good Word

Is a message from our God, Gonna tell you all about  

How to get to the kingdom, the good life

I love Jesus Na na na na...

Livin’ in the world, Where the big grapes grow

Milk and honey flow, From the morning to the night

And everybody’s singin about Jesus

Our reputation can be: those who have real hope and real life.  The basis of our reputation is our reliance upon the New Covenant in His blood.

This summer I will take us through our rather long Church Covenant, and explore the agreement we have with one another under God about this life: how to live it.   Aside from the role of these in our covenant relationship, they are practical topics to seek the Lord about today.

Lordship of Christ

Relationships with Other Members

Christian Growth

Stewardship

Family Relationships

Social and Moral Issues

Witness

These things are all important to our commitment - to one another - to our Lord.  They are important to our lives.

Jesus is the go-between for the new covenant.

It is based on the best promises.  

Stand on His promises.