Wow what a day! I am so exhausted but feel like I am walking on air. I have so much I want to say, but I am virtually speechless. What could make me that way? Today we had two people accept Christ as their Lord and Savior!
Welcome Matt and Tatum to the family! God is great and it is amazing to see Him work.
Lord thank you!
Well, today we began our series on the Apostles; I decided to look at them more or less individually rather than as a group. The reasoning behind such an undertaking was really quite simple; I wanted us to learn more abut the men that Jesus chose. In doing so there is much to be gained, first as we know more about these men we can see traits in them that we can identify within ourselves. For example, Andrew was the kind man who wanted and did bring people to Jesus and within the scriptures we can clearly see that from the very beginning to the very end we can see Andrew bringing other to Christ. Another thing we noticed from his life was that he was a man that was very passionate, in the account of Andrew telling his brother about Jesus our English text does not give us the picture that the Greek text does. For example in John 1:41, the English text tells us that Andrew “said” to Simon “we have found” the Messiah, the words in quotation marks are the keys to Andrews demeanor, in English said is a past tense verb no big deal, in the Greek, the word is NOT past tense nor is the single word for “we have found” in the Greek both of these are present tense active verbs which tells us that Andrew did not just simply go to Simon and say we have found the Messiah. No, this clue leads to a clearer picture of an excitable man who was intense in the repetitive telling Simon we found Him, we have found Him, we have found the Messiah We have found the Messiah. So as we learn about these men we will be looking for clues to their character, clues to the attitudes and behaviors, we will be looking and identifying their passion, their fears and failures the strengths and victories and in doing so we will see little glimpses of our own selves in the men that Jesus chose, and in that we will realize that Jesus still seeks men like with their qualities today and on any given Sunday morning churches all around this world are filled with men and women that fit the bill. Are you one of them, I bet you are! However, this question remains are you serving Him like they did, or like you should?
The whole of the Bible is the revelation of the story of God’s love for the human race. It is amazing when you study the scriptures and discover that from before the foundation of the world Jesus has been working, either in the creation of all that is, or He has been being revealed in and through various Old Testament figures, such as Job, or Moses. In the New Testament you have men like Simeon who longed for the revelation of Jesus and was promised that he would not see death until as he put it “the Salvation of God is revealed” and it was in Jesus.
Beyond the question of Who Jesus is, lies two more prevalent question that are birthed from knowing who Jesus is and they are; What does knowing who Jesus is mean to me? And What do I do with Jesus now that I know who He is?
I guess for me the most important realization of who Jesus is manifests itself in these two statements.
Jesus is the Love of God
And
Jesus is the Heart of God
Well you can check out the message here
We had a great Sunday, since we have spent the last two weeks hammering out what a complete biblical plan of salvation includes, I felt that it was prudent to discuss the importance of sharing our faith.
This one fact is the one that should really get us all to think about the importance of sharing ones faith. In the Gospel record, Jesus healed 40 people and of those 34, were brought to him or Jesus was brought to them. So with only six people finding Jesus on their own, it is clear that very few people will find Jesus just by picking up their Bibles and reading them.
The bottom line, we should tell people about what God has done for us and in us, in and through Jesus but we must turn that corner and tell people that God wants to similar things for them.
A simple plan would look like this;
(1) Pray everyday for God to provide a divine appointment, pray for that person that God would move them before your encounter, and during your encounter, so they will be impacted by your story and by what God wants for their life, and after so they would be so moved that they would act favorably to the gift that God has for them
(2) Share what God has done in your life, be bold and confident, temper this with love, humility, faith, and obedience and let your story the one God has developed in you be a source of power to let others know who Jesus is in real time, in your life.
(3) Share God’s story again temper this with love, humility, faith, and obedience, and you will do well. Tell them of what God has done for the whole of humanity and what He wants to do through Jesus in their life.
Well, if you want to know more check out the whole message here
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