Grafted In
…and this is the glorious good news of the gospel. We have no right or claim to these promises. Neither can we graft ourselves into them on our own. We must be grafted in. Welcome to Holy Baptism.
Losing Control
“I’m not saying to be reckless and unwise, but we can serve our fear more than we serve our Lord! That is not God’s call on the Christian’s life. He did not give us a spirit of fear, but of love, power, and a sound mind. We weren’t created to control everything around us.”
God’s Merciful Compassion
There will be times when we will be tempted to use and abuse compassion. And if we do so, we end up harming the least of these. It does not give life; it does not feed the soul. But we also harm ourselves. We embolden self-will. We attempt to subvert God’s will. The result of the use and abuse of compassion are not life-giving; they are life-taking because, at its core, compassion is about mercy.
Start Small
Why did Jesus heal them just so they could grow older and die anyway? It’s because the Kingdom of God is like a mustard seed; it grows even as we doubt and get discouraged.
Wheat & Weeds
God has planted within you His love, His kindness, His abilities, all of the fruits, all of the gifts––God lives within you…and since [He] lives within you, there will be weeds cast in your life. Remove them, for there is a judgment coming; you do not want to keep living in the weeds.
Good Soil
We don’t exist to simply meet in a building on Sundays…There is a harvest out there! There is a garden to be planted right here in Jackson. Bearing fruit requires us to understand the word of the kingdom! To seek it out! To meditate on it! To pray it! And most importantly, to live it!
Prisoners of Hope
“Jesus is offering us rest from trying to earn something that is being given to us for free.”
Selling Out
If we are to faithfully steward the gospel, the hope of the world, we have to get our own house in order: we must prioritize the Kingdom of God over all others.
Resident Aliens
“…there are 3 dangers that come with being resident aliens, or citizens of two kingdoms at the same time: The danger of being delivered, the danger of being despised, and the danger of being destroyed.”
Getting Our House in Order
“We need to get our priorities straight in the church today. We need to minister to one another so that we are inviting the lost into something good and godly. We need to get over fear, anxiety, and reluctance and get into the game. And we need to keep the church’s mission in our sights at all times before we settle into cozy Christianity.”
Two Places at Once
“The hope of the world depends on the Church prioritizing God’s Kingdom over any other commitment. That’s why you and I aren’t caught up to heaven the second we are reborn. We are sent out into the Kingdom of Man to demonstrate a better way. Not the way of asserting moral superiority over our neighbors, but the way of crying out for God’s mercy and receiving more than we could ever dream. It is our calling and it is the hope of the world.”
Friendship with Christ
…so keep loving. Keep loving Jesus. See how Jesus has loved you, and me, and others around him, and go love like that.
Nourished on the Word
We fill our hearts and our minds with his Word, right? We do that. That's the data. That's the stuff that the Holy Spirit uses, and we just fill it. He gives us understanding as time goes on. We have to be patient, but faithful, and understanding is Word, seeking understanding, meditating on it, praying through it.
Hearing Voices
Do you know the voice of the Good Shepherd? Are you listening to his voice or are you hearing other voices; the voices of strangers? Does Psalm 23 describe your life or do you feel like you are in a sheepfold being destroyed by ravenous wolves? There is a Good Shepherd, friend. He laid down his life for you.
Now You See Him, Now You Don’t
We are not above Thomas, we stand beside him. He is our big brother in the faith with something crucial to teach us. That our journey of faith is to have a Thomas-like quality to it. That we don’t just accept things without thinking, but that we learn how to doubt.
Plunge Into Hope
“The resurrection of Jesus is good news because he changed the human story from a Tragedy to a grand Comedy, the Greatest of Happy Endings!”
Ambivalence
As we saw at the beginning of Lent, when the devil was tempting Jesus, everything that Jesus was being tempted by, He could have without a bit of help from the devil. And it's the same thing as He stays crucified on the cross. He could get out… But Jesus doesn't take the easy way out.
The Whole Point
Pain before joy; death before glory. What we see that day at Lazarus’ tomb is not a Jesus who stands aloof from our pain and our grief, but experiences it Himself, not merely for His own glory, but so that you and I can enter into joy and glory. And friends, that is the whole point!
Seeing Through God’s Eyes
In healing the man blind from birth––the lesson for all of us in this is that that is all of us! All of us are blind from birth. We’re born into a world separated from God, into a reality separated from God, we’re blind to our fallen nature, our sinful nature, and it takes God coming into us and healing our blindness for us to do this.
Beyond Snap Judgements
In this story Jesus demonstrates for us how we can move beyond our snap judgments and do the work of seeing and connecting with the person in front of us, even if that means crossing traditional boundary markers, to lead with love, to give others the benefit of the doubt, to meet people with curiosity, to be truth-seekers with others instead of assuming that we’re the expert in the room.