To get to witness our students passionately worshiping Jesus, taking steps and making commitments to trust and follow Christ, was amazing! One of the most encouraging things that comes from these type of events is the unity and community that is formed.
The Christian life is not a consistent mountaintop experience. It can be repetitive and, at times, might even be described as blasé. I doubt even those the closest to God live without desert experiences. But there is so much promised to us in a relationship with God!
The winner in this story is guaranteed. And as Pastor Josh fleshed out in his message on Sunday, the brokenness that started in the Garden of Eden was immediately foretold to be restored to wholeness … humanity just had to wait awhile before the serpent-crusher was fully revealed a few thousand years later.
Why with only two choices to pick from did Adam and Eve not just keep eating from the Tree of Life and the other good trees in the garden? And why, instead, were they drawn to the one tree they were told not to eat?
We were the pinnacle of His creation, and after we chose to rebel against His ways and have what pastor, writer, and speaker Mark Sayers refers to as “the Kingdom without the King,” He has been active in restoring us into relationship with Himself ever since. But how does God go about this restoration?
We must build our foundations on the rock because just as we experience plenty of rain in the Northwest, we will all experience plenty of life’s rain and storms; and when the ultimate storm comes that will decide our eternal fate, on what foundation did we build our house?
By abiding in Jesus and endeavoring to be more like Him through time spent with God and His Word, we begin to see that good fruit He promises in our lives as He prunes us into who He made us to be. We begin to understand more plainly why Jesus had to come and die for our sins, and what it looks like to follow Him.
It does not take much for one go down the wide road. The truth is, it is far easier… at first. Inevitably, however, that “wide gate” and the road that follows eventually ends in emptiness, isolation, desolation...
The Golden Rule was not a concept completely unique to the Bible, so versions of it are a largely universal idea. In Matthew 7:12, Jesus not only made this age-old idea active, He also pointed to the legitimacy of Scripture as the whole reason for the action.
You will never be good enough, and that is okay. Truth be told, God’s love for us is not determined by the good things we do, or shockingly, even the bad. His love is a free gift offered to us from the moment He breathed the breath of life into us. It is a radical reality, and one that we cannot often parallel in this world. It is what makes our ability to converse with God so incredibly profound.
As we seek after our Savior and find Him, that genuine encounter with our holy God humbles us and reveals our place in His kingdom, as broken children in need of salvation. The truth is, our lives are just as messy as that neighbor’s life; just maybe in a different way.
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