Genesis 12:1-7; Romans 12:1-21
October 4, 2009
“The Power of the Blessing, Part 4”
To Be a Blessed Church
Rev. Meagan M. Boozer
Late in the afternoon on the first day of Bible School this past summer, I went over to the restaurant to get a sandwich before all the activity started. While I was waiting for my take-out food, a young boy came over, introduced himself, and struck up a conversation with me. He was the son of one of the waitresses. I asked him what he was doing for the evening and he said that he was just going to be hanging around the restaurant, waiting for his mom to get off work. I invited him to come to Bible School that night. With his mom’s permission, he came over to the church at least an hour before Bible School officially started. He talked a lot. He had a lot of questions. Joni was here early, and between the two of us, we did our best to answer his questions while trying to get ready.
One of the questions he asked me was this, “If you could have any job in the world, what job would you want?” I thought for a few moments and answered, “I’d want the one I have.” He replied, “Do you mean that when you were a little kid, you wanted to be a preacher here some day?” “No,” I said, “But I can’t think of anywhere I’d rather be now.”
Is that the way you feel about this church? Is it easy for you to use the word ‘blessed’ when you think about your experiences and your connection to this congregation?
What does God think of our congregation? Is God’s blessing flowing into and through us in a way that really makes an eternal difference in the lives of people? If so – how can we keep it flowing? If not – why not? Let us pray:
Thank you, dear Lord, for your word. Grant us grace in these next moments to be able to see wondrous things that change the way we think about the church. You have given us purpose in our being the church, and yet we have stood afar off, merely watching while others do more than they have been made to do – growing weary – yet pressing on. We come in faith, with hearts pried open by your Holy Spirit. Teach us, mold us, fill us, use us. In Jesus’ name we pray, Amen.
Over these last several weeks, we’ve been learning about the power of the blessing. We’ve learned that the blessing from God comes with words that bring new life, words that call forth the best in a person, words that envision a very special future, words that are cherished and remembered by those over whom the blessing is spoken.
I’ve repeated the words, ‘capacity’ and ‘result’ as part of our teaching – hoping to help us consider that God has placed within us a grand capacity for carrying and sharing the good news about Jesus to a hurting world. We think small. God thinks big. We think ‘I can’t,’ God shouts, ‘you can!’ God has spoken words of blessing over us – calling us to be fruitful and multiply. God has called us to be life-givers in word and in deed.
Listen with me to the first Scripture for this morning, and see what comes to your mind as one of the important defining marks of what it means to be blessed:
1Now the LORD said to Abram, “Go from your country and your kindred and your father’s house to the land that I will show you. 2I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you, and make your name great, so that you will be a blessing. 3I will bless those who bless you, and the one who curses you I will curse; and in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed.”
4So Abram went, as the LORD had told him; and Lot went with him. Abram was seventy-five years old when he departed from Haran. 5Abram took his wife Sarai and his brother’s son Lot, and all the possessions that they had gathered, and the persons whom they had acquired in Haran; and they set forth to go to the land of Canaan. When they had come to the land of Canaan, 6Abram passed through the land to the place at Shechem, to the oak of Moreh. At that time the Canaanites were in the land. 7Then the LORD appeared to Abram, and said, “To your offspring I will give this land.” So he built there an altar to the LORD, who had appeared to him.
God blessed Abram by speaking words to him about a special future. God promised offspring, God promised land in a fertile country, and God promised protection.
Abram responded by doing what God told him to do. God said, “Go from where you are (leave your past behind – your country, your kindred, your father’s house). Go to the place I’m going to show you.” In verse 4 we read, “So Abram went as the Lord had told him.” Abram went. In just a few verses we read that they headed for Canaan (the land we know as the Promised Land). But in the beginning, Abram did not have a destination in mind. God said he would show him the land, and Abram trusted God’s word and set out. Not mapquest. Godquest.
In Genesis 17, we read that when Abram was 99 years old, God blessed him again, and in so doing, changed his name from Abram to Abraham. God blessed him saying, “I will make you exceedingly fruitful (capacity); and I will make nations of you, and kings shall come from you. (result)”
Being that the church is its people, I think from Abram’s encounter with God, we can recognize that one of the most important traits of a blessed church is that its people are willing to follow the Lord’s leading, even when it is unclear exactly where we’re going or what the outcome will be. Far too often, we do not move forward in our personal lives and in our life together because we want more information, we want more details, we believe that we must have more assurance that everything is going to be okay once we step out in faith. But that’s not really faith then, is it?
Graham Standish wrote a book several years ago called Becoming a Blessed Church. In it he wrote the following, “A blessed church is a church of deep faith in God and God’s power. What does it mean to be a church of faith? Sadly, far too many Christians confuse faith and belief. Faith is much more than belief. It is a deep trust in God. It is an abandoning to God in which we surrender our control and power, trusting that God will act to accomplish something through, with, or among us – something wonderful and powerful that we cannot accomplish on our own. The leaders and members may be afraid of change, but in the end they always opt in faith to do what they prayerfully sense God called them to do. They may not know with clarity what the outcome of their act of faith will be, and what they opt to do in faith may seem risky or dangerous, but when given a choice between acting fearfully to protect themselves and acting faithfully to serve God, they act in faith – though it may mean taking a path that seems uncertain and frightening.”
A blessed church asks the questions, over and over again: “What does God want us to do? Where is God leading us?” And by the study of the Scripture, the discernment of the group, an awareness of circumstances that seem to be pointing in a particular direction, and the voice of the Holy Spirit speaking to us, the blessed church knows what direction to go, and begins to move together in faith.
Now, listen with me to our second Scripture for today, taken from Romans 12. I’m going to read this passage from Eugene Peterson’s The Message. This is Paul talking to the church in Rome – teaching them what a healthy, blessed church should look like:
1So here’s what I want you to do, God helping you: Take your everyday, ordinary life—your sleeping, eating, going-to-work, and walking-around life—and place it before God as an offering. Embracing what God does for you is the best thing you can do for him. 2Don’t become so well-adjusted to your culture that you fit into it without even thinking. Instead, fix your attention on God. You’ll be changed from the inside out. Readily recognize what he wants from you, and quickly respond to it. Unlike the culture around you, always dragging you down to its level of immaturity, God brings the best out of you, develops well-formed maturity in you. (That’s the capacity and result of the blessing.)
3I’m speaking to you out of deep gratitude for all that God has given me, and especially as I have responsibilities in relation to you. Living then, as every one of you does, in pure grace, it’s important that you not misinterpret yourselves as people who are bringing this goodness to God. No, God brings it all to you. The only accurate way to understand ourselves is by what God is and by what he does for us, not by what we are and what we do for him.
4In this way we are like the various parts of a human body. Each part gets its meaning from the body as a whole, not the other way around. 5The body we’re talking about is Christ’s body of chosen people. Each of us finds our meaning and function as a part of his body. But as a chopped-off finger or cut-off toe we wouldn’t amount to much, would we? So since we find ourselves fashioned into all these excellently formed and marvelously functioning parts in Christ’s body, 6let’s just go ahead and be what we were made to be, without enviously or pridefully comparing ourselves with each other, or trying to be something we aren’t.
If you preach, just preach God’s Message, nothing else; 7if you help, just help, don’t take over; if you teach, stick to your teaching; 8if you give encouraging guidance, be careful that you don’t get bossy; if you’re put in charge, don’t manipulate; if you’re called to give aid to people in distress, keep your eyes open and be quick to respond; if you work with the disadvantaged, don’t let yourself get irritated with them or depressed by them. Keep a smile on your face.
9Love from the center of who you are; don’t fake it. Run for dear life from evil; hold on for dear life to good. 10Be good friends who love deeply; practice playing second fiddle.
11Don’t burn out; keep yourselves fueled and aflame. Be alert servants of the Master, 12cheerfully expectant. Don’t quit in hard times; pray all the harder. 13Help needy Christians; be inventive in hospitality.
14Bless your enemies; no cursing under your breath. 15Laugh with your happy friends when they’re happy; share tears when they’re down. 16Get along with each other; don’t be stuck-up. Make friends with nobodies; don’t be the great somebody. 17Don’t hit back; discover beauty in everyone. 18If you’ve got it in you, get along with everybody. 19Don’t insist on getting even; that’s not for you to do. “I’ll do the judging,” says God. “I’ll take care of it.” 20Our Scriptures tell us that if you see your enemy hungry, go buy that person lunch, or if he’s thirsty, get him a drink. Your generosity will surprise him with goodness. 21Don’t let evil get the best of you; get the best of evil by doing good.
A blessed church is full of people who understand that they are not part of just another organization that happens to be called “the church.” It’s not the Lion’s Club, not the Rotary Club, not the Teacher’s Union, not the Daisy Fund, not the Fire Company, not the football team, or volleyball team, or drama club.
A blessed church is full of people who understand that they are uniquely called by God to be part of a living organism that is here to be the full expression of Jesus Christ in the world today. It’s sort of like those cartoons where you see one bird flying around doing its thing, then another one over there doing its thing, and then all of a sudden, all the birds come together in a recognizable form (like one big bird), each one holds its place, drawing much more attention than when flying separately. When the living organism, called the church is flying together under God’s direction, so much positive attention is drawn to Jesus.
Blessed churches are full of people who ‘get it’ that Jesus Christ is the Head, meaning that he is the source and goal of life for the Body by the power of the Holy Spirit!
The blessed church gathers people who are ready and willing to discover what their part in the Body is supposed to be, and are eager to do their part in a way that keeps the whole Body healthy and energized.
A blessed church understands that we won’t all agree all the time about things, but we can agree to listen, to respect each other, to forgive, and to move beyond it.
Blessed churches don’t say, “We can’t,” to God’s call. Blessed churches say, “If God is calling us to do it, then God will mobilize us and help us git r dun for God’s glory.”
I could continue on and on with this list – because I have such passion for helping to build healthy churches. But let me give just one more important defining feature of a blessed church:
Blessed churches should be connected to a bunch of people who do not yet understand what the church is really supposed to be.
If God is adding to the church’s number daily those who are being saved (Acts 2), then a blessed church should also have a group of people whom God is just now calling into a relationship with himself as brand new believers – people who have responded to the invitation to “come and see.” And so, the good news is that the church, as the Body of Christ in the world, is blessed by God to do incredible things to bring healing and peace into the world, but the challenging news is that as part of the “be fruitful and multiply” blessing, the blessed church can be, and in fact, should be a fairly messy place.
It’s sort of like this: The first pig roast that John and I attended over at Donnie & Pat Allison’s in Neelyton, found us up in the barn ready to have some fun square dancing. Well, we ended up in a square with some professionals. They knew all the termi-nology and the moves to go along with it. We didn’t. Before we got started, we were thinking that it was great to have such a good mix in our square. They could teach us and we’d all have fun. Well, some of us had fun. John and I were laughing so hard we were crying. But “the professionals” weren’t so jolly. They were there to do it right, by george, and we were nothing more than amateurs messing everything all up.
Blessed churches understand that they exist for mature believers and nonbelievers. Because of Jesus Christ, who is the Head of the Body, blessed churches have life and give life; blessed churches deepen and revive people from all walks of life in amazing ways as they work hard to bring out the best that God has placed in everyone. Blessed churches pray constantly that those who started out answering the call to “come and see,” will choose, by faith, to “stay and grow and serve” so that together we can get out into our communities and show more and more people that living like Jesus is a whole lot better than living like the world.
Probably every person here has been disappointed or hurt by the church at one time or in one place or another. But here we are – because deep inside we want to be part of what God is doing in the world. Deep inside we yearn for the exhilaration that comes from flying together in meaningful formation – from learning and loving the dance together, from knowing that the destination of someone’s soul is different because of how God used us.
It’s true what I said to that young boy: There’s no place I’d rather be serving the Lord, than right here with you. I thank God for our partnership in the Gospel together – and I believe with all my heart, that the One who began a good work among this congregation, long before any of us were born, will bring it to completion on the Day of Jesus Christ. Thanks be to God. Amen.
Let us pray: Gracious & Merciful God, thank you for calling the Church into being – by sending your Holy Spirit to empower us to be the hands and feet of Jesus in the world today. Forgive us for the many, many ways we have fallen short of this calling. Forgive us for the ways we have damaged the church’s reputation by the things we have done and the words we have said. You, O Lord, are so patient with us. You give us purpose and peace. You call us to be so much more than we think we can be. We believe, O God, help our unbelief. This we pray in Jesus’ name, Amen.
Jesus died to save us from the punishment for our sin. He alone could accomplish this as the sinless Son of God. We don’t have to be slaves to our sin any more. Jesus died to set us free! Some days we feel more free than other days – but that doesn’t change our status before God – for when the Son sets us free – we are free indeed. If you have placed your trust in Jesus Christ, receiving God’s love for you through him, know today that you are forgiven.
And if you are new to all this, then let me assure you – all you have to do is say “yes” to God, right now.
Yes, I believe you love me, God.
Yes, I know I am a sinner.
Yes, I receive your forgiveness.
Yes, I’m choosing to put my trust in Jesus.
May the Holy Spirit come, and fill us all anew, making us One in the Spirit, One in the Lord. Would you take a few moments now, and just put your hands on each other’s shoulders or forearms, and say, “May the Lord bless you with peace.”
October 4, 2009
“The Power of the Blessing, Part 4”
To Be a Blessed Church
Rev. Meagan M. Boozer
Late in the afternoon on the first day of Bible School this past summer, I went over to the restaurant to get a sandwich before all the activity started. While I was waiting for my take-out food, a young boy came over, introduced himself, and struck up a conversation with me. He was the son of one of the waitresses. I asked him what he was doing for the evening and he said that he was just going to be hanging around the restaurant, waiting for his mom to get off work. I invited him to come to Bible School that night. With his mom’s permission, he came over to the church at least an hour before Bible School officially started. He talked a lot. He had a lot of questions. Joni was here early, and between the two of us, we did our best to answer his questions while trying to get ready.
One of the questions he asked me was this, “If you could have any job in the world, what job would you want?” I thought for a few moments and answered, “I’d want the one I have.” He replied, “Do you mean that when you were a little kid, you wanted to be a preacher here some day?” “No,” I said, “But I can’t think of anywhere I’d rather be now.”
Is that the way you feel about this church? Is it easy for you to use the word ‘blessed’ when you think about your experiences and your connection to this congregation?
What does God think of our congregation? Is God’s blessing flowing into and through us in a way that really makes an eternal difference in the lives of people? If so – how can we keep it flowing? If not – why not? Let us pray:
Thank you, dear Lord, for your word. Grant us grace in these next moments to be able to see wondrous things that change the way we think about the church. You have given us purpose in our being the church, and yet we have stood afar off, merely watching while others do more than they have been made to do – growing weary – yet pressing on. We come in faith, with hearts pried open by your Holy Spirit. Teach us, mold us, fill us, use us. In Jesus’ name we pray, Amen.
Over these last several weeks, we’ve been learning about the power of the blessing. We’ve learned that the blessing from God comes with words that bring new life, words that call forth the best in a person, words that envision a very special future, words that are cherished and remembered by those over whom the blessing is spoken.
I’ve repeated the words, ‘capacity’ and ‘result’ as part of our teaching – hoping to help us consider that God has placed within us a grand capacity for carrying and sharing the good news about Jesus to a hurting world. We think small. God thinks big. We think ‘I can’t,’ God shouts, ‘you can!’ God has spoken words of blessing over us – calling us to be fruitful and multiply. God has called us to be life-givers in word and in deed.
Listen with me to the first Scripture for this morning, and see what comes to your mind as one of the important defining marks of what it means to be blessed:
1Now the LORD said to Abram, “Go from your country and your kindred and your father’s house to the land that I will show you. 2I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you, and make your name great, so that you will be a blessing. 3I will bless those who bless you, and the one who curses you I will curse; and in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed.”
4So Abram went, as the LORD had told him; and Lot went with him. Abram was seventy-five years old when he departed from Haran. 5Abram took his wife Sarai and his brother’s son Lot, and all the possessions that they had gathered, and the persons whom they had acquired in Haran; and they set forth to go to the land of Canaan. When they had come to the land of Canaan, 6Abram passed through the land to the place at Shechem, to the oak of Moreh. At that time the Canaanites were in the land. 7Then the LORD appeared to Abram, and said, “To your offspring I will give this land.” So he built there an altar to the LORD, who had appeared to him.
God blessed Abram by speaking words to him about a special future. God promised offspring, God promised land in a fertile country, and God promised protection.
Abram responded by doing what God told him to do. God said, “Go from where you are (leave your past behind – your country, your kindred, your father’s house). Go to the place I’m going to show you.” In verse 4 we read, “So Abram went as the Lord had told him.” Abram went. In just a few verses we read that they headed for Canaan (the land we know as the Promised Land). But in the beginning, Abram did not have a destination in mind. God said he would show him the land, and Abram trusted God’s word and set out. Not mapquest. Godquest.
In Genesis 17, we read that when Abram was 99 years old, God blessed him again, and in so doing, changed his name from Abram to Abraham. God blessed him saying, “I will make you exceedingly fruitful (capacity); and I will make nations of you, and kings shall come from you. (result)”
Being that the church is its people, I think from Abram’s encounter with God, we can recognize that one of the most important traits of a blessed church is that its people are willing to follow the Lord’s leading, even when it is unclear exactly where we’re going or what the outcome will be. Far too often, we do not move forward in our personal lives and in our life together because we want more information, we want more details, we believe that we must have more assurance that everything is going to be okay once we step out in faith. But that’s not really faith then, is it?
Graham Standish wrote a book several years ago called Becoming a Blessed Church. In it he wrote the following, “A blessed church is a church of deep faith in God and God’s power. What does it mean to be a church of faith? Sadly, far too many Christians confuse faith and belief. Faith is much more than belief. It is a deep trust in God. It is an abandoning to God in which we surrender our control and power, trusting that God will act to accomplish something through, with, or among us – something wonderful and powerful that we cannot accomplish on our own. The leaders and members may be afraid of change, but in the end they always opt in faith to do what they prayerfully sense God called them to do. They may not know with clarity what the outcome of their act of faith will be, and what they opt to do in faith may seem risky or dangerous, but when given a choice between acting fearfully to protect themselves and acting faithfully to serve God, they act in faith – though it may mean taking a path that seems uncertain and frightening.”
A blessed church asks the questions, over and over again: “What does God want us to do? Where is God leading us?” And by the study of the Scripture, the discernment of the group, an awareness of circumstances that seem to be pointing in a particular direction, and the voice of the Holy Spirit speaking to us, the blessed church knows what direction to go, and begins to move together in faith.
Now, listen with me to our second Scripture for today, taken from Romans 12. I’m going to read this passage from Eugene Peterson’s The Message. This is Paul talking to the church in Rome – teaching them what a healthy, blessed church should look like:
1So here’s what I want you to do, God helping you: Take your everyday, ordinary life—your sleeping, eating, going-to-work, and walking-around life—and place it before God as an offering. Embracing what God does for you is the best thing you can do for him. 2Don’t become so well-adjusted to your culture that you fit into it without even thinking. Instead, fix your attention on God. You’ll be changed from the inside out. Readily recognize what he wants from you, and quickly respond to it. Unlike the culture around you, always dragging you down to its level of immaturity, God brings the best out of you, develops well-formed maturity in you. (That’s the capacity and result of the blessing.)
3I’m speaking to you out of deep gratitude for all that God has given me, and especially as I have responsibilities in relation to you. Living then, as every one of you does, in pure grace, it’s important that you not misinterpret yourselves as people who are bringing this goodness to God. No, God brings it all to you. The only accurate way to understand ourselves is by what God is and by what he does for us, not by what we are and what we do for him.
4In this way we are like the various parts of a human body. Each part gets its meaning from the body as a whole, not the other way around. 5The body we’re talking about is Christ’s body of chosen people. Each of us finds our meaning and function as a part of his body. But as a chopped-off finger or cut-off toe we wouldn’t amount to much, would we? So since we find ourselves fashioned into all these excellently formed and marvelously functioning parts in Christ’s body, 6let’s just go ahead and be what we were made to be, without enviously or pridefully comparing ourselves with each other, or trying to be something we aren’t.
If you preach, just preach God’s Message, nothing else; 7if you help, just help, don’t take over; if you teach, stick to your teaching; 8if you give encouraging guidance, be careful that you don’t get bossy; if you’re put in charge, don’t manipulate; if you’re called to give aid to people in distress, keep your eyes open and be quick to respond; if you work with the disadvantaged, don’t let yourself get irritated with them or depressed by them. Keep a smile on your face.
9Love from the center of who you are; don’t fake it. Run for dear life from evil; hold on for dear life to good. 10Be good friends who love deeply; practice playing second fiddle.
11Don’t burn out; keep yourselves fueled and aflame. Be alert servants of the Master, 12cheerfully expectant. Don’t quit in hard times; pray all the harder. 13Help needy Christians; be inventive in hospitality.
14Bless your enemies; no cursing under your breath. 15Laugh with your happy friends when they’re happy; share tears when they’re down. 16Get along with each other; don’t be stuck-up. Make friends with nobodies; don’t be the great somebody. 17Don’t hit back; discover beauty in everyone. 18If you’ve got it in you, get along with everybody. 19Don’t insist on getting even; that’s not for you to do. “I’ll do the judging,” says God. “I’ll take care of it.” 20Our Scriptures tell us that if you see your enemy hungry, go buy that person lunch, or if he’s thirsty, get him a drink. Your generosity will surprise him with goodness. 21Don’t let evil get the best of you; get the best of evil by doing good.
A blessed church is full of people who understand that they are not part of just another organization that happens to be called “the church.” It’s not the Lion’s Club, not the Rotary Club, not the Teacher’s Union, not the Daisy Fund, not the Fire Company, not the football team, or volleyball team, or drama club.
A blessed church is full of people who understand that they are uniquely called by God to be part of a living organism that is here to be the full expression of Jesus Christ in the world today. It’s sort of like those cartoons where you see one bird flying around doing its thing, then another one over there doing its thing, and then all of a sudden, all the birds come together in a recognizable form (like one big bird), each one holds its place, drawing much more attention than when flying separately. When the living organism, called the church is flying together under God’s direction, so much positive attention is drawn to Jesus.
Blessed churches are full of people who ‘get it’ that Jesus Christ is the Head, meaning that he is the source and goal of life for the Body by the power of the Holy Spirit!
The blessed church gathers people who are ready and willing to discover what their part in the Body is supposed to be, and are eager to do their part in a way that keeps the whole Body healthy and energized.
A blessed church understands that we won’t all agree all the time about things, but we can agree to listen, to respect each other, to forgive, and to move beyond it.
Blessed churches don’t say, “We can’t,” to God’s call. Blessed churches say, “If God is calling us to do it, then God will mobilize us and help us git r dun for God’s glory.”
I could continue on and on with this list – because I have such passion for helping to build healthy churches. But let me give just one more important defining feature of a blessed church:
Blessed churches should be connected to a bunch of people who do not yet understand what the church is really supposed to be.
If God is adding to the church’s number daily those who are being saved (Acts 2), then a blessed church should also have a group of people whom God is just now calling into a relationship with himself as brand new believers – people who have responded to the invitation to “come and see.” And so, the good news is that the church, as the Body of Christ in the world, is blessed by God to do incredible things to bring healing and peace into the world, but the challenging news is that as part of the “be fruitful and multiply” blessing, the blessed church can be, and in fact, should be a fairly messy place.
It’s sort of like this: The first pig roast that John and I attended over at Donnie & Pat Allison’s in Neelyton, found us up in the barn ready to have some fun square dancing. Well, we ended up in a square with some professionals. They knew all the termi-nology and the moves to go along with it. We didn’t. Before we got started, we were thinking that it was great to have such a good mix in our square. They could teach us and we’d all have fun. Well, some of us had fun. John and I were laughing so hard we were crying. But “the professionals” weren’t so jolly. They were there to do it right, by george, and we were nothing more than amateurs messing everything all up.
Blessed churches understand that they exist for mature believers and nonbelievers. Because of Jesus Christ, who is the Head of the Body, blessed churches have life and give life; blessed churches deepen and revive people from all walks of life in amazing ways as they work hard to bring out the best that God has placed in everyone. Blessed churches pray constantly that those who started out answering the call to “come and see,” will choose, by faith, to “stay and grow and serve” so that together we can get out into our communities and show more and more people that living like Jesus is a whole lot better than living like the world.
Probably every person here has been disappointed or hurt by the church at one time or in one place or another. But here we are – because deep inside we want to be part of what God is doing in the world. Deep inside we yearn for the exhilaration that comes from flying together in meaningful formation – from learning and loving the dance together, from knowing that the destination of someone’s soul is different because of how God used us.
It’s true what I said to that young boy: There’s no place I’d rather be serving the Lord, than right here with you. I thank God for our partnership in the Gospel together – and I believe with all my heart, that the One who began a good work among this congregation, long before any of us were born, will bring it to completion on the Day of Jesus Christ. Thanks be to God. Amen.
Let us pray: Gracious & Merciful God, thank you for calling the Church into being – by sending your Holy Spirit to empower us to be the hands and feet of Jesus in the world today. Forgive us for the many, many ways we have fallen short of this calling. Forgive us for the ways we have damaged the church’s reputation by the things we have done and the words we have said. You, O Lord, are so patient with us. You give us purpose and peace. You call us to be so much more than we think we can be. We believe, O God, help our unbelief. This we pray in Jesus’ name, Amen.
Jesus died to save us from the punishment for our sin. He alone could accomplish this as the sinless Son of God. We don’t have to be slaves to our sin any more. Jesus died to set us free! Some days we feel more free than other days – but that doesn’t change our status before God – for when the Son sets us free – we are free indeed. If you have placed your trust in Jesus Christ, receiving God’s love for you through him, know today that you are forgiven.
And if you are new to all this, then let me assure you – all you have to do is say “yes” to God, right now.
Yes, I believe you love me, God.
Yes, I know I am a sinner.
Yes, I receive your forgiveness.
Yes, I’m choosing to put my trust in Jesus.
May the Holy Spirit come, and fill us all anew, making us One in the Spirit, One in the Lord. Would you take a few moments now, and just put your hands on each other’s shoulders or forearms, and say, “May the Lord bless you with peace.”
