Churches in Liberty

“Some of us need to emotionally, spiritually, mentally stop making that person, whether it's a parent, a sibling, a child, or even a spouse, we need to stop making them our problem to solve. You can't solve them. Leave them with God Even while we might be trying to care for them, sandwiched in while we're caring for others, we need in some situations to just leave them with God.”

“But if we allow ourselves to be caught up and caught in the current of God's love and grace, God's gift, then we find ourselves we find, as John Wesley said, we find our hearts strangely warmed. We find ourselves softened. We find ourselves transformed. The free gift of God. It's really interesting how Paul starts out. He says, the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God, we would expect perhaps the contrast to be the wages of sin is death and the wages of God are you notice he doesn't say that. In the Christian life with God, there are wages. We don't get paid. We don't get paid. We don't earn anything. Paul, through his letter to the Romans and other places, makes that very abundantly plain, but we can't seem to get it out of our head.”

“God wants us to forgive because forgiveness is what frees us. Forgiveness isn't principally for the person we're forgiving. Forgiveness is principally for us. It's it's what frees us moment by moment and and day by day. God invites us to choose forgiveness by God's strength as often as the offense or the offender comes to our minds, whether that's three times a year or 30 times a day, God invites us to make this decision because it is our doorway out of the pain and the bitterness.”

“Joseph's story reminds us of the ways in which families can hurt one another and offers us a call to seek to be reconciled to families, to our family members where possible. But it also teaches us that when we go through seasons that are just hard, prolonged adversity through the fire or through the flood, God is with us. And sometimes, that's all we have. But because of God's relentless faithfulness, God will see that we get through, and God will be for us everything that we need.”

“Paul is using sin as a as a power as opposed to the power of God and life and righteousness. So sin is not just things that you or I do. Let me just say that small thinking and actually causes us to shrink from being who we're called to be and shrink to live God's kind of life, but it also short sells sin, causes us to not be able to say to see sin in large structures. Like, we can't name big things like like racism sexism or Christian nationalism. Top it for another day. We can't see sin in big structures. We can't see how sin invades the monetary system and mammon. We can't see how sin is a power that just draws us in. And the next thing we know, we have fallen into a black hole. We've been overcome by power, and we don't recognize ourselves anymore, the life that God gave.”

“And one clarification right here as we come to a close, The gift of God is eternal life. We gotta get outside the box again. Most of us hear that and go, well, that means I'll be saved, and I'll go to heaven when I die. Not discounting that at all. I'm not discounting the duration of the life that God gives. It is indeed forever and ever and ever. It is life with God. But let me tell you the Greek word for eternal is aionios, and that Greek word really is referencing more a quality of life, a kind of life, the divine life, God's kind of life. So it is indeed saying that the gift of God is life that begins now.”

“``does our life does your life does your life together do our lives equate to a preview of coming attractions that is the kind of life that God gives, where we are loved and loving, we are forgiven and forgiving, where we have been graced and we are gracious, where we have been shown mercy and we are merciful, where we have been shown the way and we live the way, where we have been shown righteousness and obedience and we become people who live a good life, where it's the kind of life people says, I wanna be that. I wanna live that. I wanna I wanna be with those people. They look like they're having fun. That's where life looks like it's happening. Are we a preview of coming attractions for that which is still to come and that which has already come in Jesus Christ our lord? The wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is indeed God's kind of life, eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.”