Keeping Our Promises: Covenant, Community, and Commitment

God forms the church by calling people to Christ, marking them through baptism, and binding them together in a sacred joyful covenant as one body. It means that what you and I are supposed to do with our lives is we are supposed to keep our promises to God and each other because true life giving community begins with redemption, public confession, and a holy commitment to belong to Christ and to one another. Hey, listen, salvation, your spiritual life, your discipleship, in fact, as a whole is not an individual enterprise, it's a group project. [01:18:52] (47 seconds)  #CovenantCommunity

It means when the church gets together, holy things are happening. This is why it ain't like nowhere else. This this is this is this is why you ought be consistently committed to being present in some way in the gathering. Thank God for the opportunity that we have to be in person and online. And in some way, you ought to be gathered by the grace of God with those who have been graced by God because strange things happen when we gather. [01:35:08] (36 seconds)  #GatheringChangesLives

this is not a place for a shallow cheerfulness. Church is not an opiant for your life's pains. You don't just come here to feel better about what's wrong in your life. It's a place where you come to be better, to grow in sincere relationship with the Lord Jesus Christ. It's more than a cold duty. It's not just something you check off your to do list. It is a place where the gravity of the faith and the gladness of the faith kiss each other. [01:40:18] (32 seconds)  #ChurchForSpiritualGrowth

I'm not an afterthought in God's household. I'm not a tolerated guest in the room. Grace brought me in. I have gratitude because I recognize that grace got me before I got to God. And I'm honest to say that no external attachment can substitute for internal transformation. Come here church. I don't care what fraternity, sorority, lodge you're a member of, it ain't the church. [01:26:32] (32 seconds)  #GraceMadeMeFamily

Telling us that if one of us suffers that all the members ought to suffer with it. It's it's life giving. It's doing life together. It's Galatians six and two that we are to carry or to bear one another's burdens and in that way fulfill the law of Christ. It's having someone to pray for you when you praying for them. It's having someone on your side when your mind is crowded, when your faith feels thin. [01:41:02] (27 seconds)  #WeCarryEachOthersBurdens

This is important because we live in an age that has thin attachments. People sign up for things quickly. They scroll casually. They commit lightly and they leave quickly. We register without ever taking roots. We attend without ever attaching. We visit but we make no vows. Much of our lives trains us to keep one hand on the door handle so we can slip out the moment things become inconvenient, uncomfortable, or costly. Membership in many places has been emptied of its real weight. [01:12:25] (58 seconds)  #RootYourFaith

Stay over on 12th Street and I'll call you when I need you. This is sacred. This is holy. Yeah. This is God's church. Hey, come here. The church was God's idea. That's why you gotta be careful talking trash about it and dogging it and talking about it as though it is something that was humanly constructed. No, ma'am. No, sir. With all of its faults, with all of its flaws, with all of its issues, with all of its hypocrites, with all of its inconsistencies, it's still God's church. [01:38:00] (37 seconds)  #GodsChurchDespiteFlaws

Having been led as we believe by the spirit of God to receive the Lord Jesus Christ as savior is the opening line. It begins where all of our stories really begin. God took the initiative to save and to lead us. You you you didn't stroll into salvation because you're so smart. You don't climb your way to Christ and into heaven through your moral effort. You don't reason your way to redemption by sheer intellectual muscle. Your good is not good enough. [01:20:59] (38 seconds)  #SalvationIsGodsInitiative