Embracing Community: Grace, Hardship, and Redemption in Christ
Devotional
Sermon Summary
Bible Study Guide
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1. "We need brothers and sisters and spiritual family that know and understand the power of love to be able to bring forgiveness and reconciliation into the brokenness of our relationships in our society. God has invited us through his son Jesus and the model of sacrificial generous love that he gave for us by sending his son to die on the cross so that we wouldn't have to turn our eyes away from the stories and the philosophies and the ideas of this world that promise you everything but always leave you feeling empty to the one thing that can truly satisfy the human heart which is a relationship with the very God who created us and knows us even better than we know ourselves." [01:44] (56 seconds) (Download raw clip | Download cropped clip)
2. "The truth of the gospel, Paul is telling us, is most fully witnessed in the restored and the restoring relationships of authentic Christian community. Think about that for just a minute. The truth of the gospel that we say we believe, that God gave his son to bring this good news to us, is most fully witnessed in the restored and the restoring relationships of authentic Christian community. Doesn't that take up a notch what church maybe was intended to be when God invited us to be a part of his family?" [06:55] (42 seconds) (Download raw clip | Download cropped clip)
3. "Christ Jesus as Lord is the truth story that puts this world in its place. It's not Caesar. It's not living for the empire around us and going after all the things that the world tells us we need, but it's living for a kingdom that truly liberates the human heart and overcomes all of these philosophies and reveals to us their emptiness. And so rather than being a part of a society and a culture that's running after everything, but the one thing that truly satisfies, Paul tells us that being found in Christ, we also find ourselves within a community of people whose priorities, whose goals, and whose actions and behaviors towards one another are determined by a completely different set of criteria which redefine what a successful human being actually looks like." [08:29] (60 seconds) (Download raw clip | Download cropped clip)
4. "The church witnesses to the truth of the gospel by how we live in our lives together. And if our light is not shining in the darkness, if we're not seeing new people come to faith in Christ, if the world is going in a different direction, it might not be because we're not out there preaching on the street corners loud enough. It might be because we've lost our focus on what we're supposed to be doing together so that we have something to invite people to experience the good news of the gospel." [10:15] (32 seconds) (Download raw clip | Download cropped clip)
5. "We are seeing baptisms happen. We are celebrating the healing that is happening in the lives of lost and broken people. That's when the joy comes. That's when the excitement happens. That's when we see that God is moving in our midst, and this is, of course, the place where you would... Where else would you want to be than the place where you're seeing healing happen? That's what we see in the New Testament, right? We read those words, and we see people getting healed, and we see them celebrating and praising God, and we're like, I wish that still happened. I wish I could experience something like that in my life. And what Paul is saying is we can, and it does. But we've lost our focus. We've gotten off track." [12:20] (48 seconds) (Download raw clip | Download cropped clip)
6. "In fact, what we see in the Bible is that a large part of what defines authentic Christian community is the fact that we are not alone. What we see is that it's a community of friends and fellow workers for the gospel. And the two are supposed to go hand in hand. It took time and effort and sacrifice to maintain these kinds of relationships across an empire. And we have to not forget that it was dangerous for them, right? It wasn't safe to associate yourself with Paul. He was in prison for preaching the gospel. And yet Paul says that it was their physical presence with him and their active association and their assistance on behalf of the network of churches that actually gave him the emotional and the spiritual support that he needed to survive the long imprisonment as he waited for a word to come on his case." [20:13] (53 seconds) (Download raw clip | Download cropped clip)
7. "God is a God who redeems failure. Even though, you know, it's like the apostle Peter who outright desert their Lord and deny him three times with curses can be redeemed by God's love and God's grace. Now this fall, after our September launch season, we'll begin a new series that we're going to call Beauty for Ashes. Broken, yet beautiful in God's eyes. We're going to look at what Jesus had to say about failure and how our own failure and brokenness is not actually an obstacle to experiencing God's presence and grace in our lives. In fact, it is the very avenue through which we can encounter him." [34:29] (47 seconds) (Download raw clip | Download cropped clip)
8. "When we live in Christ, we recognize that it's not out of our own strength that we find victory, but he has triumphed for us so that our failures are not what define us and we have the freedom to rise each time we fall. Now we might apply the same principle or approach by saying that Paul might say to Faith Covenant Church in the 21st century, don't pray that God delivers you from your present challenges. Rather, pray that in the midst of your present challenges, God might use your circumstances as a catalyst that opens the door for the gospel to go out in new and unexpected and powerful ways." [35:07] (47 seconds) (Download raw clip | Download cropped clip)
9. "The gospel message reveals that reconciliation and peace, the things that we most deeply need as a human society have come, but they have not come through power or military force or through economic prosperity or through the size of your church or through the size of your bank account or through how many recreational activities you do, or through the societies you can pursue or through the societal fame or whether your political party wins in November, but through the blood of a cross. And the truth of this reconciliation that is now at work in the world is manifest in a community of people that shares in the suffering of its Lord as it seeks to be light in the darkness and to bring peace to the social, economic, political, racial, ethnic and territorial, I say, church divisions that continue to be marred by the sin in our lives." [38:03] (64 seconds) (Download raw clip | Download cropped clip)
10. "Such humility that was demonstrated by Jesus himself, such sacrifice that he endured for the sake of others, such love that he demonstrated on God's behalf toward us reminds us again and again and again throughout scripture and every time we come together in the name of Jesus, how and why all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge are hidden and that this truly life-giving story is the story that in Christ can become our story. And brothers and stories, brothers and sisters, we are stories. This is the story that we've been asked to tell, but not just with our mouth, but with our life together. Amen." [40:02] (59 seconds) (Download raw clip | Download cropped clip)
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2. "The truth of the gospel, Paul is telling us, is most fully witnessed in the restored and the restoring relationships of authentic Christian community. Think about that for just a minute. The truth of the gospel that we say we believe, that God gave his son to bring this good news to us, is most fully witnessed in the restored and the restoring relationships of authentic Christian community. Doesn't that take up a notch what church maybe was intended to be when God invited us to be a part of his family?" [06:55] (42 seconds) (Download raw clip | Download cropped clip)
3. "Christ Jesus as Lord is the truth story that puts this world in its place. It's not Caesar. It's not living for the empire around us and going after all the things that the world tells us we need, but it's living for a kingdom that truly liberates the human heart and overcomes all of these philosophies and reveals to us their emptiness. And so rather than being a part of a society and a culture that's running after everything, but the one thing that truly satisfies, Paul tells us that being found in Christ, we also find ourselves within a community of people whose priorities, whose goals, and whose actions and behaviors towards one another are determined by a completely different set of criteria which redefine what a successful human being actually looks like." [08:29] (60 seconds) (Download raw clip | Download cropped clip)
4. "The church witnesses to the truth of the gospel by how we live in our lives together. And if our light is not shining in the darkness, if we're not seeing new people come to faith in Christ, if the world is going in a different direction, it might not be because we're not out there preaching on the street corners loud enough. It might be because we've lost our focus on what we're supposed to be doing together so that we have something to invite people to experience the good news of the gospel." [10:15] (32 seconds) (Download raw clip | Download cropped clip)
5. "We are seeing baptisms happen. We are celebrating the healing that is happening in the lives of lost and broken people. That's when the joy comes. That's when the excitement happens. That's when we see that God is moving in our midst, and this is, of course, the place where you would... Where else would you want to be than the place where you're seeing healing happen? That's what we see in the New Testament, right? We read those words, and we see people getting healed, and we see them celebrating and praising God, and we're like, I wish that still happened. I wish I could experience something like that in my life. And what Paul is saying is we can, and it does. But we've lost our focus. We've gotten off track." [12:20] (48 seconds) (Download raw clip | Download cropped clip)
6. "In fact, what we see in the Bible is that a large part of what defines authentic Christian community is the fact that we are not alone. What we see is that it's a community of friends and fellow workers for the gospel. And the two are supposed to go hand in hand. It took time and effort and sacrifice to maintain these kinds of relationships across an empire. And we have to not forget that it was dangerous for them, right? It wasn't safe to associate yourself with Paul. He was in prison for preaching the gospel. And yet Paul says that it was their physical presence with him and their active association and their assistance on behalf of the network of churches that actually gave him the emotional and the spiritual support that he needed to survive the long imprisonment as he waited for a word to come on his case." [20:13] (53 seconds) (Download raw clip | Download cropped clip)
7. "God is a God who redeems failure. Even though, you know, it's like the apostle Peter who outright desert their Lord and deny him three times with curses can be redeemed by God's love and God's grace. Now this fall, after our September launch season, we'll begin a new series that we're going to call Beauty for Ashes. Broken, yet beautiful in God's eyes. We're going to look at what Jesus had to say about failure and how our own failure and brokenness is not actually an obstacle to experiencing God's presence and grace in our lives. In fact, it is the very avenue through which we can encounter him." [34:29] (47 seconds) (Download raw clip | Download cropped clip)
8. "When we live in Christ, we recognize that it's not out of our own strength that we find victory, but he has triumphed for us so that our failures are not what define us and we have the freedom to rise each time we fall. Now we might apply the same principle or approach by saying that Paul might say to Faith Covenant Church in the 21st century, don't pray that God delivers you from your present challenges. Rather, pray that in the midst of your present challenges, God might use your circumstances as a catalyst that opens the door for the gospel to go out in new and unexpected and powerful ways." [35:07] (47 seconds) (Download raw clip | Download cropped clip)
9. "The gospel message reveals that reconciliation and peace, the things that we most deeply need as a human society have come, but they have not come through power or military force or through economic prosperity or through the size of your church or through the size of your bank account or through how many recreational activities you do, or through the societies you can pursue or through the societal fame or whether your political party wins in November, but through the blood of a cross. And the truth of this reconciliation that is now at work in the world is manifest in a community of people that shares in the suffering of its Lord as it seeks to be light in the darkness and to bring peace to the social, economic, political, racial, ethnic and territorial, I say, church divisions that continue to be marred by the sin in our lives." [38:03] (64 seconds) (Download raw clip | Download cropped clip)
10. "Such humility that was demonstrated by Jesus himself, such sacrifice that he endured for the sake of others, such love that he demonstrated on God's behalf toward us reminds us again and again and again throughout scripture and every time we come together in the name of Jesus, how and why all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge are hidden and that this truly life-giving story is the story that in Christ can become our story. And brothers and stories, brothers and sisters, we are stories. This is the story that we've been asked to tell, but not just with our mouth, but with our life together. Amen." [40:02] (59 seconds) (Download raw clip | Download cropped clip)
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