This week, we have been talking about the subject of New Year's Resolutions. Yesterday we discovered that followers of Jesus and the church are called to reveal and reflect Christ by how we love and serve the world around us. Jesus calls His followers to engage the world by loving and serving those who God has placed around us. And when we love and serve others in a way that reveals and reflects Christ, the result is that we glorify God in Heaven. When Christians live life together in community with a focus on engaging those in this city in a way that reveals and reflects Christ by loving and serving those in the city, we will be the vehicle that God uses to advance His kingdom mission and bring Him glory.
We ended by asking the question "How do I reach that goal and how do I get to a place in my life where I am following Jesus is a way that reveals and reflects Christ”? And my answer to those questions would be this; when we read the Bible, we consistently see that followers of Jesus who are involved in a growing and maturing relationship that reveals and reflects Christ invest their lives in three specific ways.
First, we see that those who are involved in a growing and maturing relationship with Christ invested their time with other Christians as they gathered corporately for regular weekly worship gatherings and as they scattered to experience community in homes throughout the week.
Second, we see that those who are involved in a growing and maturing relationship with Christ invested their talents serving God by serving others through the exercise of their spiritual gifts.
Third, we see that those who are involved in a growing and maturing relationship with Christ invested their treasure to support God’s kingdom mission through regular and proportional giving.
As a result of what we see in the Bible, we believe that as individual followers of Jesus consistently invest their time by being involved in a regular worship gathering and a community group; as individual followers of Jesus consistently invest their talents serving God by serving others through being a part of a ministry team; and as individual followers of Jesus consistently invest their treasure in order to help create environments where people can explore and grow in their faith while experiencing community, the result will be individual followers of Jesus and a church that is a city in a city that is striving to reveal and reflect Christ as we love and serve the city.
At the church where I serve, we desire to create environments where people grow in their relationship with Christ and are able to move from being consumers who view the church as a place where they receive spiritual goods and services to being investors who embrace and invest their time, talent, and treasure to advance the kingdom mission that God has given us.
However, when it comes to hitting the restart button; when it comes to attempting to restart our lives through new year’s resolutions, there are often times where we can find ourselves experiencing tension and even trouble, isn’t there? Maybe you have been trying to restart your life year after year only to find yourself drowning in a sea of regrets and failure. Maybe it is the regret is the result of a failure to restart a relationship. Maybe it is a regret that is the result of a failure to restart a life that would be free from a destructive addiction or habit. Maybe it is a regret that is the result of a failure to restart a relationship with God that seems to be far and distant. Maybe it is a regret that is the result of a failure to restart a life that you feel has been a disappointing failure. Maybe you are here and you feel that the whole idea of being able to hit restart in your life seems to an impossibility after years wandering in a desert of hurt, pain, disappointment, and failure.
Now if you are reading this and feel like I have just described you, I have some good news for you. While this may not seem like good news, the good news is that you are not the first person to experience life in the desert of failure when it comes to restarting your life. You see, the tension and trouble that we can experience when it comes to restarting our life is not a new problem; it is a human nature problem.
And the good news for us is that as we begin 2011, there is a story in the Bible that chronicles a group of people who experienced the same tension and trouble when it comes to restarting their lives. And for the weeks leading up to Easter, we are going to discover, through this story, the timeless landmines that can sabotage our attempts to restart our life.
We will also discover some timeless principles that enable us to restart our lives in a way that enables us to be all that God has created and called us to be. We will discover timeless principles that will help us move to a place in our lives where we are living in the relationship with God and one another so that we will be able to accomplish the goal that God has given us to be a city in a city that is striving to reveal and reflect Christ as we love and serve the city.
So, as we enter into a new year, let's journey together and resolve that as we restart a new year that we will end up moving closer to being all that God created and called us to be...
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