If we take a step back, it's easy to see a definite leading of the Holy Spirit here at Cornerstone.
1st – we spent the summer learning to walk with Jesus, becoming familiar with His presence and increasingly committing to a spiritual place & spiritual disciplines that require both faith and trust (trust = faith with wheels)
2nd – we are becoming familiar with harkening to His voice; hearing and obeying as a ballistic, single-step response to hearing His familiar voice. Obedience, trained by the spiritual disciplines, can become like reading the words on a page. Can you look at the words on this page without reading them? Not very easily. Disobedience to God can become just as difficult through ascetic practice rooted in love of our Lord.
3rd – now that we are walking with Him, and harkening to Him, comes the hardest milestone since we started this trek; particularly hard to get as a Church body. Living in constancy from the brokenness that results from Embracing the Gospel – from embracing the Cross and never letting go.
Sow What?
Sow What?
Next we explored the key scriptures from The Beatitudes , seeing for ourselves (Acts 17:11) what it is to be authentically broken, and to fully Embrace the Gospel.
Embracing the gospel means that we get it and we live it. We are new creations in Christ ( 2 Cor 5:17 ), and the Bible is the instruction and troubleshooting guide for this new being we've become. You don't see Mr. Cat come home to Mrs. Cat at the end of a long day and say "Honey, I just don't think I'm cut out for this mouse chasing stuff." We don't see him a few months later trying to hunt Impala on the plains of the Serengeti like his Lion bretheren. Mr. Cat, enviably, knows his true nature and embraces it. Christian lives don't merely go poorly apart from embracing the Bible, the Gospel, and the (painful but necessary) work of the Cross; they won't work at all. Once redeemed, we are easily as different from our former selves as our former selves were from earthworms. New principles -- Kingdom Principles -- now exclusively apply.
Anyone who has been a believer for a while will have seen a list like the one found here. I will submit to you that truly submitting to and embracing the gospel, and understanding deeply who we are in Christ (that radically new and different being), is the Rx for 99% of what ails you, be it spiritual, mental, physical, relational, or circumstantial. In a previous blog, Red Monkeys, Green Monkeys , we discuss replacing our thoughts and the programming of man with the Truth. Following the instructions on the page I've linked to above are a valid means of doing that.
Embracing the gospel means that we get it and we live it. We are new creations in Christ ( 2 Cor 5:17 ), and the Bible is the instruction and troubleshooting guide for this new being we've become. You don't see Mr. Cat come home to Mrs. Cat at the end of a long day and say "Honey, I just don't think I'm cut out for this mouse chasing stuff." We don't see him a few months later trying to hunt Impala on the plains of the Serengeti like his Lion bretheren. Mr. Cat, enviably, knows his true nature and embraces it. Christian lives don't merely go poorly apart from embracing the Bible, the Gospel, and the (painful but necessary) work of the Cross; they won't work at all. Once redeemed, we are easily as different from our former selves as our former selves were from earthworms. New principles -- Kingdom Principles -- now exclusively apply.
Anyone who has been a believer for a while will have seen a list like the one found here. I will submit to you that truly submitting to and embracing the gospel, and understanding deeply who we are in Christ (that radically new and different being), is the Rx for 99% of what ails you, be it spiritual, mental, physical, relational, or circumstantial. In a previous blog, Red Monkeys, Green Monkeys , we discuss replacing our thoughts and the programming of man with the Truth. Following the instructions on the page I've linked to above are a valid means of doing that.
Key Scriptures from the Sermon
Matthew 5:1-10
Matthew 5:14
Matthew 4:23
Matthew 9:35
Ps. 37
1 Peter 4:10
Matthew 6:8
Authentic following of Christ: is first in relationship, then in truth (harkening), then in experience – come what may!
These scriptures and the sermon teach the Workings of the Broken Church - -
Towards God:
Adore Him in Worship
Abandon myself to His Word
Glorify God in everything I do
Towards Man:
Rescue the lost
Purity/Pure heart towards all/redeeming the saved
Resend the Disciples
... it is at once that simple and that difficult to answer the call to be a City on a Hill.
Our B.L.U.F. (Bottom Line Up Front):
(1) We need God. No, I mean we really NEED God to become that City on a Hill
(2) Reach and remain at that utterly uncomfortable, utmost end of ourselves...so that...
(3) ..there is room enough on the throne of our hearts for God alone.
(4) If we don't teach, preach, and heal (by His power), nothing, tragically, happens.
(5) Love 'em all, sharing the Grace and Love of God, come what may.
><> D&N
... it is at once that simple and that difficult to answer the call to be a City on a Hill.
Our B.L.U.F. (Bottom Line Up Front):
(1) We need God. No, I mean we really NEED God to become that City on a Hill
(2) Reach and remain at that utterly uncomfortable, utmost end of ourselves...so that...
(3) ..there is room enough on the throne of our hearts for God alone.
(4) If we don't teach, preach, and heal (by His power), nothing, tragically, happens.
(5) Love 'em all, sharing the Grace and Love of God, come what may.
><> D&N
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