What does it mean to follow Christ? Alex discusses the importance of having more of the Holy Spirit guiding us than our own desires, and the core essential-prayer.
Today, the invitation is to look at these two ways of life and choose this day which
one of these lives you’re going to serve.
These two ways of life cannot co-exist. One of these ways of living will
absolutely consume and over-run the other
If you’re not a Christ-follower here this morning, I hope that you might hear this
invitation and step into it for the first time
to be a part of God’s restoration mission by embracing his dream for this
world and letting go of a lesser and cheaper version of this life
If you’re a Christ-follower here this morning, I want to challenge you to take a look
at these two competing goals for your life
For all of us, I want to challenge you to first off commit yourself to the Acts 2 vision
and repent of the ways that you’ve bought into the American Dream alternative
Repent meaning a change of mind, a re-orientation of your mental map and of your
entire life around Jesus and his kingdom and his values and priorities
And then taking a hard look at your habits, patterns, and choices to see where you
need to start making different ones: relationships, money, time, jobs, stuff you own.
For some of you, the best gift you could give yourself, your family, and the Lord
would be to sell your house or car that you can’t afford anyway and downsize
so you have more margin financially and so that you can be more generous
Do you know what kind of eternal good God could do if JUST CHURCH people in
America would be willing to give up our addiction to money
and instead of worshipping money we worshipped God with our money?
Can you imagine if JUST THE CHRISTIANS just in America, and, if you’re not one of
those you can sit back and point fingers at us here
But if just the Christians just in our country decided to give generously each month,
we could probably feed all the hungry people here in our country for the rest of all
of our lives.
Others of you, the best thing you could do would be to change jobs—yours right now
is killing you—not what God wants you to be doing, you’ve been too lazy or busy to
make a change that you need to make
Some of us just need to take some initiative this week in inviting—practicing
hospitality or inviting someone to join us here at church
Maybe you just need to do some research into your gifts and start the journey of
more intentionally serving
Some of you don’t pray—you should try it! Just might change your life and you have
approximately nothing to lose.
Jesus calls his church into a mission-impossible assignment: to be a life-giving
presence in a broken and messy world
As a church, we’re going to press toward this Acts 2 vision. For all of us at
points this will be uncomfortable and against our natural grain
But 2,000 years ago, the Holy Spirit came in power to a couple thousand people, and
what it produced was this Acts 2 church community that literally changed the world
And what we’re dreaming about, praying toward, and moving toward as we follow
this same Spirit
Is that this same Acts 2 type of community might be formed and shaped in us as well
that WE might experience genuine transformation AND that we might be an
agent of transformation for all of Chatham County.
As we slowly but surely and over time say YES to Jesus’ mission impossible
assignment.
