It was nice to have Pastor Hollis back preaching and his passage was Ephesians 3. The two major themes that got preached on is Gods love us and it’s something that we can not comprehend completely. In Romans, the Apostle Paul tells us that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. The Bible shares not only how God interacts with and loves His creation like providing manna in the wilderness, to disciplining King David when he had his affair. Yes God is all powerful, eternal and holy, but at the core of His nature is love. As John wrote in his epistle, God is love, and it is the very reason why He does things and who He is.
The second main theme is, what is our response to Gods love? Do we love Him back and are obedient to His voice? God isn’t going to make us robots and program us to be obedient or loving, it is a choice we have to make. We all have someone that we care about and love deeply and we do things to help foster that relationship. Whether it’s buying a cup of coffee for them when you get together, or doing a chore they despise. A good relationship has rules, but it’s not so it can be a check list. But it’s to help create healthy boundaries and to help foster growth in the relationship.
The church is entering a 21 day fast and prayer focus and there is no better way to start off the new year. Fasting and prayer can each have multiple blogs a piece, but I will boil it down to this. Prayer and fasting is like hitting the reset button. We find out what is important and it helps brings things into focus. It is not so much about giving something up, but it is obtaining something better, like a better relationship with God and or others. Or it’s about getting rid of things that hold us back and may even cause some physical, emotional or spiritual distress. It is finding out what the main thing is and removing the things that get in the way and hinder our relationship with God. C.S. Lewis said this about prayer but it could word for fasting also. He said that he didn’t pray to change God, but so that God could change him. So what are those things that God is calling you to give up or fast so you can have a more vibrant and growing relationship with God and others? I will leave with this analogy, prayer and fasting is like refiners fire, where God takes away all the impurities so we can become more like Him and have a growing relationship with Him. It also allows us to know what the main thing is and do it which is loving God with everything we have and our neighbors as ourselves.
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