Done in Love

 

  

  Pastor Fred continued the series by preaching out of Galatians 5:1-12. There are several things that caught my attention. The first one is the issue of freedom. We have been from sin and death so my question is why do we want to give up on that freedom that God gives us and return to sin and death? It is essentially we become like a dog who returns to its vomit. In all reality, that is just disgusting.

  My second observation is that are we willing to wait and is worth waiting for?  As we wait, this doesn’t mean we just sit on our hands and do nothing. What I am offering us to do is what I call holy waiting. It is still waiting on God to do what only He can do, but we are also being obedient and doing things that we know God has commanded us to do. I know waiting isn’t the easiest thing to do, but waiting means that we are being faithful and trusting God will show up in His perfect timing while doing what we know in love. 

    My third observation is that we should be known by who we know, where we are going and we are motivated by love of God. What is meant by this is that we should know God and His grace and the world knows that we are a disciple of Christ. The second part is life is a journey and the destination matters. Are we developing our relationship with God so that heaven is where we go. Also, what is our motivation for doing things. Is it out of guilt or because we have to? We should do things not for self promotion or a get out of jail free card but because of our love for God. Not only that, but it is our way to glorify and worship God. Also when we do things out of love, we are bring Jesus to other people and to show others that they are loved by God. It is pointing people to God and it is called being apart of the body of Christ. The church thrives when we all do our part. So what is God calling you to do in love?

  To wrap up, God calls us to abide in Him. This means we can’t earn our salvation by following certain laws. So here is my big question to close out this blog. Just as the first century church thought that circumcision was a necessary step for salvation, what is our thing that we thing is necessary for salvation, but really isn’t? 

Grace and Peace

Tom Boustead

  

Getting our toes stepped on

   Pastor Fred continued our sermon series by preaching out of Galatians 4:21-30 and he explored the Old Covenant and the New Covenant. If we are focused on the Old Covenant which is focused on legalism and it makes it about what we can do for God and we insist that we have to earn our salvation. It is about doing things for God so that we might find favor. Or we don’t do things because we think that we will upset God and He will not love us, or that we will look bad in front of other Christians. In essence this could be perverting the good news of the Gospel and the power of God because it makes it about what we can do and not on what God can do. How about instead we are mote concerned with the freedom of the new covenant and focus what God does to and through us.  So here are some of my thoughts.

  The first one is from Matthew 21:31 which Jesus tells the religious leaders that the prostitutes and tax collectors will make it into heaven before them. The religious leaders new the law and the freedom that God has to offer, but they chose not to live out in that freedom because they were more concerned about following their version of the law instead of living in Gods grace. The prostitutes and tax collectors took their checkered past sought Gods grace and forgiveness and chose to do the will of the Father. So my question is, do we want to look holy or to be holy?

  My second thought is that we may believe in God, but how often we don’t like what He has to say.  In essence we feel that our twos are getting stepped on.  I think that this is why we avoid the Old Testament because we don’t like what God has to say. God seems vengeful and it doesn’t give us the warm fuzzies. How often have you heard that the God of the New Testament is not the same God of the Old Testament? We serve a God that never changes and just because we don’t like what God has to say doesn’t mean that there are two different Gods or that God changes. The Old Testament points to the New Testament and the New Testament fulfills the Old Testament. We can’t have one without the other.  On a side note, if are either red letter Christians or want to disregard the Old Testament, that is working towards heresy. 

  I will with the story of Nicodemus when he met with Jesus in John 3. He was a teacher that was supposed too know the law and God because he spent all of his time studying it. So did Jesus call Nicodemus a fool because he didn’t know what it means to be born again or that he knew what it meant to be born again and he just didn’t like the answer? I think we are a lot like Nicodemus because we know the answer a lot of the time but how often do  we still ask questions to hopefully get an answer we like or to get God to change His mind? I will close with what Jesus essentially told Nicodemus, the flesh produces flesh and is subject to and lives and dies by the law while the spirit produces spirit and lives by grace and has eternal life. So do we live by the bondage of the law or the freedom of grace in the spirit? 

Grace and Peace

Tom Boustead

The Unexamined Life

   Pastor Fred continue our series by preaching from Galatians 4:1-20 this weekend. One of the things that hit me kind of hard is that everything has a tax or a cost. It reminded me of a famous quote from the movie Top Gun which is “does our ego writes cheques that our bodies can’t cash?” Or the even scarier realization that does our ego write cheques that our soul can’t cash. To put it plainly, evert word action or inaction comes with a price. Does our ego get in the way and either think that the cost either not that high or we are going to benefits outweigh the cost? I pray that when we speak and act that we count the cost of doing or saying it. 

  Another observation is that we all are a slave to something. The basic concept is whether we are a slave to sin or a slave to Godliness. When something enslaves us, it can be the only thing we think about and it even consumes us. Some people would call this an addiction. We just finished up the state high school hockey tournament for Minnesota tonight. At one time tonight there were 2,200 people waiting hoping for a ticket to get into tonight’s championship game and Grand Casino Arena holds over 18,000 people and this is where the game is played. Now there is nothing wrong with wanting to catch the game, especially if you are a fan of one of the teams, but if your day, week, or year is ruined because you couldn’t watch the game in person, or you place hockey over God, there is a problem. I challenge each one of us not only to be a slave to righteousness, but also a child of God.  It is taking Gods free gift and accepting it knowing that we can’t do anything to earn it. It’s about God being the center of our attention. So what are the things that prevents us from keeping God at the center of our lives?

  My final observation is how well do we hear bad news or correction? When we hear these things we often become defensive and often shut the other person out.  When we are being corrected, how often do we try and justify our behavior, even if we know we are in the wrong? We often care more about forming a response to the correction than understanding what the other person is trying to say. I know I’m not the only person who hates to be corrected because it feels like I have been gut punched. So when these opportunities of growth come our way, don’t be afraid to listen, ask questions to clarify and lean on other people of God to see if they see the same thing and ask for accountability. Do not forget to show grace to the person sharing the difficult truth and to yourself.

  I will close with this, when receiving some difficult news or a hard truth, practice Psalm 19:14 in which we are examining the words of or hearts and what we meditate on. It is so that they can be pleasing to God. It is going to those dark and scary places of our lives and not only repenting, but to give it over to God. Also, according to Socrates, the unexamined life is not worth living 

Grace and Peace

Tom Boustead