New Creation

 

  Pastor Fred finished up the sermon series by preaching out of Galatians 6 and the crux of the message is that we are a new creation and we should live like it. Here are some of my thoughts. 

 My first thought is that life is hard and life is even harder when we do stupid things. How often do we say or do something stupid that we immediately regret. I can not be the only person who does this. How often do we say something stupid and then we immediately hope no one heard us. Instead, not only was it heard, but it gets immortalized and even taken out of context. Then we try to recover and it makes it even worse. Maybe this is why the Apostle Paul tells us to take every thought captive. It’s so we can think about what we say and do before we actually do it. 

  My second thought is what tables in our lives need to be overturned by Jesus. What are the areas where we either have slacked off, or gotten to comfortable. One of the tragic things is that as people we don’t change when we are comfortable or things are going well. It takes some major discomfort for us to change and that’s something we don’t seek in Western Christianity. It either takes us suffering the consequences of our stupidity or Jesus coming in and kicking over tables Himself. How often would we exchange Gods greatness so we can be comfortable and live that American Dream? Maybe there is a reason why Christianity is growing in places like China, maybe because they are comfortable with being uncomfortable. 

  My third thought is this idea of grace. The book of Galatians is filled with it, whether it is how God relates to us, how we relate to ourselves and others and even the application of the Fruits of the Spirit. But we can abuse that grace. We abuse it by caring what we look like on the outside rather than the inside. To put it Biblically, we become white washed tombs. We look good on the outside but we are filled with dead stinky bones on the inside. Our lives often become a live social media page where we only project what is good and only the viewpoint we like. Allowing Gods grace in our lives not only should affect how we relate to God and others, but seeing and doing life in Gods reality.  Gods grace along with the Holy Spirit allows is to see and live life as it should be

I will close with this. We need each other and not only laugh with each other, but to cry and to hold each other accountable I find this with one other youth leaders of the church. Yes we spend time together pouring into the teens on Wednesday nights, but we often gather together to do life together outside of Wednesday nights. Whether it is testing out the new slushy machine to having dinner together to build relationships. My favorite is when I was in the hospital earlier this year a group of leaders came in together and we had a party in my room and it was the highlight of my day. So my final question for the series is, what would it look like for you to embrace each other and to live out Gods grace?  After aLowe are a new creation in Christ and maybe we should act like it

Grace and Peace

Tom Boustead