Core| Fresh Starts | Aug 27
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Core: Fresh Starts
August 27th, 2023
Ephesians 2:1-6
Our vision: To become the most spiritually influential people and place by renewing the world around us through a relationship with Christ.
Spiritual influence is the impact of moving someone one step closer to Christ as a result of your connection or interaction.
Our mission: Lead people to fresh starts, great friends and a real purpose in Christ.
Ephesians 2:1-10, 19-22 (The Message)
1-6 It wasn’t so long ago that you were mired in that old stagnant life of sin. You let the world, which doesn’t know the first thing about living, tell you how to live. You filled your lungs with polluted unbelief, and then exhaled disobedience. We all did it, all of us doing what we felt like doing, when we felt like doing it, all of us in the same boat. It’s a wonder God didn’t lose his temper and do away with the whole lot of us. Instead, immense in mercy and with an incredible love, he embraced us. He took our sin-dead lives and made us alive in Christ. He did all this on his own, with no help from us! Then he picked us up and set us down in highest heaven in company with Jesus, our Messiah.
7-10 Now God has us where he wants us, with all the time in this world and the next to shower grace and kindness upon us in Christ Jesus. Saving is all his idea, and all his work. All we do is trust him enough to let him do it. It’s God’s gift from start to finish! We don’t play the major role. If we did, we’d probably go around bragging that we’d done the whole thing! No, we neither make nor save ourselves. God does both the making and saving. He creates each of us by Christ Jesus to join him in the work he does, the good work he has gotten ready for us to do, work we had better be doing.
19-22 That’s plain enough, isn’t it? You’re no longer wandering exiles. This kingdom of faith is now your home country. You’re no longer strangers or outsiders. You belong here, with as much right to the name Christian as anyone. God is building a home. He’s using us all—irrespective of how we got here—in what he is building. He used the apostles and prophets for the foundation. Now he’s using you, fitting you in brick by brick, stone by stone, with Christ Jesus as the cornerstone that holds all the parts together. We see it taking shape day after day—a holy temple built by God, all of us built into it, a temple in which God is quite at home.
All roads don’t lead to God. All roads can lead to the cross.
Our roads lead to empty, tired and stale. The cross-road leads to full, energized and fresh!
John 15:1-17 (The Message) 1-3 “I am the Real Vine and my Father is the Farmer. He cuts off every branch of me that doesn’t bear grapes. And every branch that is grape-bearing he prunes back so it will bear even more. You are already pruned back by the message I have spoken. 4 “Live in me. Make your home in me just as I do in you. In the same way that a branch can’t bear grapes by itself but only by being joined to the vine, you can’t bear fruit unless you are joined with me.
“Remain” and “abide” = “to live and make your home in me”.
John 1:14
(NIV) The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. We have seen his glory, the glory of the one and only Son, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth.
(MESSAGE) The Word became flesh and blood, and moved into the neighborhood. We saw the glory with our own eyes, the one-of-a-kind glory, like Father, like Son, Generous inside and out, true from start to finish.
Jesus came to live and make His home among us so that we could live and make our home among Him!
John 15 cont’d
5-8 “I am the Vine, you are the branches. When you’re joined with me and I with you, the relation intimate and organic, the harvest is sure to be abundant. Separated, you can’t produce a thing. Anyone who separates from me is deadwood, gathered up and thrown on the bonfire. But if you make yourselves at home with me and my words are at home in you, you can be sure that whatever you ask will be listened to and acted upon. This is how my Father shows who he is—when you produce grapes, when you mature as my disciples. 9-10 “I’ve loved you the way my Father has loved me. Make yourselves at home in my love. If you keep my commands, you’ll remain intimately at home in my love. That’s what I’ve done—kept my Father’s commands and made myself at home in his love.
Live Fresh Process:
Settle into His love.
Keep His commands.
Spiritual Freshness is dependent on Spiritual connectedness.
To live connected to Christ requires space for that connection.
We have to create space for…Word, Prayer & Worship.
It’s not that we don’t know the path to fresh it’s just too often we get side-tracked by the immediate. The immediate pounds it’s fist on the table and raises its voice demanding our best energy and best attention. And yet when God gets our best energy and our best attention our spiritually fresh life is more than enough to navigate whatever the demands life is making in the moment.
When you don’t plan for fresh stale is inevitable.
Make room.
Form a plan.
Pick a place.
2 Impacts of Fresh
Personally – You become more secure, equipped and confidant in Christ.
Productively – You become a magnet for people looking for hope! Setting you up for spiritual influence and spiritual impact.
The more you make your home in Him the more He will make His home in you!