"What If..."

Announcements

--Great Fish Fry yesterday... a blessing for all of us. $1800 made through the Fish Fry and silent auction.

--Family Night has started for Wednesdays.  6:00 meal, with meeting 6:30-7:30

--October 29 the semi-annual congregational meeting after the service.

--Terry's small group meets tonight at the Moses' house.

Pastor Terry read a passage from Isaiah 6:1-5. And then we entered into a time of worship.

Mission Moment: Jan shared about the Agape House of Hope, an all-volunteer ministry for the women who come to visit their incarcerated loved ones in our Duluth prison. Matt 22:37 and 39. 

The offering was taken while the worship team ministered to us in song. Darlene led us in a time of prayer.

"What If..."

Pastor Terry  began by sharing why he likes coaching girls basketball, how things happen fast and kids work hard so they get a chance to play.

Something Terry does consciously in his youth ministry is to get older kids to have relationships with younger, that they might impart knowledge and experience to the younger. 

What often happened was when the older mentor kids went off to college the younger would be saying, "I want to be like John" instead of having seen that John was that way because of Jesus in John. 

Galatians 2:20 has been my life verse for a long time. "I am crucified with Christ, nevertheless I live, yet not I, but Christ lives in me."

What does this look like?

Here is the passage Terry spoke about this morning, Galatians 2:15-21.

15 “We who are Jews by birth and not sinful Gentiles 16 know that a person is not justified by the works of the law, but by faith in Jesus Christ. So we, too, have put our faith in Christ Jesus that we may be justified by faith in Christ and not by the works of the law, because by the works of the law no one will be justified.

17 “But if, in seeking to be justified in Christ, we Jews find ourselves also among the sinners, doesn’t that mean that Christ promotes sin? Absolutely not! 18 If I rebuild what I destroyed, then I really would be a lawbreaker.

19 “For through the law I died to the law so that I might live for God. 20 I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I now live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me. 21 I do not set aside the grace of God, for if righteousness could be gained through the law, Christ died for nothing!”

Think about your week... What would it look like for you to have been crucified with Christ this week? What if Christ was living your life in that moment, what would He have done? How different would that have been from what you did?

When I am coaching and in the zone, all my efforts are to help the kids on the team become the best they can be. The same for us in the world... when we interact right, our focus is on helping others to be the best they can be, our co-workers and family and neighbors.

Unfortunately we often revert to having it be about our selves. We want recognition for our self-sacrifice. We want the team to win for the sake of my ego.  This distortion has consequences.

What would life for us look like if we were wholly allowing Christ-in-me to be ascendant? Think about it.

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