A Divine Introduction
Only God can draw a confession from the hearts of the lost! Only Christ can convince the pluralist, the atheist, the agnostic, that He is the Christ, the Son of the Living God. It isn’t all on you and me. We do have work to do, but He does the heavy lifting.
Getting Into Jesus
We aren’t just spectators watching the Jesus Network, looking for a good recipe for biblical ethics. No! We are IN Him just as He is IN us! We participate in the actual events of His life by virtue of our union with Him. This is our “quantum leap” into Jesus! This is how we get into Jesus! What a privilege! What a joy!
Those Who are Far Off
God is still at work! He is still drawing men, women, and children to himself! He is in all the far off places, lighting the hearts of Magi who may live next door, work in the next cubicle, or on the next treadmill over.
The Scandal of the Incarnation
And more than that, let us as a church think: Who are we here to serve? We are a high church, liturgical church, in downtown Jackson. Who has God put us here to serve? Is it the intact marriages, the intact families, with 2.5 kids and a dog? Is it the picket fences on the 3 story homes? Or is it regular people with regular lives? Messy, scandalous, difficult, confusing? Yes. This is where God wants us to work.
From Belief to Doubt to Belief
The human condition tells us, and Jesus highlights it in the scriptures, that we are going to have belief and we're going to have doubt. But He says if you will cling to me and to my works and to my words, you will have a belief that can be unshaken.
Something to Hope For
When Peter tells us in 1 Peter 3:15 to “always be ready to give an answer for the hope that we have inside us,” the way people see that we have that hope is through that participatory hope, when we roll up our sleeves and when we get engaged in the community around us, sharing the gospel in both word and deed. Then people will start to ask us questions and we can give an answer for the hope.
A Blessedness That Lasts
“Furthermore, [the Beatitudes] provide ultimate hope that even the deplorable in society are no further away from the Kingdom of God than the supposed righteous, because they single out God’s children, proving that His blessing is truly available in circumstances that are beyond all human hope.”