Celebration Center

Time is something that if not managed well can easily feel like gets away from us very quickly. Have you even tried to manage your time, but feel like you just don’t have enough of it? How do we make sure that we are accomplishing our every day life tasks, as well as preparing ourselves for the work God has for us when there just doesn’t seem to be enough time? Today we will look at 5 biblical truths about our time, and how we can better manage the precious time God has given us.

At just the right time, Jesus came into the world. He came to free us from the crushing weight of the law. We could never be good enough to earn salvation, so Jesus lived a perfect life on our behalf. Why? Because of love. God wanted us to be a part of his family. Out of love, he adopted us through the work of Christ. We are now the sons and daughters of God. Jesus is our savior and we can rest in the love of the Father.

The circumstances of life have a way of robbing us of joy. Disappointment, frustration, and loss can suck the very life from us; however, Jesus’s birth reminds us that, no matter how hard life is, we don’t have to go through it alone. God has come to us full of grace and truth, and that should bring us joy. We can trust that Jesus’s presence with us will reveal the truth about our lives and at the same time offer us the grace to see things change.

The announcement of Jesus’s birth was delivered to shepherds who lived on the fringe of society, in the fields, watching their sheep by night. If a king were born to the world, you would expect these shepherds to be the last ones to know about it. Yet, the heavenly angels told them that peace was coming to the earth for those on whom God’s favor rested. What a shocking message! God’s favor was even on the shepherds. They were being offered peace; and if it could be given to them, we can rest assured it is offered to us as well. Now that is good news for a world in turmoil!

The prophet Isaiah writes one of the most classic of all Old Testament prophecies about the coming birth of Christ. The passage he writes is born of gloom and darkness. The world had felt the full weight of sin, and it had wreaked havoc on all of creation. What Isaiah offered in chapter nine was something the Jewish people needed more than anything—hope. Hope that one day someone would come to make all things right and restore what had been broken. The birth of Jesus was the fulfillment of that hope and this fact offers us hope in our lives today.

Celebration Center

Mission accomplished; we have done the task God called us to do…now what? What if God does something that we weren’t expecting? Or worse…what if He does something that we absolutely disagree with? When God acts and we aren’t happy with Him, that actually speaks a lot to our heart and how we may be off from aligning ourselves with God’s will and God’s heart. Do our hearts break for what breaks his? Do we ultimately want what He wants…for ALL to know Him? Jonah struggled with this…

Every one of us matter to God. Even when we run from or resist Him, His pursuing love keeps coming to win us back to Him. For people of the 2nd chance, the focus is not on what it IS, but what it CAN be…God’s grace changes everything, and in Jonah 3 we see Jonah’s 2nd chance, Nineveh’s 2nd chance, and ultimately OUR 2nd chance!

Sometimes in life we find ourselves in some REALLY hot water from a decision we have made. All our choices have a consequence, and we have a good loving father who lovingly disciplines us to bring us back to Him. How we react when disciplined is key! Do we receive it, grow from it, and let it shape and mold us? Or do we reject it and keep running? When we are confronted by God, do we get BETTER or BITTER?

Our actions have a lot to do with not just what happens to us, but also with what happens to others around us. Storms in life can hit us from all angles, and our minds and attitudes play out in our actions, which lead in either running to Jesus, or away from Him. If Jesus commanded you to go love someone that you despised, what would you think? How would you respond? How would you act? Would you run TO Jesus, or AWAY from Him?

What if you mess up, and feel like you are unable to do what God has asked? You need another chance, but you feel like you lost your opportunity to do it because you ran from His call? The good news is that we serve a God who not only cares about the work He asks you do you, but He cares about you! So much so, that He always gives another chance.

The commands of Jesus that we have studied up until this week are meaningless if we don’t understand the repercussions of them. Namely, Jesus wants us to follow Him and do things His way so that we can be sent into the world, now that He is back in heaven. He has left us His Holy Spirit to guide us into the broken world around us. Therefore, if we want to go All In for Jesus, we must live the commission He has left us with.

It is often said that knowing Jesus can happen in a single moment with a single prayer, while following Jesus happens over the course of a lifetime. Jesus uses His words strategically throughout His ministry, calling people of all different backgrounds and lifestyles to follow Him. Our task this week is to answer the question: what happens when we decide to follow Jesus? And if we answer that question; we will experience what it means to go All In for Jesus.

In a world full of expectations and demands, Christian’s can tend to get caught up in the logistics of expecting God show up or hearing from Him. The reality is, we have a hard enough time figuring out the best way to hear from God and can get so crippled by those logistics that we miss it altogether. How does God speak? When does He speak? Why can’t I hear Him?

Have you ever been given something of great value? How do you treat it? We’ve been entrusted with a treasure of great value – God’s grace. It has been given by God, and passed down through generations. How should this affect our daily life? And how might this treasure that you hold affect the future?

After we have learned what it truly means to deny ourselves, Jesus calls us to take up our cross. While this is a command that brings back the image of Jesus carrying His own cross, He wants us to apply this metaphorically to our lives. Taking up our cross means that the road ahead will be difficult at times. Will we walk away when it gets too tough? Or will we take up our cross as Jesus did?

Jesus often gives commands that seem backwards from anything we hear elsewhere in the world around us. As part of His famous 3-step command to living life, Jesus first says that we must be people who deny ourselves. This doesn’t mean that we mope around in life having no fun. Instead, Jesus is calling us to give up our old ways of doing things and enter into the abundant life of Christ.

All throughout history we deal with sickness, injury, and death. Through various situations we pray and either see God heal, doctors heal, or ultimate healing where people pass from this world and into the presence of Jesus. How do we process through these times when it feels like our prayers aren’t answered, or we feel like God isn’t healing the way he does in scripture? Ultimately we will see that He is sovereign and healing doesn’t always look/work the way we think…

Our life is full of appointments. Some we look forward to, others we avoid or are late to on purpose. What do we do when we are dreading an appointment? To the Dr? To the Dentist? What about when we have an appointment with God and we REALLY don’t like what is currently happening in life. Will be listen to his prescription and look for His will, or will we live in disappointment with his path, and where we currently are in it?

There is no amount of sin in our lives that can separate us from the love of God. If we are willing to confess, He is willing to forgive. We can live pure lives because God promises us forgiveness through the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ. Our part is to repent and believe, that is the message we are given throughout the New Testament to experience new life in Jesus.