Today we step away from our journey through Acts to celebrate the first Sunday of Advent. “Advent” means “coming” and it is a term to describe the four Sundays that precede Christmas in which God’s people celebrate Jesus’ first coming in Bethlehem as well as His awaited second coming. On this first Sunday of Advent, just before the busy month of December begins, we discover that faithfulness to King Jesus produces peace and enables us to become His couriers of peace in our distressed world.
Paul continues his 2nd missionary journey, and travels to Athens, the birthplace of modern western thought and democracy. In a proud city of extraordinary architecture, art, and culture – one designed to display its great history, people, and ideas, Paul becomes “greatly distressed” by what he observes – in a way reminiscent of God himself, whenever God-given artistry and ability is not attributed and celebrated as grace and gifts from him alone. Since Paul has been transformed by Jesus himself, he is able to deeply understand Athens, and at the same time love Athens with the love of Jesus himself. In so doing, he gives us a clear example of how to engage in our highly nuanced, pluralist culture… blank Starbucks holiday cups and all.
Why are many of us reluctant to tell others the good news about Jesus? In this message we observe a key motive that fueled the Apostle Paul to lovingly and courageously explain the message of Jesus to many in the metropolis of Thessalonica in the midst of opposition. Maybe the solution to our fear and timidity isn’t more education or a new method. What if we learned and became apprehended by the same reality that compelled Paul? That “…there is another king, Jesus.”
Sometimes we all get stuck – stuck in traffic and stuck in unhealthy reoccurring thoughts, attitudes and habits. Like the struggling prey of a python, our unsuccessful attempts toward liberation can lead us to despair. In the Apostle Paul’s first visit to the ancient Macedonian city of Philippi, we meet a young girl, a business woman and a law enforcement officer who all find themselves entrapped. The good news for them is great news for us – our stuck-ness need not remain. True deliverance beyond tolerable recovery is available because a loving and infinitely powerful Deliverer is at hand.
When we followers of Jesus first learned and accepted the good news that Jesus is Lord of all, submitting our lives to His leadership and receiving all of His rewards, it was natural to want to share this message with others. Yet, in many cases not everyone was as interested as we would expect. This can discourage us and dampen our light. If you long to see more of your current friends and family living with God and joining Him in His mission to heal the world, the eternal realities revealed in this passage will encourage you to keep shining knowing that God often works in and through us in ways that we could never imagine or believe.
While most cultures recognize the power of intentional relationships between someone with mastery in a particular field and an apprentice, this approach for development is often neglected here in Denver. Investing in another person can be time consuming, messy and threatening when those we train excel. In this message we explore Paul’s commitment to apprentice Timothy in order to discover some compelling reasons to engage in apprenticing others as Paul and, more importantly, Jesus did.
People disagree. Conflict results. Anger builds. Fellowship breaks. And it’s often with the people we’re closest to. Yet God, in his infinite wisdom and power, is able to use our fractured relationships for his purposes. He intended us to live at peace with one another. Sometimes restoring peace happens quickly. Other times, it takes years. And even when it seems as though it will never happen, we know that relationships will be part of the restoration of all things.
Do we enter the family of God based on what we do for Him or by trusting in what He has done for us? The good news (gospel) is that God sent His Son Jesus because He loves us apart from what we do or do not do for Him. After we believe this message by faith, our process of transformation begins in His way and His timing as He conforms us to become more like our Lord Jesus. This is amazing grace. In today’s message from Acts 15 we discover that this unconditional love of God is so foreign to the human way of thinking that people often add requirements beyond faith in Jesus. When people do this we must follow the example of Jesus’ first disciples by lovingly, yet firmly, affirming, “We believe that we will be saved through the grace of the Lord Jesus” for God’s sake, our sake and the sake of the world.
God often leads disciple making communities to send and support specific people to show and tell the good news that Jesus is Lord of all beyond their own city. In our recent journey through Acts 13 and 14 we have seen how God called Paul and Barnabas from their church in Antioch to take His message of grace throughout Galatia. In our message today, we learn that after their journey God led them to circle back to their sending partners in Antioch in order to “declare all that God had done with them.” Today we hear a brief summary of this text followed by a report from Don and Janet Guizzetti. Don and Janet are followers of Jesus and partners with Hope who have who have recently returned from their second missionary trip among the people of Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso (West Africa).
Annually Hope Community Church asks God for an intentional focus for our Sept. through Aug. ministry year. This year’s focus is to shift to become a more relational disciple-making church. As our elders, leaders and ministry areas have begun intentionally seeking to follow Jesus and equip others to do the same, some people have asked a valid and important question, “Why?” In this message Dean Wertz explains several reasons for this year’s emphasis and casts a vision for what this could look like for generations to come.