Greetings Hitmen,
Good morning Hitmen, or should I say Saints! I recall one of Pastor Rick’s comments from this weekend’s sermon as I say that. He shared, “The work of the church is to equip the saints for the ministry.” He’s right; we are all called to be in “ministry” with one another… most of the time in our daily lives we call this friendship! It is a great message.
Today I want to share with you all about the wretched condition we all have in common one way or another. I was reading in Romans 5 last evening about how faith brings joy. I often turn to Romans 5 when I am in need of encouragement and lifting. Although it seems almost a backward way to describe the condition of joy, the author (Paul) uses several phrases to describe our painful position in the beginning of the passage. “We are utterly helpless” (5:6); we were “sinners” (5:6, 8); and we were God’s “enemies” (5:10). It was precisely when we were in that condition that God decided to solve our sin problem for us. He loved us so much that he sent His Son to die on the cross to set us free from the power of sin. We cannot be any worse than the way Paul describes us there, so God’s love and acceptance of us can never be negated by our failures. With a Savior like that, we can confidently surrender our lives to Him.
So those of you who are reading between the lines of this week’s message are probably asking yourselves “why does Brother Luke need encouragement?” The fact is we are all fighting daily a battle against the enemy by our own strongholds. Some, if not most, days we are successful, sometimes we are even able to spread the light of Christ beyond our own lives and positively impact the lives of others. Sometimes however, we fall… whether that be a course word to our spouse, a negative gesture to another driver or being too harsh in our corrections of others. As Christians we are called to be the light of the world, this means not being hurtful to others. This weekend I had an opportunity to exercise grace, and I didn’t. Although I am convicted by my actions, I am not defeated, today I surrender these flaws to Him, and once again pick-up my cross and follow Jesus! Will you? Remember, God loves us not because we humans are so loveable, but because He is love.
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