Last week we talked about forgiveness. This week we are going to talk about reconciliation. Reconciliation means to make things right with people we have sinned against. But reconciliation is both scary and hard because relational stuff is gritty.
Author: joemarino (Page 46 of 52)
Our mission and vision at The Well is to be a gospel centered church family of gospel communities that grow missionally engaged disciples who glorify God. Three words. Gospel… Family… Mission. Those three words are the summarizing focus or values of our mission statement here as we plant The Well. And that mission and vision is rooted and inspired by what we see God doing in and through the life, the death and the resurrection of Jesus in the gospels on the one hand and then what we see the Holy Spirit doing in and through the early church in the book of Acts.
Last week we talked about grace. This week we are going to talk about forgiveness. True change in our lives is a radical act of God’s grace. The process for experiencing that change then, requires that we humble ourselves and learn to receive his grace. But we will never be able to fully receive and experience grace until we are able to extend grace to others.
Our plan over the summer is to devote six weeks of preaching through a sermon series called The People of The Well. What we want to do is anchor ourselves to two texts that have heavily influenced the ethos of who we are. So we’ll spend the first three weeks in Acts 2:42 – 47 as we examine the work of God in and through the early church. And then we’ll take a break over the month of July for some guest preachers. And then we’ll resume our series in August with the final 3 weeks focusing on Jesus’ interaction with the woman at the well in John 4:5 – 42.
Last week we talked about what it means to commit to serving God as our master rather than our sinful desires and behaviors. This week we are going to talk about God’s grace and how it applies to our growth in holiness.
Five years ago, my wife, our kids and I spent the summer praying through a decision to answer the call to plant a church here in Hastings, NE. And then in August of 2012 we gathered with four other adults and 3 other kids to begin studying the Scriptures, sharing life with one another and praying for one another on a weekly basis.
Last week we talked about confession. This week we are going to talk about commitment. It is a spiritual truth that we cannot serve two masters; it is also a spiritual truth that the one we serve is, our master. If we listen to and obey sin, then sin will be our master. If we listen to and obey God, then God will be our master.
Last week we talked about self-examination – getting to the sin beneath the sin in our lives. This week we are going to talk about a very natural next step, which is confession. If we want freedom from our sins, we must be honest about those sins with others.
In our final passage of Luke’s gospel, Jesus calls his disciples to be his witnesses, he promises to send the Holy Spirit to them, blesses them one final time and leaves them worshipping him with great joy.
We have talked about believing & applying, powerlessness, hope, and surrender. The goal of the first four weeks was to get us to the point where we are ready to seek God and trust him to change us. This week we are going to start digging deeper into our struggles by discussing the principle of self-examination.