The Ride Home

After preaching Sunday at The Bridge on my ride home I thought to myself, “what could I have done better with this sermon?” My answer was the application. What difference does knowing God actually make in our life?

If we’re honest, as Christians, we’re probably not that much different than your average Joe. We often feel pressure to seem more righteous and holy because that’s what we’re supposed to be, right? When we experience our own sin and inability to change things, even after we recognize God as the one we’ve been looking for, we feel discouraged.

I can imagine Satan sitting around reminding us of this very fact: “Knowing God hasn’t really changed your life and it never will.” So what gives? I think the point is that when we know Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, the one who will connect us to the heart of God, that instead of traveling alone in our struggles we travel with God. So in practice it doesn’t mean that we won’t struggle any more. Rather, it means we have a companion for the road. We now wrestle with God and what he has done instead of wrestling with our own deprived selves.

What does that look like on a day to day basis? Stay tuned.

Matt

Suffering for Our Faith

Well, it has been a little while since I have visited cyber space; apologies for my tardiness. However, my absence has got me thinking; how is it then when life gets busy the most important things we do fall by the way side?

This week at St. Paul’s we took a brief look at how we suffer for our faith as Christians. Saying that we suffer for our faith is always a puzzling statement for North American Christians. What exactly does that mean for us? Today I would like to suggest two ways in which we can or do suffer for our faith here in North America.

One way in which we suffer is highlighted by my absence from this blog post. We suffer by prioritizing. We are constantly bombarded with a myriad of things which demand our attention, which ask us to bow down to them. It is a constant fight and struggle to say no, putting God’s desires for us first in our lives. Making priorities means that we will suffer for putting the effort into prioritizing and then suffer for the consequences when we follow through.

The second way we suffer is tied into the first point. When we do what is the important things which God has put in our life there will be a cost. Doing God’s work comes at a Cost for us in North America. Are lives are already too full and when we do God’s work the reality is it will take time. Yes, we need to choose wisely and set boundaries, but ultimately serving God will cost us time, money and energy and in the end we will suffer for it.

So when you feel angry because you’re doing too much ask yourself if you’re doing the right things. And if you’re doing the right things and you’re angry because no one understands or appreciates you for doing these things direct your gaze heavenwards. We suffer for the sake of the gospel and for our Lord, so be encouraged. As Paul said, “Do not be ashamed, then, for the testimony about our Lord or of me his prisoner, but join with me in suffering for the gospel, relying on the power of God, who saved us and called us with a holy calling, not according to our works but according to his own purpose and grace.”

God bless you in the ways you suffer for Him and His Kingdom!