Is our biggest problem really getting people into an empty church building?

Or is it in getting the people in the pews out into their neighbourhoods?!

Why not set-up a hospitality station in your front yard & serve bowls of friendship to your neighbours?!

Prickly issues...

1 Corinthians 5:9-13
I wrote you in my earlier letter that you shouldn't make yourselves at home among the sexually promiscuous. I didn't mean that you should have nothing at all to do with outsiders of that sort. Or with crooks, whether blue or white-collar.

Or with spiritual phonies, for that matter. You'd have to leave the world entirely to do that! But I am saying that you shouldn't act as if everything is just fine when a friend who claims to be a Christian is promiscuous or crooked, is flip with God or rude to friends, gets drunk or becomes greedy and predatory.

You can't just go along with this, treating it as acceptable behavior. I'm not responsible for what the outsiders do, but don't we have some responsibility for those within our community of believers? God decides on the outsiders, but we need to decide when our brothers and sisters are out of line and, if necessary, clean house.

self-confident; self-sufficient; self-centred.

self-destruct.

Galatians 3:2-4
Let me put this question to you: How did your new life begin? Was it by working your heads off to please God? Or was it by responding to God's Message to you? Are you going to continue this craziness? For only crazy people would think they could complete by their own efforts what was begun by God.

If you weren't smart enough or strong enough to begin it, how do you suppose you could perfect it? Did you go through this whole painful learning process for nothing? It is not yet a total loss, but it certainly will be if you keep this up!

Time for a happy meal...

Live God's way, it's the best diet!

Galatians 5:19-23
It is obvious what kind of life develops out of trying to get your own way all the time: repetitive, loveless, cheap sex; a stinking accumulation of mental and emotional garbage; frenzied and joyless grabs for happiness; trinket gods; magic-show religion; paranoid loneliness; cutthroat competition; all-consuming-yet-never-satisfied wants; a brutal temper; an impotence to love or be loved; divided homes and divided lives; small-minded and lopsided pursuits; the vicious habit of depersonalizing everyone into a rival; uncontrolled and uncontrollable addictions; ugly parodies of community. I could go on.

This isn't the first time I have warned you, you know. If you use your freedom this way, you will not inherit God's kingdom.

But what happens when we live God's way? He brings gifts into our lives, much the same way that fruit appears in an orchard—things like affection for others, exuberance about life, serenity. We develop a willingness to stick with things, a sense of compassion in the heart, and a conviction that a basic holiness permeates things and people. We find ourselves involved in loyal commitments, not needing to force our way in life, able to marshal and direct our energies wisely.

Do you love your job?

Do you wake up in the morning singing at the thought of being who you are and doing what you do?

As you go through the day do you come radiantly alive with a deep sense of purpose?

Are there are times when you feel like sinking to your knees in involuntary gratitude at the tremendous good fortune that has been bestowed on you?

Do you know that you are doing exactly what you were set on earth to do and each day is joyous beyond measure?

Do you long to live out our faith out from Monday through Saturday, but wince at having to go to work instead?

Stop wasting your life, especially your working life!

Life is too short to waste.

You can find happiness & fulfillment at work - regardless of your actual job. Stop working for others & work for the Father instead...

Jeremiah 29:8
"Seek the peace and prosperity of the city to which I have carried you into exile. Pray to the LORD for it, because if it prospers, you too will prosper."

Colossians 3:17
Let every detail in your lives—words, actions, whatever—be done in the name of the Master, Jesus, thanking God the Father every step of the way.

Feeling apocalyptic?

"People had more than they needed. We had no idea what was precious and what wasn't. We threw away things people kill each other for now."

“One day I heard this voice, like it was coming from inside me. It led me to a place...I found this book, buried deep in the rubble... And the voice told me to carry it west.”

“In all these years I’ve been carrying it and reading it everyday, I got so caught up in keeping it safe that I forgot to live by what I learned from it.”

"We walk by faith not by sight." Eli (Denzel Washington, The Book of Eli)

What book is written on your heart?

BELIEVE.

DELIVER US.

Ezekiel 3:10-11
Then he said, "Son of man, get all these words that I'm giving you inside you. Listen to them obediently. Make them your own. And now go. Go to the exiles, your people, and speak. Tell them, 'This is the Message of God, the Master.' Speak your piece, whether they listen or not."

If God is so good, then why do I feel so ___?

Hebrews 11:1-2
The fundamental fact of existence is that this trust in God, this faith, is the firm foundation under everything that makes life worth living. It's our handle on what we can't see. The act of faith is what distinguished our ancestors, set them above the crowd.