Time to Draw Near
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Is it better to be married or single? While marriage can often be held up in the church as a goal for everyone to attain, the Apostle Paul reminds the church that remaining single has great advantages in the Christian life. Singleness can be seen as a gift from God, allowing time and attention to be focused on building His Kingdom and growing deeper in a relationship with Christ. And married or single, Paul encourages us all to keep our focus off of the distractions of the world, and instead focus on the eternity to come.
God designed marriage to be a lifelong commitment, and yet the reality of our broken world means marriages all-too-often are broken apart. What does the Bible say about marriages that end? Does God allow for divorce in certain circumstances? What about remarriage? In the midst of brokenness, we can learn many things about God’s purpose in marriage and understand how seriously He views the commitments we make to one another.
God designed our sexuality to be expressed within a lifelong, committed marriage relationship between a man and a woman for the purposes of procreation, partnership, pleasure, purity and remembering the union of Christ and the church. As our world drifts further away from God’s design for sex, we’re called to be different - to follow God’s design and direction for our bodies and relationships.
All sin is destructive, but sexual sin is particularly damaging. It’s for this reason that God puts very specific guardrails around sexuality. As followers of Jesus, honoring God includes resisting the temptation toward sexual sin, running to Jesus, and leaning on his strength to find freedom. The first step is bringing sin into the light and experiencing the forgiveness and transformation only a faith in Jesus can bring.
Conflict is an inevitable part of life in this broken world. When conflict arises between followers of Jesus, the way we resolve that conflict says a lot about whether or not we follow the example of love to which Jesus calls us. The world tempts us to always want to ‘win’ when conflict appears, but the Apostle Paul reminds us that our first priority is to love one another well, always eager to maintain unity within the church family as we serve as witnesses to a lost world.
God takes the integrity of His church seriously. When we encounter someone in sin within the church family, our responsibility is to call it out in love, praying always for repentance and restoration. But our first look should always be inward, asking the Holy Spirit to reveal those areas in which we struggle. With encouragement from our brothers and sisters in Christ, we walk with humility to worship and honor Jesus Christ through whom we receive the gift of grace and freedom from sin.
The Gospel is an amazing message of hope to share with the world, and the responsibility to share it rests on every follower of Jesus. While the gospel message can sometimes be met with pushback or even persecution from the world, ultimately it’s only God who will judge our faithfulness in the task. We put all our faith and trust in Jesus, the only one who can save.
Whose kingdom are you building? The pursuits of this world like wealth, success, popularity and influence can make us feel good in the moment, but none of those things will last. Instead of building our own kingdom, God calls those who are in Christ to spend time and energy building His Kingdom. When we live with the mission of pointing others toward Jesus, we build on top of a foundation that will last forever.
What does it mean to be spiritually mature? The Apostle Paul calls out some in the Corinthian church for their immaturity and encourages them to keep their focus on Jesus. It serves as a reminder to us all that preachers and ministry leaders are merely servants of Jesus Christ, called to be faithful in their duties, but never forgetting that only Jesus saves, and only Jesus can transform lives. Our desire should be to serve God in humility, always pointing to His glory and the hope of His gospel.
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Sermons by: Mark Yule
Highlands 25th Anniversary
As Highlands celebrates its 25th anniversary, it’s important to pause...
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