Catching Up

We had a great day yesterday with services, Stacie's Wedding, and Charles Marshall at night. I have to admit that by about 4 in the afternoon after doing 2 morning services and the wedding I was toast--so I took today off.

Part of my day off has been catching up on my reading of the Text. I got a bit behind last week. One of the cool things about doing a lot of reading of the text at once is seeing patterns that you miss in shorter readings. So here's few things I found today,

There is a consistent call to realize our lives are for God, not ourselves. This first got my attention in 2 Cor. 5.15, "And he died for all, that those who live should no longer live for themselves but for him who died for him." That idea flowed through the rest of 2 Corinthians as Paul talks about his sacrifices for the kingdom. Then in Galatians the theme is sounded again when Paul says that people praised God because of his life--the praise does not go to him, but to God. In Ephesians 1.5-6 we are told that God saves us for the praise of his glorious grace and chapter 2 tells us that we are saved to do good works (2.8-10). Philippians in chapter 1 talks about the fact that we need to be filled with the fruit of righteousness so that glory and praise can go to God. Bottom line: life is about God, it is one of the hardest things to remember and even harder to live.

Another thing that I noticed is that when Paul makes lists of what we should not do that greed is connected with idolatry--one of the greatest sins in the Old Testament that brought down both Israel and Judah.

As I was reading through Ephesians I noticed something for the first time: in 1.4 we are told that God choose us to be holy and blameless in his sight and then in 5.27 we're told that Christ dies to present the church to himself as a radiant bride, holy and blameless. A neat connection, especially when you keep watching for those kind of words in other parts of the Text I read. What I found is God's goal is all caught up with making each of us and his church holy, blameless, perfect (Col. 1.28), and pure (Phil 1.10). When you take those four words seriously they can reorient your life.

Just a few things from my reading today.

Just a reminder that Jodi, our outreach director, leaves for Uganda tomorrow for about 2 weeks and John and Barb, members of our congregation leave for an 8 week time of service in Uganda. Keep them all in your prayers.