What did Jesus mean when he said that he came so that we might have life and life to the fullest? In our Thrive series we are going to look at a number of spiritual habits that can help us to grow our relationship with God. What about the idea of sabbath? What exactly is included (or not included) in this biblical practice of sabbath keeping?
We live in an angry world. Many news outlets share a little bit of news and a lot of commentary about the bad guys, the people who you should be afraid of, or mad at. Much of our digital and now public dialogue takes on an aggressive, forceful tone. We are told to take a stand, to make our views known, to defend whatever it is we are to defend. Yet Jesus invites us to love our enemies. To love and forgive those who are different than us, and even challenges us that if we are not able to do that, we are no better than our enemies.
Have you ever felt like you didn’t belong? Like you weren’t good enough or didn’t live up to the standards that either you or other people had set? In Ephesians 2, we will learn that this is not something that is new to our world. We will see how all were once separated from Christ, not originally included in the promises of God, but that Jesus made a way to extend the invitation to belong to the family of God for ALL people, including me and you!
We are so good at being good, we have a word to describe individuals who are hyper focused on it: perfectionist. We put attention into all kinds of things, our home, our work, our family, our social media, politics, but what if we were never meant to be perfect, or even pretend we can be close?