Enlivened by the Gospel

We are coming towards the end of a heavy week. We have remembered 9/11. We have endured more violence on American soil perpetrated by Americans against Americans, against American children. We are seeing the fallout from grief, anger, confusion, even hopelessness. I am not sure where you fall on the emotional spectrum described above, but, here in God's world there is always hope.

As we have been working with vision priorities that will take us into the future, we stand by the mission statement that has galvanized us in the past: Enlivened by the Gospel, we glorify God with all our lives and fully enjoy Him. There are more specifics about how we enjoy God with worship, embrace folks with welcome, engage the world with winsomeness, etc ... but today, this week, I just want to sit with that first phrase, Enlivened by the Gospel. When God brought out Ezekiel to valley of dry bones (one of our recent devotional readings), he called on Ezekiel to prophesy to the bones and to call upon the wind, and the bones came together to LIVE! When Jesus came upon his friend Lazarus who had been laying in the tomb for four days, he called for his friend to come out; and Lazarus came out to LIVE! Which was just a precursor to Jesus own descent into the grave, only to be called out three days later by the power of the Holy Spirit and he now LIVES! And when that same Holy Spirit blows over our cold, rebellious souls, dead in our trespasses and sins, we are awakened to LIVE! This is THE truth of the gospel that animates our fellowship. Without the indicative of the life-giving work of the Trinity on our behalf, there could never be enough kept imperatives for us to have a relationship with God or any hope at all for the world.

But we do have hope. Because if Jesus can enliven dead sinners like us there is hope for all. This is what we hang on to as a church, we have been enlivened by the gospel. If God can do that for us, then we can then take that life germinating within, share it with each other and let it overflow to the world. It is the only hope for a world awash in war, political turmoil, loneliness, hate and grief. It has been, and always will be, at the heart of who we are as a church.