1 John 4:1-21

Mark Acuff

Larry was the person who first recruited me to be a pastor years ago. Whenever I think of him, even now, I feel encouraged.

Why?

Larry cared for me and respected me before I did anything to earn it. Matt of fact, now that I think of it, I never did anything that fully earned the level of support and love he gave me.

He loved me first.

I have no doubt that the positive experience I had as a new pastor was the result of Larry’s love.

This Sunday at the Gathering Church I will teach from 1 John 4:1-21. The passage contains perhaps some of the most well known verses about God’s character and the priority of his love.

Religious and spiritual experience gets totally warped and actually becomes bad for us when the order of God’s love gets reversed. It is too easy to act as if we’ve got to do something to get God to love us.

In Love 2: The Way of God we connect again to what happens when we know that we are loved first.

This Week’s Scripture Passage:

Dear friends, don’t believe every spirit. Test the spirits to see if they are from God because many false prophets have gone into the world.  This is how you know if a spirit comes from God: every spirit that confesses that Jesus Christ has come as a human is from God, and every spirit that doesn’t confess Jesus is not from God.

This is the spirit of the antichrist, which you have heard is coming and is now already in the world.  You are from God, little children, and you have defeated these people because the one who is in you is greater than the one who is in the world.  They are from the world. So they speak from the world’s point of view and the world listens to them.  We are from God. The person who knows God listens to us. Whoever is not from God doesn’t listen to us. This is how we recognize the Spirit of truth and the spirit of error.

Dear friends, let’s love each other, because love is from God, and everyone who loves is born from God and knows God.  The person who doesn’t love does not know God, because God is love.  This is how the love of God is revealed to us: God has sent his only Son into the world so that we can live through him.  This is love: it is not that we loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son as the sacrifice that deals with our sins.

Dear friends, if God loved us this way, we also ought to love each other.  No one has ever seen God. If we love each other, God remains in us and his love is made perfect in us.  This is how we know we remain in him and he remains in us, because he has given us a measure of his Spirit.  We have seen and testify that the Father has sent the Son to be the savior of the world.  If any of us confess that Jesus is God’s Son, God remains in us and we remain in God.  We have known and have believed the love that God has for us.

God is love, and those who remain in love remain in God and God remains in them.  This is how love has been perfected in us, so that we can have confidence on the Judgment Day, because we are exactly the same as God is in this world.  

There is no fear in love, but perfect love drives out fear, because fear expects punishment. The person who is afraid has not been made perfect in love.  We love because God first loved us.  If anyone says, I love God, and hates a brother or sister, he is a liar, because the person who doesn’t love a brother or sister who can be seen can’t love God, who can’t be seen.  This commandment we have from him: Those who claim to love God ought to love their brother and sister also.

1 John 4:1-21 (Common English Bible)

View the .pdf of Songs & Announcements.

1 John 3:11-24

Mark Acuff

While using my gas lawn edger the nut holding the blade on had come off and I was trying to find it. It had happened a few days earlier and I had already given up searching for it, assuming that I could easily replace it at a local hardware store.

Wrong.

Did you know that a nut has two different measurements, size and pitch? Size is obvious. Pitch has to do with how close and fine the threads are. And my missing nut had a special enough pitch, so as to be irreplaceable by anybody but the manufacturer. Hence, a renewed search.

Anna Maria, 8, was the first to run over to help. She couldn’t resist. She even went home and got some big magnets. Soon her brother, mother and father were searching.

Nothing.

Not even when Anna Maria said, “My body is very sensitive,” and started rolling in the grass.

Hmmm…

This is how we know what love is, that Jesus laid done his life for us.

-1 John 3:16

Okay, Anna Maria, rolling in the grass is nothing like Jesus dying on a cross. Except in attitude.

At the Gathering Church this Sunday I will teach from 1 John 3:11-24. The passage sets the standard for love, and I have to admit that the standard seems out of reach, even burdensome if it were in reach. “C’mon Jesus, do we have to love like that? Sacrificially?”

You know what I learned from Anna Maria?

Vision trumps sacrifice.

The hope of finding the nut made getting itchy okay.

What love achieves makes the sacrifice worth it. We’ll learn about that this Sunday.

And by the way, after more searching we gave up and I headed towards my front door. Then Anna Maria shouted, “I found it.”

She found it in the median strip by the mailbox. She had not stopped searching. Great excitement ensued as the prodigal nut had been found.

This Sunday: Love: The Way of Sacrifice

This Week’s Scripture Passage:

This is the message that you heard from the beginning: love each other. Don’t behave like Cain, who belonged to the evil one and murdered his brother. And why did he kill him? He killed him because his own works were evil, but the works of his brother were righteous.

Don’t be surprised, brothers and sisters, if the world hates you. We know that we have transferred from death to life, because we love the brothers and sisters. The person who does not love remains in death. Everyone who hates a brother or sister is a murderer, and you know that no murderer has eternal life residing in him. This is how we know love: Jesus laid down his life for us, and we ought to lay down our lives for our brothers and sisters. But if a person has material possessions and sees a brother or sister in need and that person doesn’t care—how can the love of God remain in him?

Little children, let’s not love with words or speech but with action and truth. This is how we will know that we belong to the truth and reassure our hearts in God’s presence. Even if our hearts condemn us, God is greater than our hearts and knows all things. Dear friends, if our hearts don’t condemn us, we have confidence in relationship to God. We receive whatever we ask from him because we keep his commandments and do what pleases him. This is his commandment, that we believe in the name of his Son, Jesus Christ, and love each other as he commanded us. The person who keeps his commandments remains in God and God remains in him; and this is how we know that he remains in us, because of the Spirit that he has given to us.

1 John 3:11-24 (Common English Bible)

View the .pdf of Songs & Announcements.

1 John 2:28-3:10

Mark Acuff

Coming out of the Venezuelan music system that engages children from impoverished areas, he had burst on the classical music scene as “a conducting animal.” While rehearsing the renowned Vienna Philharmonic as a guest conductor, he challenged them at one point to “play with more blood.” He told the musicians that blood should be splashing on their faces as they attacked the piece.

Incredibly talented and hard-working, there is one word that describes him best: passionate.

He is passionate for music.

But he is more passionate for people.

His passion changes everyone around him.

Passionate is not a word we often associate with God. God’s too dignified, too holy, too preoccupied with correct beliefs and proper behavior.

Well, to understand what I will be teaching this Sunday at the Gathering Church, you’ll need to know how passionate God is.

Passionate for what?

For you.

In 1 John 2:28-3:10, God’s passion is unmistakable. And the impact of that passion is unmistakable. People live well, like children of God, like people who will stand with Jesus one day.

This Sunday – Loved: The Way to Know Ourselves.

This Week’s Scripture Passage:

And now, little children, remain in relationship to Jesus, so that when he appears we can have confidence and not be ashamed in front of him when he comes.  If you know that he is righteous, you also know that every person who practices righteousness is born from him.

See what kind of love the Father has given to us in that we should be called God’s children, and that is what we are! Because the world didn’t recognize him, it doesn’t recognize us.

Dear friends, now we are God’s children, and it hasn’t yet appeared what we will be. We know that when he appears we will be like him because we’ll see him as he is.  And everyone who has this hope in him purifies himself even as he is pure.  Every person who practices sin commits an act of rebellion, and sin is rebellion.  You know that he appeared to take away sins, and there is no sin in him.  Every person who remains in relationship to him does not sin. Any person who sins has not seen him or known him.

Little children, make sure no one deceives you. The person who practices righteousness is righteous, in the same way that Jesus is righteous.  The person who practices sin belongs to the devil, because the devil has been sinning since the beginning.  God’s Son appeared for this purpose: to destroy the works of the devil.  Those born from God don’t practice sin because God’s DNA remains in them. They can’t sin because they are born from God.  This is how God’s children and the devil’s children are apparent: everyone who doesn’t practice righteousness is not from God, including the person who doesn’t love a brother or sister.

1 John 2:28-3:10 (Common English Bible)

View the .pdf of Songs & Announcements.

1 John 2:12-27

Mark Acuff

I was tired and more than empty from the busy demands of life and ministry when I discovered in a bookstore this volume written by a seventeenth-century English Puritan.

Perhaps it was the different language, but I was instantly both pierced and freed by a moment of clarity.

My life is incredibly valuable. God made it that way. What God has done through Jesus Christ to restore life is amazing. The only sensible thing is to devote my life to things that will last forever in the life that God gives us.

A transcendent sense of eternity . . . immediately renewing. Immediately focusing me on what matters most.

But why is that sense of meaning so elusive? So easily lost?

This Sunday at the Gathering Church I continue a study of 1 John, a letter that teaches how to know and experience life with God now and forever. 1 John 2:12-27 gives a great picture of what that life is like, but it also clearly identifies what makes God seem unreal to us.

Bottom line: to truly know and experience God means always swimming upstream. Currents in this world will take us away from God.

For instance, the current of achievement produces anything but serenity and trust in God’s presence and purpose.

What other currents, do you think, may be taking people away from God?

This Week’s Scripture Passage:

Little children, I’m writing to you because your sins have been forgiven through Jesus’ name.

 

Parents, I’m writing to you because you have known the one who has existed from the beginning.

 

Young people, I’m writing to you because you have conquered the evil one.

 

Little children, I write to you because you know the Father.

 

Parents, I write to you because you have known the one who has existed from the beginning.

 

Young people, I write to you because you are strong, the word of God remains in you, and you have conquered the evil one.

 

Don’t love the world or the things in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in them.  Everything that is in the world—the craving for whatever the body feels, the craving for whatever the eyes see and the arrogant pride in one’s possessions—is not of the Father but is of the world.  And the world and its cravings are passing away, but the person who does the will of God remains forever.

 

Little children, it is the last hour. Just as you have heard that the antichrist is coming, so now many antichrists have appeared. This is how we know it is the last hour. They went out from us, but they were not really part of us. If they had been part of us, they would have stayed with us. But by going out from us, they showed they all are not part of us. But you have an anointing from the holy one, and all of you know the truth. I don’t write to you because you don’t know the truth but because you know it. You know that no lie comes from the truth. Who is the liar? Isn’t it the person who denies that Jesus is the Christ? This person is the antichrist: the one who denies the Father and the Son. Everyone who denies the Son does not have the Father, but the one who confesses the Son has the Father also.

 

As for you, what you heard from the beginning must remain in you. If what you heard from the beginning remains in you, you will also remain in relationship to the Son and in the Father.  This is the promise that he himself gave us: eternal life.  I write these things to you about those who are attempting to deceive you.  As for you, the anointing that you received from him remains on you, and you don’t need anyone to teach you the truth. But since his anointing teaches you about all things (it’s true and not a lie), remain in relationship to him just as he taught you.

1 John 2:12-27 (Common English Bible)

View the .pdf of Songs & Announcements.

1 John 2:3-11

Mark Acuff

What impressions, thoughts or feelings does that word prompt in you?

Are you instantly inspired? Are your passions suddenly elevated to a higher level of devotion?

I wish mine were.

Instead I tend to think of restriction, control, of having to do something that you would prefer not to do. Obligation. Conformity instead of free expression. The school to which you take your dog so you can manage it better.

Perhaps I’m the only one who distorts such an essential spiritual concept.

At the Gathering Church I’m doing a message series, Included: Participating in the Life of God. It is based on 1 John, a letter written fifty to sixty years after Jesus’ resurrection. Its purpose is to help people be sure about what it means to experience God’s life.

And guess what?

After honesty, obedience is the next factor that describes how God works in our lives.

The outcome is anything but controlled, restricted people gritting their teeth to live up to some impossible standards.

See for yourself in 1 John 2:3-11.

Am I the only one who doesn’t have an immediately positive reaction to the concept of obedience?

What’s your reaction?

This Week’s Scripture Passage:

This is how we know that we know him: if we keep his commandments.  The one who claims, “I know him,” while not keeping his commandments, is a liar, and the truth is not in this person.  But the love of God is truly perfected in whoever keeps his word. This is how we know we are in him.  The one who claims to remain in him ought to live in the same way as he lived.

Dear friends, I’m not writing a new commandment to you, but an old commandment that you had from the beginning. The old commandment is the message you heard.  On the other hand, I am writing a new commandment to you, which is true in him and in you, because the darkness is passing away and the true light already shines.  The one who claims to be in the light while hating a brother or sister is in the darkness even now.  The person loving a brother and sister stays in the light, and there is nothing in the light that causes a person to stumble.  But the person who hates a brother or sister is in the darkness and lives in the darkness, and doesn’t know where to go because the darkness blinds the eyes.

1 John 2:3-11 (Common English Bible)

Listen to the Spotify playlist: Sunday 4/29 at the Gathering Church.

View the .pdf of Songs & Announcements.

1 John 1:5-2:2

Mark Acuff

It’s big news this week about how the Secret Service advance team for the President, along with some military folks, spent their advance time with prostitutes in Cartagena, Columbia.

A church home page should probably be above mentioning something so sordid, but it leads to a confession.

My own.

I wasn’t shocked.

I don’t think that I’m particularly negative or cynical. What concerns me is that I’ve grown accustomed to a dark world, where apparently “good people” do some really bad things.

At the Gathering Church this Sunday we are on the front end of a new study in 1 John. This letter uses the simplest language to draw contrast between the things that help people experience God and the things that destroy us.

Light – Darkness

Truth – Lies

Love – Hate

Of God – Of The Devil

I have to admit, I’ve never been much of a fan of 1 John, except for a few select verses that we all love. (Gee, my second confession in this post.) Its style is repetitive, like a NASCAR race, round and round. But as I study it, the power of this letter comes out.

For instance, it challenges us to understand what authentic experience with God really looks like. John explains why there are Christians who aren’t really Christians at all.

What is life with God really like? This series, Included: Participating in the Life of God, will help us know the reality of God.

This week – Light: The Way of Honesty, 1 John 1:5-2:2.

This Week’s Scripture Passage:

This is the message that we have heard from him and announce to you:

 

“God is light and there is no darkness in him at all.”

 

If we claim, “We have fellowship with him,” and live in the darkness, we are lying and do not act truthfully.  But if we live in the light in the same way as he is in the light, we have fellowship with each other, and the blood of Jesus, his Son, cleanses us from every sin.

 

If we claim, “We don’t

have any sin,” we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us.  But if we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and cleanse us from everything we’ve done wrong.

 

If we claim, “We have never sinned,” we make him a liar and his word is not in us.

 

My little children, I’m writing these things to you so that you don’t sin. But if you do sin, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous one.  He is God’s way of dealing with our sins, not only ours but the sins of the whole world.

1 John 1:5-2:2 (Common English Bible)

Listen to the Spotify playlist: Sunday 4/22 at the Gathering Church.

View the .pdf of Songs & Announcements.

The cost of the event is FREE.

As you know, immigration is discussed often in our society. It will be a more frequent topic for discussion as we navigate our way through this election year. World Relief is an amazing organization showing love in relational ways to refugees and immigrants as well as standing against human trafficking.

Here is a video of the speaker for the event, Matt Soerens:

I am really looking forward to hearing Matt speak! I hope you’ll plan to attend.

-Amy Crump

1 John 1:1-4

Mark Acuff

I don’t think that any of us ever forgets it.

The first time we ride a bike without training wheels.

Maybe it was the combination of mild terror and desperate pedaling.

For me it was the transformation.

No one running behind me, holding onto the seat. No rattling training wheels slowing me down.

To this day when I ride a bike the first minutes are like magic again and I can’t believe I’m getting to do it.

The new ease and freedom of something previously unknown becoming absolutely familiar. It’s great.

This Sunday I begin a new message series at the Gathering Church: Included: Participating in God’s Life. 1 John is going to be the guide.

As I prepare I have realized that in many ways I’m still using training wheels when it comes to God. That realization comes from a hint that there is a bike-riding potential with God that is greater than we imagine.

John, in this letter, makes it clear that Christ coming to this world was so that people might be included in God’s life, that people might experience the life and joy that God has, that God enjoys with His Son, that the first followers experienced and now want to share.

It’s easy to reduce the Christian life to believing the right things and behaving the right way, having the right social views. Those things are training wheels. They don’t represent bike-riding at all. No wonder the Christian life sometimes looks so irrelevant or unattractive. It’s way too narrow and controlling.

Not enough bike-riders having a blast experiencing God’s life.

This Sunday begins with 1 John 1:1-4.

We announce to you what existed from the beginning, what we have heard, what we have seen with our eyes, what we have seen and our hands handled, about the word of life.

The life was revealed, and we have seen, and we testify and announce to you the eternal life that was with the Father and was revealed to us.

What we have seen and heard, we also announce it to you so that you can have fellowship with us. Our fellowship is with the Father and with his Son, Jesus Christ.

We are writing these things so that our joy can be complete.

 

1 John 1:1-4 (Common English Bible)

Listen to the Spotify playlist: Sunday 4/15 at the Gathering Church.

View the .pdf of Songs & Announcements.

When the gospel is presented with strength rather than vulnerability, it becomes poison.

-Mark Acuff on Easter Sunday at the Gathering Church

Several people have asked about the Brene Brown talk that Mark mentioned on Easter.  Here is a link to play that TED talk:

John 20:1-18

Mark Acuff

How strange it is that we have this big celebration about someone who lived over two thousand years ago in a culture totally alien to us.

That people still today claim to be his followers.

That people still today claim that this person changed their life.

How is it that anyone is still talking about Jesus?

The tomb was empty.

“He is risen.”

What’s the most compelling evidence that it was true?

The change in the lives of the followers of Jesus and those who would believe their message.

This Sunday the Gathering Church will have a great celebration of the resurrection life of Jesus Christ. It’s a life we not only celebrate, but a life we experience.

Invite someone to share the celebration with you.

They will be glad you did.

Oh, yeah. The kids will have an Easter Egg Hung. 1,000 eggs. So, bring a bunch of kids.

Early in the morning of the first day of the week, while it was still dark, Mary Magdalene came to the tomb and saw that the stone had been taken away from the tomb.  She ran to Simon Peter and the other disciple, the one whom Jesus loved, and said, “They have taken the Lord from the tomb, and we don’t know where they’ve put him.”

 

Peter and the other disciple left to go to the tomb.  They were running together, but the other disciple ran faster than Peter and was the first to arrive at the tomb.  Bending down to take a look, he saw the linen cloths lying there, but he didn’t go in.  Following him, Simon Peter entered the tomb and saw the linen cloths lying there.  He also saw the face cloth that had been on Jesus’ head. It wasn’t with the other clothes but was folded up in its own place.  Then the other disciple, the one who arrived at the tomb first, also went inside. He saw and believed.

 

They didn’t yet understand the scripture that Jesus must rise from the dead.  Then the disciples returned to the place where they were staying.

 

Mary stood outside near the tomb, crying. As she cried, she bent down to look into the tomb.  She saw two angels dressed in white, seated where the body of Jesus had been, one at the head and one at the foot.  The angels asked her, “Woman, why are you crying?”

 

She replied, “They have taken away my Lord, and I don’t know where they’ve put him.”  As soon as she had said this, she turned around and saw Jesus standing there, but she didn’t know it was Jesus.

 

Jesus said to her, “Woman, why are you crying? Who are you looking for?”

 

Thinking he was the gardener, she replied, “Sir, if you have carried him away, tell me where you have put him and I will get him.”

 

Jesus said to her, “Mary.”  She turned and said to him in Aramaic, “Rabbouni” (which means Teacher).

 

Jesus said to her, “Don’t hold on to me, for I haven’t yet gone up to my Father. Go to my brothers and sisters and tell them, ‘I’m going up to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God.’”

 

Mary Magdalene left and announced to the disciples, “I’ve seen the Lord.” Then she told them what he said to her.

 

John 20:1-18 (Common English Bible)

Listen to the Spotify playlist: Easter Sunday at the Gathering Church.

View the .pdf of Songs & Announcements.

The earth trembled; its foundations

shook like silt; the sun, chagrined,

fled the scene, and every mundane

element scattered in retreat. The day

became the night: for light could not endure

the image of the Master hanging on a tree.

All creation was astonished, perplexed

and stammering, What new mystery is this?

The Judge is judged, and yet He holds his peace;

the Invisible One is utterly exposed, and yet

is not ashamed; the Incomprehensible is grasped,

and will not turn indignant; the Immensity

is circumscribed, and acquiesces; the absolutely

Unattainable suffers, and yet does not avenge;

the Immortal dies, and utters not a word;

the Celestial is pressed into the earthen grave,

and He endures! What new mystery is this?

The whole creation, I say, was astonished;

but, when our Lord stood up in Hades—

trampling death underfoot, subduing

the strong one, setting every captive free—

then all creation saw clearly that for its sake

the Judge was condemned, et cetera.

For our Lord, even when He deigned

to be born, was condemned in order

that He might show mercy, was bound

that He might loose, was seized

that He might release, suffered

that He might show compassion, died

that He might give life, was laid in the grave

that He might rise, might raise.

-Scott Cairns, How It Was

John 18-19

Good Friday with the Gathering Church Playlist

View the .pdf of Songs & Announcements.

John 12:12-26

Mark Acuff

If you won the New York Mega Bucks Lottery this weekend. It’s up to $540 million and the frenzy to buy tickets is one of the lead stories of the day.

Imagining what you would do with all that money could identify some of your strongest dreams. What would most change about you? Would anything change about the world in which you live?

Or maybe you don’t win the lottery but you’re the highest earning hedge fund manager in the country. You know how much you made last year?

$3.9 billion.

That’s not what your company earned, that’s what your personal income was. Your company earned more than Google, Yahoo, Amazon, and eBay combined.

What would be your best goal?

This Sunday begins the week leading up to Easter, Holy Week. Christians celebrate Jesus’ triumphant entry into Jerusalem. After three years of preparation Jesus arrives for the Passover Feast as the big story.

He’s got Jerusalem right where he wants it. Even stages his entry to match the highest expectations the Jews could have.

In John 12:12-26 Jesus clarifies his ‘dream’.

What will he do when he has it all?

What’s his best goal?

His answer teaches us what is essential about a best goal.

Welcome to Holy Week this Sunday.

The next day the great crowd that had come for the festival heard that Jesus was coming to Jerusalem.  They took palm branches and went out to meet him. They shouted,

“Hosanna! Blessings on the one who comes in the name of the Lord!  Blessings on the king of Israel!”

Jesus found a young donkey and sat on it, just as it is written, Don’t be afraid, Daughter Zion.  Look! Your king is coming, sitting on a donkey’s colt.

His disciples didn’t understand these things at first. After he was glorified, they remembered that these things had been written about him and that they had done these things to him.

The crowd who had been with him when he called Lazarus out of the tomb and raised him from the dead were testifying about him.  That’s why the crowd came to meet him, because they had heard about this miraculous sign that he had done.

Therefore, the Pharisees said to each other, “See! You’ve accomplished nothing! Look! The whole world is following him!”

Some Greeks were among those who had come up to worship at the festival.  They came to Philip, who was from Bethsaida in Galilee, and made a request, “Sir, we want to see Jesus.”  Philip told Andrew, and Andrew and Philip told Jesus.

Jesus replied, “The time has come for the Human One to be glorified.  I assure you that unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it can only be a single seed. But if it dies, it bears much fruit.  Those who love their lives will lose them, and those who hate their lives in this world will keep them forever.  Whoever serves me must follow me. Wherever I am, there my servant will also be. My Father will honor whoever serves me.

 

John 12:12-26 (Common English Bible)

Listen to the Spotify playlist: Sunday 4/1 at the Gathering Church.

View the .pdf of Songs & Announcements.

Romans 11:33-12:2

Mark Acuff

She had helped me get my car inspected. It was way overdue and afterwards required going to the DMV to get the registration. And she did that.

Who’s not grateful when someone goes to the DMV for you?

It wasn’t hard.

Have you ever noticed how gratefulness makes us better people? (I wish my gratefulness wasn’t a surprise to my wife.)

This Sunday from Romans 11:33-12:2 I get to teach about how we best respond to what God has done for us. Completing the First Things First message series about worshipping God I come to the passage that describes the essence of worship.

Hint: It changes us in the best ways.

How is it that the change people can experience can actually match how great is the cause of that change?

This Sunday.

God’s riches, wisdom, and knowledge are so deep! They are as mysterious as his judgments, and they are as hard to track as his paths!

 

Who has known the Lord’s mind?
Or who has been his mentor?
Or who has given him a gift
and has been paid back by him?
All things are from him and through him and for him.
May the glory be to him forever. Amen.

 

So, brothers and sisters, because of God’s mercies, I encourage you to present your bodies as a living sacrifice that is holy and pleasing to God. This is your appropriate priestly service.  Don’t be conformed to the patterns of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your minds so that you can figure out what God’s will is—what is good and pleasing and mature.

 

Romans 11:33-12:2 (Common English Bible)

Listen to the Spotify playlist: Sunday 3/25 at the Gathering Church.

View the .pdf of Songs & Announcements.

Romans 8:28-39

Mark Acuff

It was a simple question I asked at the end of a sermon a number of years ago.

And it troubled Peter the next week. He had just started attending the church. In his mid-fifties he had never had any use for church or a belief in God, but a co-worker whom he respected had invited him.

He made an appointment with me and when I welcomed him to my office I noticed that he looked as comfortable as someone needing a root canal.

If there really was a God was there also a way to truly know that God was for us?

Answering that question, Peter suspected could change maybe everything he thought about life.

This Sunday at the Gathering Church I get to teach from one of the most powerful passages in the Bible, Romans 8:29-39. Continuing the First Things First message series about centering our lives in an authentic worship of God I get to face a particular challenge. How can we really love and honor God when things aren’t going so well.

Without doubt we are at our best when we can get a sense of God’s perspective on what’s happening to us.

This Sunday God’s perspective shows up huge.

And I can’t wait to tell you about it.

We know that God works all things together for good for the ones who love God, for those who are called according to his purpose.  We know this because God knew them in advance, and he decided in advance that they would be conformed to the image of his Son. That way his Son would be the first of many brothers and sisters.  Those who God decided in advance would be conformed to his Son, he also called. Those whom he called, he also made righteous. Those whom he made righteous, he also glorified.

 

So what are we going to say about these things? If God is for us, who is against us?  He didn’t spare his own Son but gave him up for us all. Won’t he also freely give us all things with him?

 

Who will bring a charge against God’s elect people? It is God who acquits them.  Who is going to convict them? It is Christ Jesus who died, even more, who was raised, and who also is at God’s right side. It is Christ Jesus who also pleads our case for us.

 

Who will separate us from Christ’s love? Will we be separated by trouble, or distress, or harassment, or famine, or nakedness, or danger, or sword?  As it is written,

We are being put to death all day long for your sake.
We are treated like sheep for slaughter.

 

But in all these things we win a sweeping victory through the one who loved us.  I’m convinced that nothing can separate us from God’s love in Christ Jesus our Lord: not death or life, not angels or rulers, not present things or future things, not powers or height or depth, or any other thing that is created.

Romans 8:28-39 (Common English Bible)

Listen to the Spotify playlist: Sunday 3/18 at the Gathering Church

View the .pdf of Songs & Announcements.

Romans 8:14-27

Chris Breslin

DON’T FORGET TO SPRING FORWARD SATURDAY NIGHT!

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All who are led by God’s Spirit are God’s sons and daughters.  You didn’t receive a spirit of slavery to lead you back again into fear, but you received a Spirit that shows you are adopted as his children. With this Spirit, we cry, “Abba, Father.”  The same Spirit agrees with our spirit, that we are God’s children.  But if we are children, we are also heirs. We are God’s heirs and fellow heirs with Christ, if we really suffer with him so that we can also be glorified with him.

 

I believe that the present suffering is nothing compared to the coming glory that is going to be revealed to us.  The whole creation waits breathless with anticipation for the revelation of God’s sons and daughters.  Creation was subjected to frustration, not by its own choice—it was the choice of the one who subjected it—but in the hope that the creation itself will be set free from slavery to decay and brought into the glorious freedom of God’s children.  We know that the whole creation is groaning together and suffering labor pains up until now.  And it’s not only the creation. We ourselves who have the Spirit as the first crop of the harvest also groan inside as we wait to be adopted and for our bodies to be set free.  We were saved in hope. If we see what we hope for, that isn’t hope. Who hopes for what they already see?  But if we hope for what we don’t see, we wait for it with patience.

 

In the same way, the Spirit comes to help our weakness. We don’t know what we should pray, but the Spirit himself pleads our case with unexpressed groans.  The one who searches hearts knows how the Spirit thinks, because he pleads for the saints, consistent with God’s will.

Romans 8:14-27 (Common English Bible)

This Week’s Music: Songs & Announcements

Romans 5:1-11

Mark Acuff

Testimony- Susie Bird

It’s impossible to experience God unless you have a sense of irony. There’s no chance of even coming close to understanding Jesus or the Gospel unless you can get irony.

You’ll never have the sense of humor for it, for one thing. You will always take yourself too seriously. You’ll always be trying too hard. You’ll always be like the Ted Baxter character in Caddyshack, positioning yourself for things that don’t matter and are absurd.

It’s impossible to understand what God has done for us without knowing how ridiculously ironic it is.

This Sunday at the Gathering Church we will look at one of the clearest descriptions of irony. Found in Romans 5:1-11 the apostle Paul cannot hardly fathom the result of God’s love.

It is so unexpected.

It makes no sense.

People whom by their failures and constant attempts to live for the wrong things and should be rejected by God become the focus of his greatest act of love.

People who royally mess up become the guests of honor to God’s celebration.

People who should have nothing when it comes to God suddenly have everything – peace, grace, joy, purpose and everything else one can imagine.

As we continue the message series, First Things First, a look at what it means to worship God we will see why the first followers of Jesus were marked by a joy that made no sense.

They were gripped by irony.

Therefore, since we have been made righteous through his faithfulness combined with our faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ.  We have access by faith into this grace in which we stand through him, and we boast in the hope of God’s glory.  But not only that!  We even take pride in our problems, because we know that trouble produces endurance, endurance produces character, and character produces hope.  This hope doesn’t put us to shame, because the love of God has been poured out in our hearts through the Holy Spirit, who has been given to us.

 

While we were still weak, at the right moment, Christ died for ungodly people.  It isn’t often that someone will die for a righteous person, though maybe someone might dare to die for a good person.  But God shows his love for us, because while we were still sinners Christ died for us.  So, now that we have been made righteous by his blood, we can be even more certain that we will be saved from God’s wrath through him.  If we were reconciled to God through the death of his Son while we were still enemies, now that we have been reconciled, how much more certain is it that we will be saved by his life?  And not only that: we even take pride in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, the one through whom we now have a restored relationship with God.

Romans 5:1-11 (Common English Bible)

This Week’s Music: Songs & Announcements

Romans 3:21-26

Mark Acuff

A powerful word.

Life-changing really.

Too good to believe.

Especially when attached to the word justified.

Think for a moment how much energy you have spent this week trying to justify yourself in some way or another.

Not you? (Gotcha. To even think that thought is to attempt to justify yourself.)

Right now you might be anticipating some conversations where you will have to justify yourself. Your plans for the weekend. Your point of view in a work discussion. Why you feel the way you do about a certain situation.

Our drive to justify ourselves is so constant and normal that it is imperceptible. It’s the default. It goes into overdrive whenever we are threatened, in moments of conflict.

But it never works with God. Even if you try by being as spiritual a person as you can be.

If you think you can justify yourself, it makes you both prideful and judgmental towards the losers who can’t. Sure, a lot of church work and ministry is fueled by people trying to justify themselves.

You could actually justify yourself if everything in your life was a perfect match with what God had in mind for you, if every relationship, every thought and attitude, every action matched God’s glory.

To be justified is to be totally righteous – everything right.

This Sunday at the Gathering Church we will look at Romans 3:21-26, one of the clearest descriptions of what God has done in Jesus Christ to deal with our falling short of the life he intended.

And it says that he justified us freely.

Imagine the stress that would be shed from our lives if that truth got hold of us. Imagine the freedom to enjoy God and really love others if we didn’t have to prove ourselves all the time.

Let’s imagine it this Sunday.

But now God’s righteousness has been revealed apart from the Law, which is confirmed by the Law and the Prophets.  God’s righteousness comes through the faithfulness of Jesus Christ for all who have faith in him. There’s no distinction.  All have sinned and fall short of God’s glory, but all are treated as righteous freely by his grace because of a ransom that was paid by Christ Jesus.  Through his faithfulness, God displayed Jesus as the place of sacrifice where mercy is found by means of his blood. He did this to demonstrate his righteousness in passing over sins that happened before, during the time of God’s patient tolerance. He also did this to demonstrate that he is righteous in the present time, and to treat the one who has faith in Jesus as righteous.

Romans 3:21-26 (Common English Bible)

This Week’s Music: Songs & Announcements

Romans 1:14-25

Mark Acuff

Every diet assumes that, right?

I wonder if there’s ever been a more diet-obsessed and overweight culture as ours?

Have you seen the new Alec Baldwin? Back to his slimmer version of years past. No more sugar he says. Even Charles Barkley is on the bandwagon. A friend of mine lost twenty pounds recently after a physical indicted that he had become pre-diabetic. What he was eating was threatening his health.

A more serious issue?

You are what you worship.

Oops. Was that what my son, Jon calls a ‘Jesus-juke,’ an abrupt shift to spiritual talk ? Maybe, but not entirely surprising in a church blog.

This Sunday at the Gathering Church we will look at what the Bible defines as the most critical issue of human experience: how we respond to the incredible God who is. In Romans 1:14:25 it describes that response as worship.

And it says that everyone is worshipping in one way or another. That is, spending their life, their energies, their affections and devotions on something. You will never meet anyone who is not worshipping something. Even atheists and agnostics are serving something or someone.

Some passages in the Bible give us a clear look at the world that God imagines.

This is one of them.

It first gives us a clear look at the world that is.

In this message series, First Things First, we align our lives with what works for God. And that’s only always good.

I have a responsibility both to Greeks and to those who don’t speak Greek, both to the wise and to the foolish.
God’s righteousness is revealed

That’s why I’m ready to preach the gospel also to you who are in Rome.  I’m not ashamed of the gospel: it is God’s own power for salvation to all who have faith in God, to the Jew first and also to the Greek.  God’s righteousness is being revealed in the gospel, from faithfulness for faith, as it is written, The righteous person will live by faith.
Gentiles are without excuse

God’s wrath is being revealed from heaven against all the ungodly behavior and the injustice of human beings who silence the truth with injustice.  This is because what is known about God should be plain to them because God made it plain to them.  Ever since the creation of the world, God’s invisible qualities—God’s eternal power and divine nature—have been clearly seen, because they are understood through the things God has made.  So humans are without excuse.  Although they knew God, they didn’t honor God as God or thank him.  Instead, their reasoning became pointless, and their foolish hearts were darkened.  While they were claiming to be wise, they made fools of themselves.  They exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images that look like mortal humans: birds, animals, and reptiles.  So God abandoned them to their hearts’ desires, which led to the moral corruption of degrading their own bodies with each other.  They traded God’s truth for a lie, and they worshipped and served the creation instead of the creator, who is blessed forever.

Amen.

-Romans 1:14-25 (Common English Bible)

THIS WEEK’S MUSIC

Psalm 100

Mark Acuff

What’s the best change that could happen in your life?

I don’t even have to know you but I can know what the best change would be?

I know what would make you the very best version of who you could be.

I know what would make you the best person for your family, for your job, for your neighborhood, for every environment that needs you to be the best person you could be.

And, by the way, it would give you the best shot at being content and becoming a person of love, joy and peace.

The change?

To grow your ability to worship God.

That is, learning how to love, trust, adore, enjoy and honor the God who made us and has loved us through Jesus.

Nothing aligns us better to what we were made to be than worshipping God.

This Sunday at the Gathering Church we will begin a new message series, First Things First with a focus on growing our ability to worship God.  The book of Romans is going to be our guide, but we will introduce the series this Sunday from Psalm 100 which gives a great picture of the world that God imagines.

This series will not be about how to behave in a church service (although I may have to bust out a dance move before it’s over).  It’s going to be about how we best experience God.

It begins this Sunday.