Dear Family at Christ Community,

     We will begin the Easter Season with Zephaniah 1:1-3, a sobering word to us as God’s people who continue to struggle with sin. We will have the opportunity to respond by accepting Christ’s invitation to His table to remind us of who and whose we are as His beloved. This pattern in worship reflects the redemptive movement that permeates God’s Word and the lives of God’s people: a warning to repentance, judgment to redemption, death to resurrected life!  In Matthew Henry’s Commentary on the Whole Bible, Vol. 4, he writes of the solemn nature and gracious purpose of this pattern:

“From first to last (God’s) design was not to drive the people to despair, but to drive them to God and to their duty—not to frighten them out of their wits, but to frighten them out of their sins.”

     Join me in praying for the ears to hear God’s sobering words to us through His prophet Zephaniah and for the tender hearts to respond to God’s mercy and grace in repentance and praise. May the broken bread remind us of sin’s gravity and the shameful cost Jesus so willingly paid on our behalf for the joy of our redemption set before Him! From the overflowing cup, may we be empowered to display our resurrected newness of life for God’s glory, our joy, and the eternal lives of those in our spheres of influence!  Come to worship on Sunday humble, expectant, and joyful because of God’s love for us so gloriously displayed through Jesus!

In Christ,
Cameron