Dear Family at Christ Community,

     This Sunday we will wrestle with Paul’s example in 2 Corinthians 12:1-10 of offering up his weaknesses and sufferings to display the strength of Christ. As part of our worship, we will confess in coming to the Lord’s Table that we aren’t strong enough to save ourselves. We will also confess that we can’t endure the weaknesses and sufferings of life in a fallen world without Jesus’s ongoing sustaining grace. This will help turn our eyes from the things of the earth to look to Christ in the hope of His present reign and His promised return to wipe away every tear and make all things new. The broken bread reminds us of Jesus’s suffering in our place declaring once again God’s great love for us. The overflowing cup reveals again Jesus’s lavish generosity in both forgiveness and the power of the resurrection to make us strong in our weakness.

     Please consider Timothy Keller’s wisdom about suffering from Walking with God Through Pain and Suffering to help you prepare for the Lord’s Table:

“…we must look at suffering—whatever the proximate causes—as primarily a way to know God better, as an opening for serving, resembling, and drawing near to him as never before. It is only if we make God’s glory primary in suffering that it will achieve our own. And yet sorrows and difficulties can do just that. We are called not to waste our sorrows but to grow through them into grace and glory.”

     Pray for the Holy Spirit to guide you through your weakness to God Himself in Christ. Ask the Spirit to show you how to serve others with and through your sufferings that God be glorified and others blessed.

In Christ,
Cameron