Dear Family at Christ Community,

     This Sunday we will begin our new sermon series “Take Up Your Cross and Follow Jesus: Forgiveness, Repentance, Suffering and Joy.” As part of our worship in Luke 9:23-27, we will seek nourishment from the Lord’s Table to help us grow as Jesus’s disciples who daily mortify our self-centeredness and take up our crosses in love and service to others as we follow Him. Just as Jesus depended on the power of the Holy Spirit through the means of grace and loving support of others to accomplish His redemptive mission, so too must we receive these helps to follow Him. This process of becoming more like Jesus will prove costly and painful at times as the cross of death precedes the crown of glory, so we’ll need all the help we can get!

In preparation for the Lord’s Table, please consider Harold L. Senkbeil’s encouragement from The Care of Souls: Cultivating a Pastor’s Heart:

“Jesus found joy in doing his Father’s will because it was love in action…. Love and joy are inseparably bound together in the inscrutable will of God. The Father’s love in action sent Jesus through first suffering and shame, and only then to glory. The Father’s love brought him pain and death, but both were joy for Jesus because he confidently knew he was doing the Father’s loving will. First the cross and then the crown; that’s the way it works in God’s economy. And that’s the way it will work for you. Your joy will come as you see God’s love in action through you….”

     Ask the Holy Spirit to help you see how you are unwilling to give of yourself for someone else’s true good so that you may receive forgiveness in Jesus and bear fruits in keeping with repentance. Ask the Holy Spirit to also help you experience joy through your love and service to others in union with Christ. Come desiring to grow more like Christ as His disciples!

In Christ,
Cameron