Safe Harbor Online

This week’s sermon continued in Romans chapter 4, and Luke preached the Gospel.  I know there are times in our lives, whether in the past or as it continues to be a struggle, where we feel that we must do more “good” or do less “bad” in order to compensate for something we have done (or failed to do) morally.  This may manifest in different forms from person to person and from time to time.  It may be that you lied to your boss to cover yourself, so you do something nice like take a co-worker out to lunch to feel better about yourself.  Maybe you look a little too desirously at a man or woman who is not your spouse and so you read an extra chapter in your Bible to make up for it.  It may be that, for some people, this system of checks and balances is more than an occasional battle with feeling better about yourself.  It may be that for you, this feeling means you are “OK” with God only when you do good “Christian” things.  Or  maybe that you are “OK” with God because you attend a church service regularly.  Maybe because you think you aren’t as bad as some people, being “OK” is fundamental to how you view your interaction with God and His Church.

The good news that God shows us in His word in Romans 4 is that you are not “in with” according to what you do or do not do, but you are “in with” God ONLY according to your faith in Christ’s atoning sacrifice.  You can’t be saved by being a member at any church, or by being part of a particular denomination, or by observing certain religious practices.  You are saved only by FAITH.  This idea of salvation by grace through faith is the most fundamental of all truth.  I wonder if any of us are willing to share our testimony of when and how we realized that we must trust God for our salvation, or of a time when you had to be reminded of this again after salvation (like many of the churches that Paul wrote to like Galatians)?

Please feel free to share your story here that our faith may be mutually encouraged.

Grace & Peace,
Paul

This past Sunday, Pastor Luke continued the sermon series on the book of Romans.  We finished chapter 1 and will be moving to chapter 2 next week.  This week, the focus was on the reality of our “ungodliness—the rejection of God and His knowledge,” our “unrighteousness—our wrongful interaction with others,” and how when we lose our consciousness of sin we have lost our consciousness of God.  Luke also showed some of the ways these realities are expressed in our lives. 
As we continue through this series, my prayer for us is that we will be unfamiliar with this gospel message, meaning that we will not pass it by with a cavalier attitude that exclaims, “I already know this and have experienced it.”  Rather, we will approach this gospel with a renewed consciousness of our great sin and also a renewed consciousness of our great LORD and His great grace - the grace we receive through faith.  Let us not only continue to preach the gospel to each other but let us also RECEIVE this gospel from each other. 

I encourage all of us this week to do three things: 

1.) Read the first chapter of Romans multiple times, quickly at first and then more slowly each time you read it allowing yourself to meditate on it.
2.) Let’s share our salvation testimony with each other and with someone outside of our congregation. 
3.) Let’s allow ourselves to become conscious of the sin in our lives again and conscious of God’s presence as well.  If you would like to, you can share your testimony here on this blog as well.  Feel free to share the ways you are becoming conscious of sin or of God in your life this week.  I will share my story about this tomorrow.  You can also share your reflections on Romans 1 as well.
 
Grace and peace,
Paul

Hey Safe Harbor,

On Sunday, Luke began sharing from Romans 1—the gospel is dangerous (”dynomite!!!”).  It is this unsafe yet good news that reveals the “rightness” of God and it is “by faith to faith.”  Most of us are personally familiar with how our salvation is ‘by faith’ in that it begins with and by faith, but we can all find ourselves in a place where we forget that it is also to faith or continued on or sustained in faith.  Living in this world causes many things to come against us, and that makes it hard to continue on by faith—we get hurt (by other people, friends, family, the Church, etc.), we want to keep control (to be able to measure and quantify our spirituality), or we are pressured to perform for others (this being in an attempt for them to measure or quantify our spirituality).

This “dangerous” gospel does not let us keep control.  It is our faith in this unsafe and good God that begins and continues this.  While we cannot work to obtain or sustain what faith alone provides us, we can and do demonstrate our faith in our actions (James 2).  I believe that we all need to be reminded of the steps of faith that we have taken and also encouraged to step out in faith again.

Today (Monday) through Wednesday, I would like you to feel free to share some of the times that you have put your faith in action (not attempts to earn anything, but living proof of the inner reality).   By doing this, we are celebrating what God has accomplished in us, encouraging one another to continue, and overcoming by the word of our testimony!  You can feel free to be real but don’t share any details that your are not comfortable sharing on the internet…we can get more personal in person.  Also, please respond to each other’s posts! We will finish the week (Wednesday through Friday) by sharing ways we believe God is challenging us to step out in faith again to continue in faith!

Peace,
Paul