Ready, Set, Go!

What are the top 10 New Year’s Resolutions??
10. Be more spiritual
9. Get out of debt
8. Be more organized
7. Spend less time on the internet
6. spend more time with the family
5. be a better person
4. Quit drinking
3. Quit smoking
2. Exercise
1. Lose weight

Here’s the problem with resolutions…. I will. It really is about willing things into existence. Some of us good at will power for a day, a week, a month, 6 weeks – they say it takes that long to form a habit and some make it through the whole year. However, for the Christ follower, the Christ life has more to do with being than with doing. It is more about living in the mystery of the Christ life than trying to will myself to be more spiritual. Why is it that the people who are trying to force you to live by their rules always look like they’ve been sucking on a pickle? It is a constant tension for the Christ follower to learn the ‘unforced rhythms of grace’ as Eugene Peterson paraphrases in Matthew 11:28
"Are you tired? Worn out? Burned out on religion? Come to me. Get away with me and you'll recover your life. I'll show you how to take a real rest. Walk with me and work with me—watch how I do it. Learn the unforced rhythms of grace. I won't lay anything heavy or ill-fitting on you. Keep company with me and you'll learn to live freely and lightly."
The problem is that living that kind of life is hard to measure externally. We can easily tick off the boxes if we were to check whether we read our Bible for the day, prayed prayers of supplication, interceding for others, did a kind act of service. However God wants to stretch us beyond a performance based relationship where the way that we live and respond is a natural outflow of His life in us. It is for this realization that I am drawn to Colossians 3 because of the way that this passage of Scripture is set up.
Get READY! v1
Since, then, you have been raised with Christ v1
I was ‘soaking in’ a song on Friday by Hillsong on this very subject. The premise of the song was the amazing revelation that the same power that raised Christ from the dead flows through me. We talk about how we want to begin a new year, bring in a new perspective. Start on your knees and renew yourself –spirit, body and mind with this same thought that gripped Paul. I am raised with Christ! I am raised with Christ! I am raised with Christ! The place that I belong is in His fullness, being made complete in Him, not in the valley of defeat and despair. It lights my day, it renews my mind. It needs to energize me beyond belief.
So, instead of putting up a good fight with sinful habits, getting worn out in the process and finally succumbing when tired; choose to seek God’s face for a deeper revelation of what it means to be ‘raised with Christ’. Take your eyes off your weakness and put them on the exalted position of Christ.
As one writer shares:
You are not a sinner struggling to get free from the tight grip of sin but an ‘heir with Christ’, raised up together with him with sin trying to pull you down.
Learn to look down at sin not up at it.
The most important things about us are invisible. No one can really identify the things that are really affecting us by just looking at us. They cannot ascertain the critical issues that really determine us and who we are from this vantage point. The realization that you are raised with Christ is the most valuable, most important invisible truth about you as a follower of Christ….stop reading ahead, let this sink in!
We are united with Jesus Christ. We have died and have been raised with Christ and our lives are hidden with him in God. These realities cannot be proved by how you look; nothing you can measure, touch, and show other people. Your very connection with Jesus in this way is the greatest truth imaginable. However you have to choose to believe it and act on it because it can’t be seen. You want to live in freedom, believe that Jesus has set you free. Appropriate the riches of your position. Stop living like a slave to sin when God has told you that you are an instrument of righteousness! (parallel passage – Romans 6)
GET SET! v1b-4
set your hearts on things above, where Christ is seated at the right hand of God.v1
The heart is the seat of affections. We need to position ourselves so that we are ready to receive. It is a matter of appetite, what am I really hungry for.
Have I come to the ‘Rolling Stones’ revelation in my own life….’I can’t get no satisfaction.’ Have I really experienced the joy of the Lord as my strength?
Or is the U2 reality…’I still haven’t found what I’m looking for’ Am I just flirting with my affections for the King or does He truly have all of me. I can’t experience all of Him until I have fully surrendered all of me. That is the only way that it works. You have as much of God as you want for they that hunger and thirst after righteousness shall be filled!!
Set your minds on things above, not on earthly things. For you died, and your life is now hidden with Christ in God. When Christ, who is your life, appears, then you also will appear with him in glory. V2-4
Once you have accepted your spiritual position in Christ and your heart is Christ’s home and it is more than just a cliché , the next place to work on is your mindset. You need to understand the nature of sin with your intellect – your mind.
Know this:
You are not your habits. The goal of lust is to own you and ultimately destroy you. It will never give up until it has reached that goal. Sin will entice you, ‘just do it one more time’ and nothing is further from the truth. Sin wants to be your master and it will not give up. Only your death will satisfy the lust of sin. It is a thief and it robs you of time, community and real relationships. Sin never delivers on its promises. Sin takes real needs and pushes you to fulfill them in illegitimate ways.
Arm yourself with this mindset: If there is a death that needs to take place, it might as well be my death in Christ!
As we really take hold of the diminished power of sin in our life. Remember the knee jerk reaction between sinful attitude and sinful response has been broken. We are no longer slaves to sin, its power has been broken over us.
Awareness is huge here as we go through this list of sins, they are all designed to lure you away from your heavenly position in Christ.
It is a training process of your mind to learn to hate the consequences of sin despite the temporary pleasures it presents. Evil, wrong thinking always gives birth to evil, wrong living. If we are to live well, we have to align our thinking and keep renewing our minds, fill it with godly truth, soak its transforming power into our lives.
Renewing the mind is a journey; don’t get discouraged at the first sign of defeat.
If you happen to get knocked down by the lure of sin and we all do, never accept the lie that you are now back under its control. You are not and you never will be as long as you step back up to your ‘raised position in Christ’. Live in light of who you are, not the way that you feel after you just got beat up.
GO! Part 1 v5-11 out with the negative
Put to death, therefore, whatever belongs to your earthly nature: sexual immorality, impurity, lust, evil desires and greed, which is idolatry. Because of these, the wrath of God is coming. You used to walk in these ways, in the life you once lived. But now you must rid yourselves of all such things as these: anger, rage, malice, slander, and filthy language from your lips. Do not lie to each other, since you have taken off your old self with its practices and have put on the new self, which is being renewed in knowledge in the image of its Creator. Here there is no Greek or Jew, circumcised or uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave or free, but Christ is all, and is in all.
The two major categories here relate to sex and anger. In many ways these two areas are great areas of struggle for Christians because in many ways they are invisible battles that many face in shame and defeat because they are so hard to be really open and honest with. So most go the battle alone in silence and friends can’t help because nobody knows the truth. The breakthrough often comes in most people’s lives when they can find someone who will battle with them.
The first list consists of things that have to do with sexual sin: immorality, the general word for sexual sin, impurity, evil passion, evil desire, and greed. Greed is really the word covetousness and by its placement here would be best understood as coveting someone sexually or seeking for someone out of the bounds of marriage.

The question is, if you have died with Christ, have been raised with him, and are united with him, what right does impurity have to march around in your head, putting pressure on you to act in ways that are inappropriate? Or who gave that right to covetousness, wanting someone who is married to another, envying their relationship?
Paul makes it pretty clear that we are not into trying to just condition our external behaviors because they need a death blow! Even though you may feel unloved in this world, there is a lover of your soul. Even thought you may feel lonely, you are never alone
The second list has to do with the power of anger, hatred, malice or resentment of another to take over our lives. The human tendency is that we say the most hurtful things to the people closest to us and how do we hurt…by the things that we say. Paul call it filthy language and we could easily change that to ‘abusive language’. The question we need to keep asking is what right does hatred of another person have to fill my thought life? It doesn’t belong there because I’ve been raised with Christ.
Now having said all this, it is important to know that is a right place for both sex and anger in our lives. Sexual fulfillment is a gift from God within the bond of marriage and anger at the destructive nature of sin is always right.
Paul now moves on to the subject of lying and it is lying to each other about how we are really doing that usually gets us into this mess in the first place. Stop lying and start learning to be honest with someone you can trust. Start with God but then find someone with whom you can truly bear your soul.
GO! Part 2 v12-14 in with the positive
Therefore, as God's chosen people, holy and dearly loved, clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness and patience. Bear with each other and forgive whatever grievances you may have against one another. Forgive as the Lord forgave you. And over all these virtues put on love, which binds them all together in perfect unity.
Paul just can’t stray from the kind of person that he is. He keeps bringing us back to who we are as opposed to what you have done. He keeps calling us to live in light of who we are in Christ. It is our identity in Christ that makes us who we are.
You also can’t get away from the fact that all these virtues need to be discovered, developed and found in community. There is no place for loners in the body of Christ. There is something about worshipping and learning together that enables the truth of God to penetrate deeper and really take root in our lives.
The language is also important as we look at words like compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness and patience. We need to know that it is a process and this is not instantaneous, be patient with each other and celebrate the small victories as well. Your growth and ‘fast tracking’ on the grace of God must not lead to impatience with others because that is often what happens.
Finally love - put on love, we end with the positive… patience and forgiving grievances speaks of putting up with people; however love is the positive because it goes just bearing with others to the place of actively becoming a blessing in their lives.
The Takeaway
The secret to living out the Christian life is not to focus on 'stop sinning', but to live in the power of our resurrected life.
If our focus is always on looking out for sin, so we can avoid it, than we are only half living. If I was to tell you don’t think about a blue panda because thinking about a blue panda is sinful; so you tell yourself don’t think about a blue panda, but what would you think about… a blue panda! Exactly. In telling yourself “Don’t think about a blue panda, you have to think about a blue panda to know what you have to stay away from. All your energy becomes focussed on staying away from blue pandas. You don’t think about anything else.
In turning your attention to focusing on the power of our resurrected life and the newness that it brings has a simultaneous affect. We focus on being raised with Christ, set our hearts and mind on things above and in the process negate the negative downward pull of sin and sinful habits.
We have devotional journals here at Southside for you to take to do just that…set your mind on things above. The key to your ongoing success is to find a spiritual buddy who will keep you honest and open on the journey so in taking a journal you are committing to that as well. They don’t have to be working through the exact same devotional; however you need commit to finding someone who will track with you, share in the adventure with you.

Merry Christmas from the Ninabers!

Thank you so much Southside for the love offering that we received on Christmas Eve. WE have been richly blessed by you to be given such generous gifts that we know came from the heart. In addition to the money, we were blessed with gift certificates for some great date nights....just had one last night! Someone also gave us Leaf tickets...WOW! It is all appreciated so much so thank you from the bottom of our hearts. We know we are loved and it is an honor and privilege to serve here for over 7 years now!

Love in Jesus, Jack and Sharon

Don't Underestimate The Power Of One!

In every aspect of our lives, we are led to believe that bigger is better and it tends to easily flow over to the church. We think that more people, more money, bigger ministries, more programs will result in greater effectiveness at God’s work. We often think that God can do more when there is something going on that is grand and marvelous.

We also tend to think the same about smaller things. We act as God could not possibly be working in smaller churches or ministries, less programs or fewer ministries. So, the small complex gives us this feeling of insignificance or attitude of, ‘why bother’

The feeling of being small or insignificant trickles right down from the churches and ministries we are in to thinking it about ourselves. We may feel like, ‘man I really don’t have much to offer…I don’t have enough resources to make a significant difference’ but is bigger always better? No, not when it comes to spiritual things.

It was one year ago that I gave you a challenge to have ‘mustard seed’ faith and it is that time again except this year I want to look at the passage of Scripture in Luke’s gospel.

Luke 13:18-21

Even though the mustard seed is incredibly small, it grows to be one of the largest herbs in that part of the world. It typically grows to be about 12 feet!

The second illustration that is used here is that of God’s working is like yeast. Typically in that day they wouldn’t have dry yeast like we do today. They would take a very small lump of dough from the previous day’s making of bread and knead it into the flour mixture enough to influence the entire batch.

The most important part of the illustration is really missed in the NIV text as it states the amount of flour into which the small amount of yeast is mixed. The NIV states a large amount, but the Greek states more specifically three ‘satas’. Three satas equals 50 pounds of flour! That will feed 100 people and so we are talking about more than just daily bread. Jesus was talking about more than just a household baking situation. You see even that small original ball of yeast could have a huge influence.

So, you need some examples of how this gets played out in the Bible –

• When God wanted to create a new nation to call his own, he started with a nomadic man and a woman too old to conceive children
• When God wanted to lead his people out of slavery in Egypt, he used a man rejected by his own people and who spent most of his life tending sheep
• When God wanted someone to represent His people, His choice was a shepherd boy
• When Jesus wanted to feed 5000 people, he used a small boy’s sack lunch to do it
• When Jesus watched people give, He wasn’t impressed with the big donors, but by the widow’s penny
• When God came to earth in the form of man, he didn’t choose a rich and established family to be part of; He chose to be a baby born in a poor and seemingly unimportant family.

We tend to write things off a lot sooner than God. He uses small things to do BIG stuff. What we might think is too small or insignificant, God see as something that He wants to use for His purpose.

1 Corinthians 1:27-29

We need to remember what ministry means. In greek, the word for ministry is ‘diakonia’.

We see a couple examples of this verb usage in:

Luke 8:3 where it speaks of women who were helping the disciples to support (minister) them out of their own means.

2 Timothy 1:18 where Paul thanks those who helped (ministered) to him in Ephesus

The root word is ‘konis’ which means ‘dust’ or ‘grit’. In other words, ministry is dirty. It rolls up its sleeves and does things that look unimportant to the world. We get the word ministry in the English from the Latin root word for ‘small things’ as in miniscule. Ministry should and really does happen on an everyday basis. It is everyday service and it all adds up. Southside can grow a significant tree of service and of seemingly insignificant acts! We can do it and it is even better when we do it together. We need each other, support one another and spur each other on to greater Christlikeness. Hebrews 10:24,25!

In the book, Resident Aliens, we read:

By being the church, that is, by being something that the world is not and can never be, lacking the gift of faith and vision, which is ours in Christ. The confessing church seeks visible church, a place, clearly visible to the world in which people are faithful to their promises, love to their enemies, tell the truth, honor the poor, suffer for righteousness and thereby testify to the amazing community-creating power of God. The confessing church has no interest in withdrawing from the world… The church knows that the most credible form of witness is the actual creation of a living, breathing, visible community of faith.

I think often we are looking for the real big breakthrough ministry that is going to put our lives and for that matter our church on the map. So, what happens? Often we might hold back from really giving our all because we just can’t see how God could work through something that is so small or insignificant. Size because a discouragement and we need not let that happen. We need to be released from BIGNESS!! If God can grow a significant tree out of an insignificant seed, He can do the same with the small acts with you and me.

Last year we were involved in the Santa Claus Parade and we wanted to make Christ’s presence known and we did with our Happy BDAY Jesus float. There was one family in particular watching the parade at that time and when they saw our float, it resonated in their heart and they knew that was what it was all about. Since then they have become a part of our church and not only that but marveled as they went from watching last year to being an active participant this year.

How can blessing a person with a hot chocolate; singing songs to seniors; prayer walking through town next Sunday make a difference. It will in God’s eyes first an foremost and we ultimately serve an audience of one. Galatians 1:10

The people who make a difference in your life are not the ones with the most credentials, the most money or the most awards. They are the ones who do the small things with a big heart.

It was Mother Teresa who said, ‘We can do no great things; only small things with great love.

The Takeaway:

This week focus on small acts of kindness in Jesus’ name with great love!!

Action For Movement:

1. Sign up for a service project. You will be called with details this week!

2. Sign up for ‘kettle time’ with Salvation Army

3. Pay for the coffee of the person behind you in the drive through

4. Purchase a ticket for a friend for Friday’s Christmas Banquet and invite them to join you.

5. Purchase a toy for the ‘fill the bus’ toy drive or donate money to the gifts for MD students –see Mary Martin

6. Ask God to fill in the blank for the acts of kindness He has in store for you!