What do Christians believe?

If we were to ask folks on the street, we would get quite a few answers:

• Christians believe Jesus is the Son of God
• Christians believe Jesus rose again from the dead
• Christians believe being gay is sin

If we were to ask the same folks, “How do Christians live?”

……….silence……….

Christians have not shown the world a better way to live because Christians live pretty like everyone else.

When Christians cannot show a different way of living, our beliefs have very little credibility.

Free from guilt and shame. Joy-filled, grace-filled. Grateful. Fully alive.

Sadly, most of us have no idea what these words mean.

We all know that we once knew how it felt to live that way…just look at any child.

They haven’t learned how to cope with guilt and shame…yet.

We have coped with guilt and shame for so long, coping, medicating, ignoring, quieting, covering our guilt and shame has become the new norm…in our “growing up” we have grown out of grace and forgotten what it’s like to be free…free from guilt…free from shame.

So, today, millions live with emotional pain, physical weariness because of our alienation from God. The dis-ease has become the new norm.

But in our quiet moments…in those moments when we have the opportunity to quiet our souls…in those moments when we can free ourselves from the noise and the distractions we’ve placed in our lives to cover our guilt and shame…in our quiet moments, we remember…we remember the life we are meant to live…the life we long for…

Free from guilt and shame. Joy-filled, grace-filled. Grateful. Fully alive.

Yet, the greatest shame is that the guilt-free, shame-free life is available to all.

That’s the way God intends for all of us to live.

How can we live the life we were meant to live?

“Then I acknowledged my sin to you and did not cover up my iniquity. I said, ‘I will confess my transgressions to the LORD.’ And you forgave the guilt of my sin” (Psalm 32:5)

The word “acknowledge” means to “make known,” “to declare,” “to confess.”

How can we live the life we were meant to live?

1. Confess your sins to God
2. Receive his forgiveness

Are you ready to experience what it means to be fully alive once again? Ready to be done with guilt and shame?

Free from guilt and shame. Joy-filled, grace-filled. Grateful. Fully alive.

God is waiting to hear and forgive your sins…

 

 

An organization recognizes that the way they are currently running their business is not working. They recognize that changes need to be made.

The board of the organization asks some people from the board to do the hard and time consuming work of exploring, studying, and examining different possible ways forward.

A small group of people are tasked with finding new ways forward. They are even given an apt name for their work – Task Force.

The people on this task force diligently study, meet, discuss, explore.

• Dozens of conversations with other like organizations and how they do business.
• Dozens of conversations with other like organizations who are experimenting with new ways of doing business.
• Dozens of meetings to discuss the strengths and weaknesses of the different options.
• Hundreds of combined hours of discussing the merits of the different approaches and drafting a way forward to present to the board.

After hundreds of combined hours of service from the Task Force, the report and recommendations are presented to the board.

The board, seeing that the recommendations call for changes (that is what they asked for), decide they don’t like the changes.

• We’ve never done things this way before.
• We’ve always had a full-time executive.
• We’ve never shared staff before.

And in a matter of minutes worth of discussion by the board, the board rejects the recommendations and decides to continue doing business the way they’ve always done business.

Hmm.

• Hundreds of hours of work.
• Dozens of face to face meetings.
• Hundreds hours of conversations.

Mind you, changes that are necessary because the way the organization currently does business is no longer working.

Mind you, changes that were asked by the board because they recognized changes were necessary.

All dismissed within a few minutes of discussion by the board that asked them to do the work to begin with.

Now substitute the word “Board” with “Presbytery.”

Yup.