Assurance
Notes
Transcript
Living Unsure
Living Unsure
How much of our lives are waisted because we are unsure?
Ex. watching a movie while on the phone (Neither here nor there)
In lecture / browsing the internet
Out to dinner / checking email
Pro-longed courtship / difficulty in commitment / lost years
Unsure career path / decades of work bereft of meaning & passion
but compensated financially
Lent starts tomorrow…How many are unsure if they are going to fast tomorrow?
Our society grooms us to live with an extrodinary amount of uncertainty.
The uncertainty bleeds life out of us.
Unsure Faith
Unsure Faith
Our world increasingly ascribeds to a belief that we trust and belive FACTS but faith is reserved for the inferior and weak.
They come to this conclusion based on their reading of the 5th gospel.
“There are five Gospels: Matthew, Mark, Luke, John and the Christian. Most people will never read the first four” ~Rodney Smith
But is that truly reflective of scripture
3 But when you give alms, do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing, 4 so that your alms may be done in secret; and your Father who sees in secret will reward you.
6 But whenever you pray, go into your room and shut the door and pray to your Father who is in secret; and your Father who sees in secret will reward you.
14 “For if you forgive others for their transgressions, your heavenly Father will also forgive you. 15 “But if you do not forgive others, then your Father will not forgive your transgressions.
9 because if you confess with your lips that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.
Regardless of how our lives reflect the message of the Gospel, when you look at the text itself, there is no space left to be unsure..
Yet we are unsure in
our acts of service
prayer
forgiveness
proclomation of the resurrection
Faith is actually the complete opposit of what society has relegated it to…It is a wholehearted, confident belief in someone or something
Paul the picture of a faithful life
Paul the picture of a faithful life
Paul’s apostleship was continually questioned during his life because he didn’t fulfill the key qualification of an apostle…To be a witness of the resurrected Lord.
Line of thinking: If you witnessed the resurrected Lord you would not waiver in your efforts to evangelize
Paul makes his defense of his apostleship by speaking of what he has endured to spread the truth of the Gospel
24 Five times I have received from the Jews the forty lashes minus one. 25 Three times I was beaten with rods. Once I received a stoning. Three times I was shipwrecked; for a night and a day I was adrift at sea; 26 on frequent journeys, in danger from rivers, danger from bandits, danger from my own people, danger from Gentiles, danger in the city, danger in the wilderness, danger at sea, danger from false brothers and sisters; 27 in toil and hardship, through many a sleepless night, hungry and thirsty, often without food, cold and naked.
Why does he do all this...
28 And, besides other things, I am under daily pressure because of my anxiety for all the churches.
A clearer picture
A clearer picture
This was not meant to discourage...”I’ll never live a life like that so why try...”
The point is to realize what is truly being offered to us...
Faith is not about living with uncertainty, but rather it is living with an assurance.
It is that assurance that builds in us a capacity to endure and passion to push on.