"The church consists of souls in whom Christ has had a personal advent, and in whom He lives. This is another mystery, never to be explained by the unspiritual, never to be perfectly explained by the spiritual."
Gary had a lot to say last night about the Colossian church. It was interesting to hear how a great church, a well known church, full of love towards their community was still missing something. Here are the highlights:
- The church in Colossians was full of faith and love, but they were missing Christ.
- They had an incorrect understanding of who He is and what He does
- We noticed that Jesus is:
- Pre-eminent: the most important in everything
- Image of the invisible: made what was not known able to be known and understood
- Creator: see also John 1 and Hebrews 1
- The Reconciler: bringing peace for hate
- We also learned that without a high view of Jesus, His life, teachings, and their implications will all be ineffective in producing love and faith.
"The irony of this should not be lost on us, standing as we do in the midst of the modern culture wars. To most people in our society, Christianity is religion and moral ism. The only alternative to it (beside some other world religion) is pluralistic secularism. But from the beginning it was not so. Christianity was recognized as tertium quid, something else entirely."
— The Prodigal God, Timothy Keller
And now, O God, give me a quiet mind, as I lie down to rest. Dwell in my thoughts until sleep overtakes me. Let me rejoice in the knowledge that, whether awake or asleep, I am still with You. Let me not be fretted by any anxiety over the lesser interests of life. Let no troubled dreams disturb me, so that I may awake rfreshed and ready for the tasks of another day. And to Your Name be all the glory.
Amen.
… since we’ve updated anything. We will be trying to keep content coming to you through the fall. We just wanted to let you know we are recruiting some writers and creative types to keep up with the blog.
Here’s the list of how to love people from last night:
Encourage
Spur
Build
Challenge
Forgive
Instruct
Serve
Greet
Bear with
Be kind
Be compassionate
Be devoted
Live in harmony
Be sympathetic
Be patient
Accept
Submit
Clothe with humility
Pick one and do it! Share how it turns out if you want below.
So, we here at night church have been extremely slack on the updating of the blog. We apologize. With that in mind we have two announcements
First, look for a rash of updates this weekend from the night church crew. This will include slides from the past couple weeks, podcasts, and maybe even some actual blogging.
Second, we need a social media coordinator. If you are interested in generating content including Facebook, Twitter, and the blog give us a tweet, message, or comment. We would gladly provide content and suggestions.
We’ll catch you next Friday!
Sincerely,
Management
