Who do you respect and admire the most? What is it about them that you strive to emulate? What are they able to do that makes you think, “I could never do that!”

But what if they came to you and said, “Hey – you know that thing I do? I want you to go do that for me.”

There is perhaps nothing more validating than having someone we look up to say they trust us to stand in for them and act on their behalf.

This week, we conclude our Get a (NEW) Life series by meditating on what happens when we live out Colossians 3:1-17 in our world today.

Is there a song that when you hear it instantly transports you to another time and place?

Maybe it takes you back to your first live concert. Perhaps a song reminds you of the feel of the passenger’s seat of your best friend’s car on a road trip. The right song may enable you, just for a moment, to smell the perfume your wife wore on your wedding day. Love, loss, victories and disappointments, music has the unparalleled power to conjure up them all.

Singing in worship to God – whether alone at home or alongside others at church – has a unique ability to make us feel safe enough to go to the depths of our grief and then, somehow, be lifted out of our circumstances, into the joyous presence of God.

Worship is a way to be brutally honest with God about our pain and uninhibited in our praise – sometimes in the same song!

This week, we continue our series Get a (NEW) Life by exploring the role of worship in the life of a disciple, and how it cultivates new life outside a weekly church service.

Be honest: what part of your character needs a little work?

Be honest: do you have people in your life that know you will listen when they help point out what you need to work on?

Be honest: are you grateful for their feedback or annoyed, even angered by it?

The honest truth is, none of us are perfect. We are all a work in progress. One of the greatest gifts God gives us are people who come along side us to help point out our imperfections, and then help us as we work on them. But it’s up to us to stay open to the feedback of others instead of shutting down when we receive it or shutting out the people who give it.

This week, we continue our series Get (NEW) a Life by looking at what Proverbs has to say about how disciples of Jesus approach feedback. Spoiler alert: wise disciples don’t just approach feedback – they chase after it!

Spiders. Heights. Peanut butter sticking to the roof of your mouth. What do all of these have in common? Enough people are afraid of each of these that there is a clinical phobia for each.

You may have no problem smashing a spider while standing on a ladder and chewing a bite of peanut butter sandwich. But what are you most afraid of? For most of us, our greatest fear, the fear that hides behind all our other fears, is the fear of failure.

This week, we’re examining fear in the life of a disciple. We’ll examine how one of the most famous disciples in history navigated his own failure – even with Jesus standing right there with him – and how learning from his failure can change the way we handle our own.

Have you ever volunteered to run to the grocery store to pick up a few last minute items? Have you had the experience of receiving a text on your way there that asks you to add one more item to the list? And then another text while you’re in the checkout lane asking you to add just one more item to the list?

This week, we come to a thought from the Apostle Paul that, at first, might seem like just one more item added to the list as a last minute. But, as we’ll discover, this idea permeates all of Colossians – which means it should permeate all areas of a disciple of Jesus.

Join us as we continue our exploration of Colossians 3 and it’s myriad applications for our lives as followers of Jesus.

Who drops a piece of paper on a clean freak’s desk? Why would a highly productive person put “sit on couch” in their calendar? When is it a good idea to show up at someone’s apartment unannounced when they’ve specifically told you they need to focus to meet a deadline?

A boss who knows words of affirmation mean the world to her hardworking employee.

Because this husband who knows quality time marked by good conversation fills his wife’s heart of joy.

When the kind act of giving the gift of dinner reminds them they are seen and loved for who they are, not because of what they do.

It’s not enough to say we love the people around us. We have to show it. More importantly, we have to show it in the ways that mean the most to the person we want to feel loved. We have to love intentionally, creatively and personally.

Join us this weekend as we look at the primary quality of a disciple of Jesus, the one that when it is evident in our lives, the rest come as a natural byproduct.

When you buy a car, you want the salesperson to over-charged you, right? When you order your favorite meal at a restaurant, you’re hoping they bring you an extremely small portion, right? Every time you open your music streaming app, you think to yourself, “I sure wish they’d only give me access to a couple dozen songs, instead of 100 million,” don’t you?

Of course not! We want the most marked off the MSRP, the most amount of food on our plate, and the most amount of songs we can access. We want everyone to always be as generous to us as possible.

But do we extend the same generosity to others – specifically, when it comes to forgiveness? How would our relationships be transformed if we were as generous with our forgiveness as we want others to be with theirs?

Join us this weekend as we continue through the Paul’s list of character traits we must clothe ourselves in as disciples of Jesus who desire to look and act more like Jesus.

The longer we sit in traffic the happier we become. The longer it takes the server to bring our food, the more our souls are filled with joy. And the longer we wait to be seen by the doctor the less anxious we feel.

Said no one to any of these things ever!

As disciples of Jesus, we’re not called to delight in or celebrate situations like these. But we are called to endure them without losing our cool or responding with hurtful words and actions.

This week, we’ll unpack the next attribute disciples of Jesus are called to adorn in order to model a kind of love that has the power to heal relationships and transform lives.