Covenant Church at Creekside | Weekly Inspiration for Christian Living

Primero, Ama

Jesus tells us that when you do something for the "least of these" you do it for him, and that the inverse is also true. There's a danger of allowing this scripture to become a carrot or stick—Do good, go to heaven, fail to do good suffer eternal consequences. But, if our focus is there, we miss a critical invitation. The first opportunity that we have in any relationship is love. Consider what difference love has made in your life. How did it change you when someone cared for you, carried you, sustained you? This is our grand opportunity. Jesus is inviting you to respond in love to his family—all those around us. If we are to emulate Jesus' model then every interaction begins with love. It's the order of operations: First, LOVE.

Nuestra mission: Compartir la Luz de Cristo

There are some things in life that are too good to keep to yourself. Jesus is one of those things. Would you put your lamp under a bed? That's ridiculous—a light is put on a stand to serve its purpose of lighting the space. If you've ever been in a cave and experienced total darkness you know how profound darkness can be. Without light, you could not survive. You would literally die. In the analogy of the lamp, Jesus is the light. He is looking for lampstands—those who would carry the light of Christ into the darkness of the world. The task is daunting, to be effective you must develop strong personal faith. How do you do that? Belief is contagious. Like the disciples, your personal faith grows when you're in community with other believers. At Covenant, we do this in small groups.

When we live in a community of discipleship, our joy in doing God's work is not our joy alone. We share these transformational stories of what God is doing in our lives with each other and celebrate together. Our joy is exponential as it is shared and re-experienced. This pattern of interacting is reinforced as we share in the celebration, we discover even more opportunities to do God's work in the world.

Jesús nos motiva

Persevering in the face of failure can be hard. Following Jesus, attempting to emulate his life on earth, is the most important life skill we can master, yet we constantly feel like failures. It's hard to persevere in a sinful world, but we cannot give up in our pursuit of living like Jesus. If we are going to persevere, we need encouragement. Jesus consistently encourages the disciples in their failures, urging them to keep going. And in his modeling, we find direction for how we are to encourage one another.

La Conciencia Transformadora de Jesús

How often do we miss the present because we are either multi-tasking with full concentration on nothing or hyper-focused on one task at the expense of all else? But in today's scripture, Jesus gives us a beautiful example of being attentive in the moment—giving his full attention to a relationship now. Regardless of the other demands upon him, Jesus says to us, "I am wholly here for you." This is a way of interacting that we are called to, that we can practice. What spaces in your life do you devote to being wholly attentive to others? Are there places you can enter where you can trust that others will be wholly attentive to you? That is the model for small groups at Covenant. In small groups, you can practice being attentive to relationships in the here and now and receiving that same focus back. Let us model the ability to say, "I am wholly here for you."

Jesus es Vulnerable