We are Family, Servants, and Missionaries who Gather, Go, Give, and Grow to be disciples of Jesus, making disciples together in the everyday stuff of life.

We are Family, Servants, and Missionaries who Gather, Go, Give, and Grow to be disciples of Jesus, making disciples together in the everyday stuff of life.

We are Family, Servants, and Missionaries who Gather, Go, Give, and Grow to be disciples of Jesus, making disciples together in the everyday stuff of life.

Pastor Jeff discusses where the Elders and Staff feel God is leading Doxa in 2018, our hopes for the year, and the call to our people.

Looking Back on what God has done in 2017

The Christmas story, from one perspective, is the unlikely story of God becoming a child, given to an unwed mother and adopted by his earthly father. This adopted Son would go on to die on a cross so that all those who believe in him might be adopted into his heavenly family. This is a remarkable thing for a God to do and it expresses his loving and accepting heart in a truly unique way. This Christmas, let’s remember that have all been orphaned from our heavenly father and are remade into a family only through the tragic sacrifice of the firstborn son.

The good news of the gospel is that Jesus Christ, the Son of God, came to save us. But in all cases, good news has to be preceded by bad news. The bad news of the gospel is that we are deeply in need of saving. When the Bible says that he came for the widows and orphans, the fatherless, sojourner, slave and poor, it means us. It’s easy for us to think of others as poor, powerless and in need but they are no more so than we are. Those with most material blessing, and therefore the least perceived need are also the most in danger of missing the good news of the gospel. John says in verse 11 that Jesus “came to his own, but his own did not receive him.” Why didn’t they receive him? Because they didn’t recognize the salvation he was offering. They didn’t recognize the need he came to meet. They didn’t recognize the need because they thought of themselves as sufficient, successful even, and to admit that Jesus was a Savior meant that they had to admit that there was some area in their lives that was failing. Jesus came to save us from our sins, but before doing that he has to save us from ourselves.

God entered into his creation to redeem it from the inside out, not to bestow redemption on it from the outside in. Every other faith or philosophy puts the burden of salvation in the laps of the devotees. Only Jesus came to his people to know, love and save them. The essential posture of our God is missional. In creation and re-creation, God enters in. Jesus not only enters into the world that he made but enters into the muck and the mire of the everyday lives of his people. In Philippians 2, Paul tells us that Jesus lowered himself to leave heaven and become a human, and lowered himself further to be killed on the cross for us. That’s the proactive love of God for his people.

God came himself. He didn’t send an envoy or a document. His desire isn’t primarily that we would know about him or simply obey him. He came himself so that we might know him. He is the focus of our faith and should be the focus of our discipleship. A disciple knows her teacher, not just his teachings. We know that this wasn’t incidental because later in Jesus’ ministry, he told a group of Pharisees that the greatest commandment is to love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind and strength. A love relationship with God is the most important thing a person can have. It is our purpose, our telos. Everything we learn and know about God is meant to reveal his essential loveliness, including (and climatically) in the appearance of his Son on the earth.