Gateway Church - MO

Life with Jesus is about more than just getting ‘cleaned up.’ It’s about being made new. That requires confession and repentance. We’re good at confession. In our culture it’s almost a virtue to ‘confess’ what we do. But repentance is a whole different matter. We need to confess our sin and then repent from it if we are going to follow Jesus.

The Christian faith is based on the belief that Jesus died and rose again. But where do we hear that story? We hear it in the Bible. The Bible is one unified story that points to Jesus. It is the revelation of God to man so that we may know Him, trust Him and choose to follow Him with our lives. And the story of Jesus, as told in the Bible, has the power to transform our world. So how do we know we can trust the Bible?

Some of us need to get busy DOING what Jesus called us to do. We spend a lot of time talking about what we believe, but many of us don’t actually live it out. Talk is cheap. We need to obey Jesus and engage our world with His love, grace, and mercy as we go and make disciples.

‘If God is so good, why is there so much suffering in our world?” That’s a question a lot of people ask. It’s a valid question. But instead of assuming God isn’t good – or worse yet – that God isn’t real, what if we considered that God understands our suffering because he became one of us and he is already dealing with the problem of suffering because he is a good and loving father?

People talk about God and Jesus a lot, but we don’t often hear conversations about the Holy Spirit. So, who is the Holy Spirit and what does He do? How does the Holy Spirit impact the life of the follower of Jesus?  

Everyone loves the idea of Heaven. No one likes the idea of Hell. But Jesus taught that Hell was a very real place. Rather than avoid the topic because it’s uncomfortable or unpopular, we should allow it’s truth to move us with compassion to share the love of Jesus with as many people as possible

When we think of Heaven, we tend to think of some faraway place with clouds and quiet music playing in the background. We think we’ll spend forever doing nothing. But that isn’t what Jesus taught about Heaven. Heaven is really about God restoring this world – and us – to his original plan. It began with the resurrection of Jesus and we can partner with him to begin restoring our world and bring hope right now.

When we get conflict wrong, relationship break. If we don’t have a plan to make things right, those relationships can be permanently damaged or worse yet, destroyed. However, the love Jesus offers us compels us to focus on reconciliation more than we focus on being right. When I am more concerned with being reconciled than I am with being right, relationships – even the tough ones – can be restored.

In every relationship there is the potential for conflict. Whether that conflict will pull us apart is up to us. When we learn how to “pull together when we’re pulled apart” and accept that we are a part of the problem, that conflict can become a tool used by God to draw us closer to each other and closer to Him.

WE MUST INVEST IN OUR CHILDREN SPIRITUALLY, OPENING UP A RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN THEM AND JESUS. SALVATION IS THE END GOAL FOR EVERY CHRISTIAN PARENT.