God invites His people to be on mission with Him. When we are obedient to His call we get a front row seat to experience His glorious might, His supernatural work and His magnificent victories. God delights in using His children not only to further His mission, but to grow their faith. What does it look like to trust and follow God by faith? Denying self and laying down our own agendas to participate with God. When we fail to join Him willingly, we miss out on the glorious work of His gospel in our generation.

FAMILY SERVICE SUNDAY:
The first three chapters in the Book of Judges tell us the story of how the Israelites were stuck in a cycle of self-reliance where they wanted to be rescued from their circumstances more than from their own sinful hearts. This week, we are invited to identify where we have a tendency to do the same thing and learn how our inside-out struggles require a Savior that can actually save us from ourselves!

Each judge we encounter in Chapter 3 of the Book of Judges, Othniel, Ehud & Shamgar are here in God's Word to point us to Jesus. Othniel’s clean-cut, flawless-ness is intended to be a pre-shadow of the only truly flawless One. Ehud’s “left-handed-ness” made him an unlikely savior, but nobody was a more unlikely Savior as Jesus. And nobody was more of an obscure outsider than Jesus, not even the judge Shamgar. Being despised and rejected led Jesus to the cross in the ultimate act of deliverance of God's people and by His death even Roman soldiers got saved.

God’s people are commanded by God to intentionally remember all the works of God together, from the time they rise to the time they lie down. This is so we can learn and grow in our personal trusting and following of God in our lives as we help others do the same. When we neglect to do this, and succumb to "common sense" or half-hearted discipleship by placing other things as more important than God, the generation after us misses out on seeing and experiencing the grace of God in our lives.

There is no automatic passing on of faith from one generation to the next, there must be an intentional passing on of the gospel.

Just like in the Israelites' day, when common sense (“subjective rightness") is your guide, the door to compromise swings wide open and through that door is moral deterioration that will lead you down the path of unfaithfulness and disobedience to God. But God is faithful to keep His promises even when we are not.