Gulf Coast Community Church Podcast – St. Petersburg

Isaiah’s vision of the day when Messiah would come is either the most fantastic promise of peace or comically absurd. He pictures the messiah slaying his enemies with mere words. Wolves living peacefully with lambs; leopard resting with goats, baby bulls and lambs fattened for slaughter lying peacefully with lions; and get this, all with a little child leading them. Not only this but infants could play unharmed near a cobra’s den or viper’s nest. (Isaiah 11:4-8)

Not understanding the metaphorical nature of such prophecies, many Christians have arbitrarily assigned this prophesy’s fulfillment to some future age. Sadly that may mean we don’t understand the glory to which it calls the church today.

Advent is a time of recognizing the possibilities of peace in the world because Jesus has come. While it also looks forward to a greater peace when He comes again, we must not think the promises held forth by Isaiah’s vision are comically absurd today. They call us to a new way of living.

Hope is one of those funny words that can describe both the waiting and the arrival of a thing. For instance, it could be said that the Jewish people (and truly all people unknowingly) longed for the messiah and that Jesus was their hope, the Messiah. He is the hope of all the world.

Hope anticipates what is to come and is embodied and fulfilled in that which comes. This Sunday is the first Sunday of Advent which focuses us on hope. What is the hope that we as believers have? Is there a distinct hope that we are to have?

How does the first coming of Jesus effect our lives? How should it lead us to live lives of hope? What might that look like? Are we just a bunch of optimists?

Colditz was a German POW camp inside an old castle during WWII. It was the kind of place that may have inspired Hogan’s Heroes. Though the real-life version was no comedy, it certainly had its comical moments.

The prisoners frequently put on theatrical productions –usually bordering on the absurd. But none of their productions were as bizarre as the drama that unfolded at the end: the German garrison was pretending to guard a prison no longer under its control. In truth, the inmates had rebelled and taken over but were acting as if they were still prisoners to protect their jailers against both the SS and the advancing American troops. The guards had become prisoners, and the prisoners their guards.[1]

In the great drama of the Gospel, history has been determined by a crucified God. An entirely new way of thinking has come upon the world. Believers, if they are in tune with the Spirit, willingly walk in ways that seem foolish. They rule in Christ but serve everyone. They are conquerors, but gladly live as the conquered. How can they do this? Because they know the future.

Join us for worship in our final message in the series: Becoming a Spirit-Formed Community as we learn what it means to walk in the way of the Lord, in the way of the Cross, and in the Way of the Spirit.

If one were to live under the Law of Moses today, what would they look like? Arguably they would look Jewish. Food rules, feast days, circumcision, and more might be the defining characteristics. Of course, there would also be lives distinguishable from the world.

The Christian is not under the Mosaic Law. Does that mean their lives should be indistinguishable from the world’s? May it never be! The follower of Jesus is called to live under the Law of Christ. What would be the defining characteristics of such a life?

Living under the Law of Christ is to live a Cross-shaped life in a Cross-shaped community. To live under the Law of Christ is to live as the Crucified One lived. And that is what it means to live on earth as it is in heaven.

Over 120 years ago, two brothers who hadn’t graduated from high school were trying to accomplish something without the funding that many other well-known and well-educated people were working to accomplish. A manned, powered, flying machine. And as you know, The two brothers, the Wright brothers, against all odds, were first to accomplish it.

Their accomplishment would not have been possible if they hadn’t imagined it, if they hadn’t believed in it, and if they hadn’t continually renewed their commitment to the vision. After each failure. After each setback. This is a good reminder for the church.

What God has set out to do in the world will require a similar commitment to the vision of the kingdom of God (life on earth as it is in heaven). We have to imagine it, believe in it, and continually renew our commitment to the vision. After each failure. After each setback. And that vision that we are to imagine is found in the story of Scripture.

"The church is not just a club of Christians who gather to express their praise and worship of God. Rather, the church is a called people, gathered to encounter and be shaped by God into a ‘peculiar people.’” (James K. A. Smith)

This term “peculiar people” is often joked about and certainly far too often applies in the way the jokes imply. But what does it mean to be a peculiar people and what makes us such people? I offer that it is the “fellowship of the Holy Spirit” (2 Cor. 13:14).

This week we will explore what it means to be a Spirit-formed community from 2 Corinthians 13:11-14 where Paul speaks of “the fellowship (koinonia) of the Spirit.” What is the koinonia of the Spirit? Why is it so transformative?

These last 3 weeks have been wearying for most of us. Houses flooded, roofs damaged, fences down, power out, food lost, waiting for gas for hours if you can find it. And then there’s the help you need and others need. The sense that you aren’t doing enough and can’t do anymore.

For the believer, this can pile onto plenty of other things that feel like defeat. Is there any let up? Is there any victory?

The last ACT in the book called Acts, which is a quarter of the book, makes our last few weeks (and even long term weariness) seem like a picnic. Paul has so many reasons he could be discouraged and yet he clings to the promise that He will arrive at the destination the Lord Jesus has for him.

Join us in worship as we take a break from our series and allow the message of Acts 27-28 speak to our own circumstances and give us hope in the midst of what might otherwise be discouraging circumstances.

Ephesians 4:1-6

I am a fan of impressionist paintings. Author Malcolm Gladwell explains how the impressionist painters became a movement.

It “didn’t begin because one genius took up painting impressionistically and, like the Pied Piper, attracted a trail of followers. Instead, Pissarro and Degas enrolled in the École des Beaux-Arts at the same time; then, Pissarro met Monet and, later, Cézanne at the Académie Suisse; Manet met Degas at the Louvre; Monet befriended Renoir at Charles Gleyre’s studio; and Renoir, in turn, met Pissarro and Cézanne; and soon enough everyone was hanging out at the Café Guerbois, trading ideas and egging each other on, and sharing and competing and dreaming, all together, until something radical and entirely new emerged.” (Malcolm Gladwell, The Bomber Mafia)

That may help us grasp how it is that the church is to bring the kingdom of God to manifest itself in communities all across the globe. When we gather, we each bring something to contribute, and in that sharing of our bits and pieces of the whole, encouraging one another, “something radical and entirely new” emerges. That “new” thing is the work of the Spirit, the Kingdom of God.

Join us as we continue our series Becoming a Spirit-Formed Community as we examine the role of the Spirit’s empowering with various gifts in the life of the church.

A lot of the focus in modern discipleship is on the individual. There are exceptions, of course, but rarely is discipleship taught primarily as a community project. It’s a team sport, not like an aerobics class or a zoom class, but like a baseball team or a football team.

In an aerobics class, it may serve me to be in a class for I might feel more motivated with the group. With baseball, or football, I simply cannot play it without the rest of the team. The church is like the latter and therefore discipleship (training for godliness or Christlikeness) must primarily be a group activity. “Practice the way you play.”

The early church sometimes spoke of gathering on the 8th day of the week. Of course, the last time I checked, there were only 7. But that is the point. What did that term signify for them? How does it inform the purpose of our gathering? How does our gathering inform the rest of our lives?

Join us as we explore some of the symbolic and visual aspects woven into the church’s worship and how they impact the rest of our lives.