HopeGateWay

Sometimes we think we can ask God for whatever we want. We want to be someone else. We want to have something else. We want to do something else. But what we ultimately want is to be satisfied. God wants us to accept who we are, and most of all God wants to give us God's Spirit, God's very self.

Jesus asks, "Isn’t life more than food and the body more than clothes? Aren’t you worth much more than they are? Who among you by worrying can add a single moment to your life? And why do you worry about your clothes?"And then the promise: "If God dresses grass in the field so beautifully, even though it’s alive today and tomorrow it’s thrown into the furnace, won’t God do much more for you, you people of weak faith?"Where do you place your hope and trust? What do you want your life to count for?

Today we conclude the worship series "Blessed to Be a Blessing." On the other side of fear, skepticism, and impatience -- is laughter! Three times in this story, Abraham and Sarah laugh. They laugh at the sheer craziness of their situation! They laugh because they discover that God's ideas as so much better than their own! They laugh because it’s not even close to what they've expected of their life for decades, but here they are, and it’s going to be a wild ride, and all they can do is surrender to the journey, throw their heads back and laugh! The podcast ends with a hilarious version of Ha! Ha! written by Linnea Good and sung for the first time by the Hope.Gate.Way. community.

Almost 15 years after God promised Abram many decendants, Sarai got impatient and gave her servant Hagar to her husband to have a baby. We all get impatient. We all think we can find a quick fix to our problems, but we learn through trial and error that there are no quick fixes. God shows us the way....eventually. What we need is patience, trust, and openness. At the end Monique Barrett sings Come to Canaan Come by Andrew Peterson (reworked).

God promise Abram is outlandish--unbelievable! Sometimes we are like Abram and imagine that our current reality is the only reality possible. God can change our circumstances. God promises to bless us not just for our own blessing, but so that we can change our world.

We begin the story of Sarai and Abram, as they were first named. We explore their journey of faith and the obstacles to trusting God. Particularly this week, we begin with the obstacle of fear. Abram pretended Sarai was his wife out of fear. What blessings do we miss because of our own fears. God wants to bless us so that we might bless others. Let go of your fear and embrace trust.

The greatest is the one who serves. Is the goal of the Christian Life to be the greatest? Should we be trying to achieve something with our lives? Or should we just serve. Service brings us to a place of contentment and compassion, that is the way of Jesus.

Jesus' final words to his followers: "Go therefore, and make disciples of all nations..." We call it the Great Commission.Brian McLaren says, "“Good evangelists... are people who engage others in good conversation about important and profound topics such as faith, values, hope, meaning, purpose, goodness, beauty, truth, life after death, life before death, and God. They do this, not because they like to be experts and impose their views on others, but because they feel they are, in fact, sent by God to do so. They live with a sense of mission that their God-given calling in life is not just to live selfishly, or even just to live well, but to live unselfishly and well and to help others live unselfishly and well, too. Evangelists are people with a mission from God and a passion to love."You've been sent. So go. Be a disciple. Share. Listen. Love. Serve.

A Pharisee comes to Jesus and - testing him - asks, "Teacher, which commandment in the Law is the greatest?" There are 613 commandments in the Torah – 613 commandments which faithful people were expected to keep. Jesus says the greatest is to love God with all your heart, mind, and soul... and the second greatest is to love your neighbor as yourself. All the Law and the prophets are summed up in these words, he says.Love God. Love your neighbor. The Great Commandment. A faith built on the foundation of love.