Lake Highlands Church

Why do we serve? Christians serve because Jesus was a servant. Jesus viewed himself as the fulfillment of God’s promises that a servant would come and bring the kingdom. Jesus served us by healing the sick, feeding the hungry, and by his great love for us in his self-sacrificial death. After being humbled unto death, Jesus was exalted. In the kingdom, we follow the path of service if we want to be exalted.

Scripture reading: Isaiah 42:1-9, Philippians 2:3-11, Matthew 20:25-28

Fasting reminds us that we are sustained by God.  Fasting humbles us and puts us in a position where we recognize our dependence on God and thus can hear more clearly from God.

Scripture reading: Matthew 9: 14-17

The power of repentance is that it clears the obstructions in our relationship with God allows us to take a giant step toward wholeness and health; toward the full and abundant life that Jesus came to give us. And we can have confidence that a prayer of confession God will always answer, with guaranteed forgiveness.

Scripture reading: Ezra 9:1-15

Scripture reading: Romans 12:2, ll Chronicles 7:11-16, l Chronicles 4:9-10

The reason we give up things, things that are pleasurable, is not so that we somehow earn favor with God, but it is so that we re-orient our lives and get intentional about our relationship with God.  We give up a pleasure for a brief time in order to allow God to replace that pleasure with Himself.

Scripture reading: various

With the first Adam came the curse, but the last Adam, the offspring of the woman, Jesus, came and bore the curse for us on the cross so that we could be born again, into the family of God.

Scripture reading: Genesis 3:7-24

Too often we listen to voices that do not have our best interest in mind.  The voice we need to have our ears trained to hear is the voice of our loving creator who will always call us into fellowship and freedom.

Scripture reading: Genesis 3:1-13

This is about more than marriage; this is about the dynamics of humanity…that we need both male and female perspective, male and female gifting.  It is about community.

Scripture reading: Genesis 2:18-25

For 5 and a  half days God created and filled the earth, but if he had stopped there all he would have had was a greenhouse and a zoo.  But God wanted someone to be in relationship with—to be love and be loved by—so he created humanity, in his image, giving them provision and purpose and privilege and prerogative.

Scripture reading: Genesis 1:26-31; 2:4-9

The Jewish day doesn’t begin in the morning, as we westerners tend to think; the Jewish day begins at sunset.  The mindset is, your day doesn’t begin with production; your day begins with resting.  The idea is, your identity lies in who you are (as created by God), not in what you do.

Scripture Reading: Genesis 1:31-2:3