MVT: Rewind

Joy in the hustle and bustle of this life can feel completely unattainable. What if we stop chasing joy where it wasn’t meant to be found and instead allow Jesus to bring Joy to us in our every day lives.

We find a great example of hope in Mary’s story. Mary was venturing into the unknown and still directed her praise towards God and what He had for her. Luke 1:46-55 chronicles Mary’s song and shows us how real the hope of Jesus is. 

It doesn’t matter what we have done to break the peace between us and God or what we have done in the past to break our relationship with God. Will you accept the invitation to live at peace with God? Jesus can restore peace with God in your life.

It can be hard to see how we can make a difference in the 603, in the world, and in the Kingdom of God. At times, we feel as though God has only given Kingdom work to people we see as "spiritual giants.” But that simply isn’t true. God asks us all to be a part of bringing his grace everywhere; to our families, to our workplaces, and even to people we don’t particularly like. God can turn our ordinary offering into something extraordinary. We experience unity at the highest level when everyone is in concert, working to bring God’s Kingdom to New England!

Who we become informs what we do and what we do informs who we become. As we do our best to move closer to Jesus and people, we want to become people marked by grace and love through our actions. We want to be a community of people who advocate for God's grace every chance we get. We want to love our neighbors with everything we've got, remembering everything we do can be an act of worship. And we want to see this replicated over and over; here, there and everywhere! 

HERE, we live out faith together. We are the church here when we celebrate together, when we contribute to make MVT what it is, and when we live radically generous lives. This is where we learn from one another as we participate in the lifelong process of sanctification. Here is where we point one another to the cross and and to grace, where we grow as disciples, and where we become known. 

Jesus is inviting us into uncomfortability; not in a way that is forceful or harsh, but to stretch us so we can continue to move closer to him. He has not asked us to do anything he hasn’t already done. God is asking for our best and is asking for our first fruits because he gave us his best in Jesus life, death, and resurrection so we do not have to worry about our relationship with God. Jesus generously, intentionally, and willingly laid his life down so that we can experience and share his love to others. 

The way we feel about ourselves often reveals our ability to believe in God's perfect love for us. It can feel natural to listen to voices of fear and shame instead of the voice of Jesus. Sometimes, that makes us hold back from talking to him at all; we're too afraid of how we'll be met. In prayer, we're able to both speak to God and hear from him. It's a two-way conversation full of grace and honesty and openness that every single one of us is invited to participate in! 

We can see suffering around us, every day, everywhere we look. In the midst of this suffering, it’s tempting to thing some wrong things about God. Maybe we think He caused it. It’s possible we think He doesn’t care about it. Or maybe we think He’s sitting on the throne, with head in hands, feeling just as overwhelmed as we are. The good news is that none of those things are true. God is bigger than we think. Even in times of long-suffering that require intense perseverance; God is very much in control, intimately present, and loving us with a steadfast love.