RENEW

In our fallen and sinful world, an all-important aspect of our personhood is our need to be healed, to get up after we’ve fallen, our need to repent, to forgive – and to be forgiven.

This is why confession is an important and integral aspect of Christian life.

Everything the Holy Spirit does bestows grace upon us. Sacraments, like the Church, are both visible and invisible. In every sacrament there is an outward visible sign along with an inward spiritual grace. They are moments we experience in which God reveals Himself to us and imparts His grace upon us. Through marriage, God (through his representative) joins a man and a woman as husband and wife.  Marriage is not simply a social institution or legal contract. It is an eternal vocation of the Kingdom of God that continues from this life into the age to come. The Holy Spirit calls a husband and wife to share their Christian life together in all respects. 

Whenever we celebrate Communion together, we are telling not only ourselves but the world around us about Jesus and his death on the cross for us. But we are also declaring that this is just a foretaste of the Great Banquet that is still to come, when Jesus returns — as both Judge and Saviour — and that our call is to repent and receive him now so that we can welcome him as our saviour and not tremble before him as the Judge.

The church since the very beginning began to take these specific moments in our salvation and our walk with Jesus and began to celebrate them as holy, as sacred and consecrated to God. Baptism shows that we have understood the good news message of Jesus and we understand the symbolic power of being immersed in water because the Creator has touched our lives at a very personal level.

Giving is not an obligation. Giving is not something God does to raise money; giving is something God does to raise people, because it's an invitation for us to step into kingdom reality.

We come together to build a church where people are encouraged and equipped to pursue a relationship with God – Father, Son and Holy Spirit. We come together to pursue connection with each other, and then learn to leverage our influence with our friends who are far from God. Everyone has something God wants them to do within the Church body.

If you’re with a group of people who are connected and doing life together in a positive way, praying together, asking the difficult questions, opening God’s Word together, if you have a heart building habit like that going on in your life, it’s not so easy to stumble out of it.

Our spiritual heart has a certain set of requirements necessary to keep it healthy and growing. One of those requirements is a corporate intake component. People who are serious about their corporate intake will do everything in their power to obey the discipline of assembling that Hebrews 10:25 talks about.

We can find ourselves in the middle of God's perfect will and in the middle of a storm at the same time. Trusting God does not keep storms away.

If you had to choose the name of a single person who has had the biggest impact on the world's history since the beginning of recorded time, one life that has touched every continent, every culture, every tribe, and every language - who would it be?