Faith is acting on the truth - whether I feel, or like, or agree with the truth or not.

In order to have faith, you need to know the truth.

If you don’t know the truth, you don’t have faith, you have belief. And God is not pleased by belief, He’s pleased by faith, so, we need truth!

Not every battle is yours – do you understand that? Does your pride understand that?

There will be times when your very best option to keep peace is – in peace – to just walk away.

But what about when you can’t walk away – or you shouldn’t walk away? We’re not avoiders; we’re not peace-fakers.

In those instances, the best protector of your heart is STILL your feet if you’re wearing the shoes of peace.

If you want to live in righteousness, you have to get rid of your trash. If you want great relationships you have to get rid of your trash! God wants what’s right for you. We want what’s right in our relationships… so we need to rid ourselves of what’s wrong…but instead…too often we don’t get rid of the trash…we just manage it.

We must learn to wage love.

Love is something you must fight for.

Love is hard work!

We didn’t start this church so that we could share knowledge together. We didn’t start this church so that could be better people. People are hurting and dying without hope…And I don’t want to look back 25 years from now and see a sea of people gathering at a bunch of campuses all across the community that do church well, but have missed the friendship and presence of Jesus. We started this church because John’s friend Jesus, is alive today and the world can know Him!

Jesus touched the untouchables.

He ate meals with the rejects of society.

Jesus was notoriously known by all the nice people as a “Friend of sinners.”

And so as his people, as this church, we will be friendly, kind, gracious and loving to all people… because they matter to God and they matter to us.

On the day of Pentecost, all the believers were meeting together in one place. Suddenly, there was a sound from heaven like the roaring of a mighty windstorm...

And everyone present was filled with the Holy Spirit …

Acts 2:1-4

One of our core values as a church is “You can’t out give God.”

This is why we worship through our giving. It’s our response to who he is, what’s he’s done, and expectancy of what He can do!

This is why we worship through the reading of His word and prayer. Because He holds the future and gives us words of life for today, we respond to his goodness by getting closer to him.

This is why we worship through the singing of our songs! Our praise and worship is an active audible response to the greatness of our God!

Following Jesus is an ongoing lifestyle of studying his words, and repenting of sin, and generosity and worship of Jesus and friendship with God and God’s people.

All the things that we’re going to look at in this series together were ongoing, habitual, and a new lifestyle.

It wasn’t just a resolution for the beginning of the year, it was resilience for the rest of their lives.

2018 is ending and 2019 begins in a few days. I don’t mean to freak you with that statement. But have you ever noticed that God specializes in beginnings and endings?