The Local Church

When you hear the question "Who helped you find and follow Jesus" what faces pop into your mind? These people invariably sacrificed their time, energy and resources so you could experience what they had. This is what three of the tribes did in Joshua 1:10-19 and there is a lesson in this seemingly insignificant story for us. Who are the people that your face will pop up in their mind when they hear the question "Who helped you find and follow Jesus"?

Are you on the cusp of something new, a job transition, relationship, a move or new phase of life? This is where Israel found itself as Moses has dies and Joshua is asked to lead the fledgling nation into the Promised Land. There's three lessons we can learn from Joshua's commissioning as we start our study of the book named after him. Promises have consequences, even for God.

localchurchgr.org

12.19.21

Entitlement may be the ugliest thing on planet earth and yet most of us in the West struggle with it. As our world and lives continually speed up we need to learn how to how to keep our joy, peace and love even when we don't get what we want when we want it. Jesus practiced slowness or the discipline of humble patience as an antidote to entitlement and when we choose to practice slowing ourselves we build the muscle memory required to pick up our cross as He did.

localchurchgr.org

localchurchgr.org

We are bombarded with noise, both external and internal so much so that we can rarely remember that last time we were silent. The enemy of your soul knows that the best way to keep you from experiencing God's presence and voice is to keep the actual and figurative noise level our lives constantly humming. Jesus modeled a resistance practice for us often going into the wilderness (eremos) as a place for silence and solitude with His Father. The eremos (wherever that is for you) is a place to find strength and intimacy so like Jesus you may find strength for the work ahead.

Justin Bieber and the Jonas Brothers, Moby Dick, and Jesus healing a bleeding woman and the dead daughter of Jairus. Love is patient, which makes it incompatible with hurry. Jesus was full of patient love that challenges our hurried lives and invites us into something better (Luke 8:40-56).

We're both made in God's image and made from dirt... bursting with potential, yet absolutely limited. The myth of living life without being yoked together with some type of master is an illusion. The only question is what does your master promise and what do they deliver? Jesus wasn't the first teacher to say that he had a yoke, he was just the first to say that His was light and easy. If our lives don't seem to have much love, joy or peace, we're probably more yoked to the things of this world than we are to Him. The way to experience the life of Jesus is to adopt the lifestyle of Jesus.