Vision For Life

In Matthew 5:14-16, Jesus compares his followers to a lamp. A lamp's very nature, its intended purpose, is to give off light. That is why, Jesus adds, people put a lamp on a stand; there it will give light to all in the house. He continues with an admonition to those listening to "let your light shine before others." In the same breath, Jesus acknowledges the temptation to hide, which he compares to putting a lamp under a basket.

Based on this teaching, Hunter describes public faith as a willingness to identify as a follower of Jesus and a commitment to good works that serve others. We grow in these good works, a public display of our faith that directs attention to God, by knowing our story, practicing hospitality, doing our work with excellence, caring for the poor and vulnerable, and sharing our church.

The church is called, not to fit in with it's surrounding culture, nor to go to war with it, but to lovingly challenge it. Followers of Jesus - the church - challenge culture in love through a biblically distinctive posture, practices, and priorities. Our current sermon series considers some of the church's distinctive priorities, namely gathered worship and investing in the next generation.

Putting these priorities into place in our lives often brings us to decision points that require deciding between two good options, or between what is good and what is best. What are the practical implications of setting aside time every week for gathered worship? What does investing in another life visa vie sharing the gospel require? And what if this is all harder than it sounds? Dave, Hunter, and Autumn respond to these questions in a candid discussion.

In the final installment of our Daily Life with God conversations, Hunter and Dave talk about what it’s like to cultivate a relationship with God over many years. They discuss habits they’ve always returned to and the mysterious experience of the Lord’s distance or absence, when what used to “work” doesn’t work anymore and what He might be teaching us in those seasons.

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Apple Podcasts (https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/id1578291844)
Spotify (https://open.spotify.com/show/16xemuRB2blAVuOoLnWMhC)
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Everyone who attempts to cultivate a daily relationship with God runs in to obstacles and frustrations - time, distractions and apathy, just to name a few. In part 2 of our series, Autumn and Hunter discuss some of these frustrations and how we can keep going even when the going gets slow.

Many Christians only experience their faith as things they have to believe or do or not do. But the point of the gospel is to lead us into fellowship with God. Are you experiencing God as personally present with you, in your everyday life? Autumn and Hunter begin a new series of conversations on how to cultivate a daily relationship with God, starting with 3 essential ingredients.

Here is the resource Hunter compiled: https://storage.snappages.site/GCSXWC/assets/files/Daily-Life-With-God-Handout.pdf

Corporate Sunday structures can easily read like a grab bag of "church things." Some coffee, some songs, some Scripture, some classes, maybe communion. So do we, one expression of the big family of God, simply select the coffee, songs, Scripture, and curriculum that we jibe with and call that our "Sunday Worship Gathering?"

Adam and Autumn continue their discussion about worship by examining the hows and whys of a Sunday morning service as it exists at Fellowship Denver. As Zac Hicks writes in his book The Worship Pastor, “When we invite people to worship through the story of the gospel, we aren’t just asking people to observe the gospel structure we have built but we’re inviting them to inhabit it.” We set aside and thoughtfully structure our time together on Sunday mornings to encourage us all to remember God’s faithfulness, acknowledge God's active work in the world, and to join with him in that work.

What is worship? Is it singing and sitting through a church service on Sunday morning? Connecting with God through the beauty of nature? An ambiguous feeling or a way of thinking?

Worship, in the biblical conception, is our response to a worthy Creator-God and to all the ways He loves us. Our heart orientation, what or who we worship, manifests itself in all of life. God demonstrates his transcendent worth, not with mere thoughts and ideas, but with real words and tangible actions - the action of sending his son in space and time to live a perfect life, die a death we deserve, taking our sin, to be resurrected into a body that can never die, and then finally ascended to the right hand of the Father. Our response should be a holistic one that takes shape in adoration and action, individually and corporately.