At Wawasee Bible, Your Pathway is to (1) be ENCOURAGED in your faith, (2) get EQUIPPED for your calling, (3) ENGAGE at Wawasee, and (4) EXTEND the Gospel wherever you live, work, learn, and play. This week Pastor Josh briefly explains each part of that pathway before unpacking why gathering regularly is so important. Hebrews 10:24-25 says it’s so that we would stir one another up to love and good works and to encourage one another. There’s a path for you at Wawasee that begins with showing up to be encouraged and to encourage others.

We wrap up our Grateful series by looking at three evidences of a grateful life from Colossians 3 and Habakkuk 3. Gratitude isn't just a feeling tied to good circumstances — it's a heart posture that returns thanks to God no matter what. That posture shows up in three ways: it lets Christ's peace rule our hearts, lets his word shape our walk, and lets his strength sustain us — even when everything else fails.

There are two things we can be grateful for as Americans. First, that God (in his sovereignty) placed us here. And second, that here is not home. We've been sent here by God to seek the good and welfare of this place so that others might know God's goodness in Jesus Christ personally. But while we've been sent here, here is not home. As followers of Jesus our citizenship is in Heaven, and from there we await our Savior who will come and fully transform us.

Gratitude fades when God’s people forget the Lord, not because they lose information, but because they stop keeping his goodness at the center of their lives. Deuteronomy 8 calls God’s people to remember how he humbled them, provided for them, disciplined them, blessed them, and warned them against pride. Remembering the Lord forms grateful people who can trust him in the wilderness, bless him in gratefulness, and source every accomplishment in his grace.

We start a new short series exploring what it means and how to be grateful. God commands us to be thankful, and the gratitude Scripture commands is not a feeling, but a posture. It's a choice we make. But choosing it is often hard. Gratitude is hard because it requires obedience before it's felt, we miss God's nearness, and we focus on our circumstances.

As we wrap our series through the Nicene Creed called "What Christians Believe," we look at what baptism is. Baptism isn't something we trust in for salvation, it's a picture of what we trust in. It's a picture of the gospel and God's cleansing work in our lives that is all by his grace and mercy. God's grace and mercy—not our merit—washes and renews us through his Spirit and gives us eternal life.

We believe in one holy Church. God's Church consists of every believer in Jesus throughout all of history. And because God is three-in-one, he's made his Church one and given us unity in Jesus Christ. Our responsibility is to maintain it. Unity isn't uniformity, it's unity of heart where it's all about Jesus, and it's not about me. Our temptation is often to make it about our own preferences. But to maintain unity I must be willing to lay down my preferences in favor of loving one another. As Paul commands, we must work to "outdo one another in showing honor to each other!" God has made us one, so we must maintain that unity and grow up together into Christ.

This week we look at who the Spirit is and what he does. In a sentence, the Spirit always and continually glorifies the Son in all that he does. Jesus told his disciples that it was better for him to leave so that the Spirit (the Helper) would come to help them: indwelling, guiding, illuminating, convicting, and empowering God's people. The Spirit sent from the Father and Son convicts and guides and always glorifies Jesus.

For us and for our salvation, Jesus came down and became human. The creator and ruler of the universe condescended to add full and complete humanity to his full and eternal deity. We tend not to think as much about Jesus’s humanity as we do his deity, yet Jesus was fully human in every way. Because of this he is our failthful and merciful high priest who is able to sympathize and empathize with us, as he has been tempted in every respect that we are, yet without sin. Hebrews 2 reminds us to pay much closer attention to all we have heard about Jesus, lest we drift away and neglect so great a salvation.

Jesus is fully and eternally God in every way. He’s not merely like God or close to God, he is of the exact essence as the Father—one substance with him. The New Testament book of Hebrews opens by presenting Jesus as the radiance of the glory of God, not a mere reflection, but the source of glory as he himself is fully God. In this way the Son reveals the Father perfectly, purifies sin completely, and gives his people security, courage, and confidence to draw near to him and one another as he has drawn near to us.