Waypoint Omaha

This week, Pastor Matthew started us in a new series called ‘how to follow Jesus into today’s world;’ beginning with the sub-topic of discipleship.

We are living in and on the cusp of dark times. But when times get darker, the light gets lighter and the Lord needs His church to stand. The reason that we are here on this earth is for people to come to know Jesus. We are called to lay our lives down, and to know Him, love Him and obey Him. And the way we first and foremost do this, is by being His disciple.

The word disciple appears 266 times in the New Testament and generally means abandoning the things of this world and following Jesus.

Matthew shared ten points of discipleship:

1. A disciple counts the cost before following Jesus (Luke 14:28)

There is a cost to following Jesus and it’s everything; our body, possessions, time and futures. We need to be people who count the cost.

2. A disciple is totally committed to Jesus (Luke 14:26)

He is our first priority, and we need to be willing to go anywhere and do anything He asks.

3. A disciple is willing to carry his/ her cross and sacrifice for Jesus and His cause (Luke 17:10)

We are called to and will be called upon to lay our lives down for Jesus. It is a choice to yield to His will, and we must choose obedience at all costs. Obedience must be our only preference, but there is life in it.

4. A disciple is willing to give up all earthly possessions (Matthew 6:24, Matthew 6:21).

We must be willing to surrender all of our possessions if Jesus asks us to.

5. A disciple is immersed in God’s Word and experiences freedom in Christ (John 8: 31-32, Romans 12:2).

We need to soak in the Word so that we know and hear His voice. The Word of God can set us free from the lies of the enemy and empower us to overcome.

We cannot be a disciple without a hungry commitment to consume and obey the Scriptures.

6. A disciple really loves other believers (John 13:35, John 15:17)

If you don’t love other believers, you don’t know the love of God. We should love one another in such a way that it shows the world the character and reality of Jesus. We must be committed to love God, one another and those who don’t know Him.

7. A disciple abides in Christ, bears fruit and glorifies God.

8. A disciple is full of the Holy Spirit (Acts 13:52)

We need to bear the fruits of the Holy Spirit. We also need to serve and use our gifts.

9. A disciple is obediently following the desires of Jesus (Matthew 26:19).

Immediate, complete and cheerful obedience is the hallmark of a disciple.

We are members of His Kingdom, He is our King and it is a joy to serve and obey Him.

He will return one day and we will be held accountable. We can not assume the rewards of Jesus if we have not obeyed the wishes of Jesus.

10. A disciple is intimately involved in the mission of Jesus to make disciples (Matthew 26:16)

It is a command to go and make disciples, and He promises to be with us in the process. We need to be more than just believers in Jesus, we need to be His disciples.

This week, Pastor Alex finished up our 1 Peter series with Chapter 5: 1-11.
Peter is addressing multiple groups of people in this passage; the elders and the young. Pastor Alex broke his message down into three categories:

The Flock
Peter tells the elders to exercise oversight by being examples to the young. The young and the old need each other in the church; as the young need an example of what a Godly life looks like. Without the conjunction of generations, we are doomed to repeat the past.
Humility is the way forward. It is “the only soil in which the graces root; the lack of humility is the sufficient explanation of every defect and failure. Humility is not so much a grace or virtue along with others; it is the root of all, because it alone takes the right attitude before God, and allows Him as God to do all.” (Andrew Murray).

The Adversary
As believers, we have to remember that we are at war. We need to actively build our spiritual muscles so that we can stand firm in our faith and endure suffering.
We need to keep our conduct honorable, glorifying God and doing good. We need to make time for Jesus, and not just fit Him in when it’s convenient. Being firm in your faith means you make time for your faith.
Devotion to Jesus is our primary defense we have to withstand the adversary. Anything less than a surrendered life leaves us vulnerable.

The Promise
In chapter 5 verse 10 the Lord promises He will “restore you and make you strong, firm and steadfast”.
We are responsible for our response to the Lord, and we need to build and stretch our faith muscles.

This week, Pastor Matthew took us through 1 Peter 4:12-19. Within this Scripture, Peter brings warning, correction and hope in an attempt to shift the perspective of the Gentile believers and their experience of hard times.
How we go through hard times matters, and we need to see them as an opportunity for God to do an amazing work in us and through us.
Matthew's three main points were:
Hard times are going to happen, guaranteed.

We should not be surprised when hard times come, as we are living in warfare. We are going to get hit and we need to prepare for that. When we suffer, we need to identity with the sufferings of Christ and see it as an opportunity to draw into Him. If we learn to do this, we win and have victory.

2. If hard times are guaranteed, then make sure they are for the right reasons.

The Spirit of God and of His glory rests on us. We need to wrap our minds around that fact and rid ourselves of hated, bitterness and unforgiveness. They will ruin us, and they will make us suffer for things that are not worthy of our time.
We are called to look like Jesus, and we need not suffer for anything outside of being like Him.

3. Trust in God and do good.
We have to fully lean on God and give our lives completely to Him. No more luke-warm, on-the-fence Christianity. We need to live differently and righteously for His sake, as His ambassadors.
We need to work hard at giving our lives away on behalf of the Gospel.

This week, Pastor Luke continued on with our 1 Peter series with Chapter 4: 1-11. He titled his message “Peters practical guide for not losing yourself in 2020.”

His five practical points were:

1. Arm yourself with the Gospel

In order to effectively live life in the center of Gods will and escape the temptations of this world we need to arm ourselves with the mindset of Jesus and the Gospel.

We can not just have head knowledge of the Gospel, but instead, we need to apply it to our lives. We need to arm ourselves daily and carry a Christ-awareness with us everywhere we go. We need to always be aware of God’s will and His presence.

2. Draw the line

The person we were before Christ is not the same as the person we are after Him. We need to draw a line around the things we used to do and be, and stop teeter-tottering between the will of God and who we were before Christ.

We need to draw the lines in our lives, and refuse to cross them, knowing that God’s grace is sufficient to cover all of these things.

3. Pray as if it’s your last day

Peter says that in order to pray effectively in this time, we need to be sober minded and self-controlled. We need to pray as if it’s our last day in order to keep our focus on the right, main thing.

We need to ask the Lord: what is your heart today? And we need to live from that place.

4. When tempted to sin, serve.

Peter tells us that above all, we are to love earnestly. We need to serve, in our hearts and with our lives, our brothers and sisters in the Lord. Nobody can truly love others if we take delight in finding and exposing the faults and sins of others, and so we need to stop doing that. We need to learn healthy confrontation for the sake of love and unity.

If we get annoyed with people, we need to deal with it, staying together for the sake of Jesus in order to show the world what the church actually is.

People are to know the disciples of Jesus by our love for one another, and we need to put that into very practical, everyday action.

5. Remember who your life is for.

Two things happen when we give our lives to Jesus; He gives us spiritual gifts, and He redeems our natural talents. These gifts are discovered in service, as we need to give our lives away.

Our life is not our own, it is meant for people – as Jesus’s heart is for people. Jesus died for souls. For humans. We need to take our spiritual gifts and our natural gifts and use them for the Glory of God.

This week, Pastor Matthew and Amanda took us through 1 Peter 3: 1-7.

From our cultural vantage point, this is a very difficult section of Scripture to understand and apply, and we must do the hard work of reading and understanding it through the lends of first century Christianity. Not doing so is very dangerous, as it opens the door for misinterpretation.

Under the Jewish law during this time, women were objects, owned first by their fathers, and then by their husbands. Wives could not leave their husbands under any circumstances, but husbands could dismiss their wives for any reason. Women had no rights, and could not make decisions for themselves: including that of religion.

The family religion was that of the husband, and it is almost unfathomable for us to think about what it would have meant for a wife to become a Christian in this time, without her husband doing do first. And yet, this is the exact circumstance that Peter is addressing.

Therefore, although this passage can read as very oppressive towards women through our twenty-first century American viewpoint; it is actually in many ways the exact opposite. The fact that Peter addresses the women as their own independent moral agents in this passage is in itself radical and revolutionary, as normally within this time, women would not have been addressed at all.

Additionally, Peter is not encouraging believing women to walk away from Jesus in their submission to their husbands, but instead, to be model wives; as their seeking to please their husbands is far more likely to win them over than arguing, disobeying or nagging. Their submissions in not out of fear, but obedience to Christ who treats them as full persons and allows them to rise above the threats and fears of the age.

Peter then goes on to address the husbands, commanding them to live considerately with their wives, which was also radical for the time. He tells husband to love and honor their wives as the physically weaker gender, something that dictates the effectiveness of their prayer life (and is therefore extremely important!).

Before God, husbands and wives are equal and joint heirs to God’s gift. Marriage is a mutual laying your life down, all the time, and there is no vacation from that. But this mutual submission actually brings life, as we were made to lay our lives down for others, for the Lord and for other people. Great marriages are established when two people lay their lives down for one another, constantly.

This week, Bec Isaacson continued on with our 1 Peter series with 3:13-22.

Following Jesus means being people who do good. People who are peaceful, united, sympathetic, loving, compassionate and humble. People who give gentle and respectful answers to those who ask about the hope that they have.

The Kingdom of God is upside-down, and following Jesus requires living out of a reverence for Christ. This reverence leads to a relinquishing of our rights, as we put Jesus in His proper place as Lord. Our rights to freedom, culture, reputation, family and sleep among others should never stop us from being obedient to the Lord and what He asks of us.

This morning, Pastor Jermaine continued on with our 1 Peter series with chapter 3: 8-12, titled “Wax or Mud”.

This section of Scripture is centered on suffering; and Peter teaches on how Christians and friends should treat one another. He implores the Christians to be united in both heart and mind. To be sympathetic and compassionate, loving one another.

We need to walk in other people’s shoes, to show practical love and compassion and to put the interests of others ahead of our own. We need to lay down our preferences.

Our response is our responsibility. We must seek peace and pursue it by building great relationships and having healthy conflict in the context of commitment.

We need the Lord to change and soften our hearts; to transform us into His likeness.

This week Pastor Matthew spoke to our current times; a world that is shaking. He took us through the history of the Bible and the place of God's people within it.

We need to be people who hear from the Lord, and not the world. We need to spend more time with Him than we do soaking in the news and social media. We need to lay down our rights so that people may know Jesus. We need to learn (or re-learn) to hear and obey the Word; unmingling our belief system from that of the world.We We need to come back to the Word of God. To hear it, read it, and obey it.

This week, Pastor Luke led us through 1 Peter 2: 18-25.

This passage introduces a section of the book that talks about household codes and answers the question: how do we honor God and suffer well where we are at, specifically in the context of slavery, marriage and government.

It speaks about turning the other cheek and responding to mistreatment and false accusations with humility, forgiveness, love and service.

This is not a natural human response, as we love to retaliate, get revenge, justify our actions, defend ourselves and fight back. We hate to look weak, and letting false accusations come against us is very difficult.

However, the response that the Lord calls us to is not one of weakness, but great strength as it is actually much more difficult to respond to suffering with restraint, forgiveness and unconditional love and respect for others.

How can we do this? By looking to Jesus, and just as He did – trusting the one who judges justly (v.23).

Three points to help us hope as we suffer unjustly:

1. God sees you and will help you.

Do not look at your situation, look to God and trust Him.

2. You will be rewarded

The Word makes it clear that we will be rewarded for our faithfulness, and our worst misery could very well be our best ministry.

3. You are imitating Jesus.

We can do this BECAUSE of Jesus. He is both our example and our empowerment.

This week Pastor Jermaine continued with our 1 Peter sermon series with Chapter 2: 11-17 under the title of: Tension #thestruggleisreal.

In this section of Scripture, Peter is prescribing the Christians a response on what to do when they are criticized for their faith.

As Christians, the world needs to see us living honorably; treating every human being, (regardless of their position, political affiliation, status, ethnicity and gender) with honor and dignity. We have to live from the understanding that above anything else, our allegiance is to the Kingdom of God and to Jesus as Lord.

Submitting to and honoring our bodies of authority does not mean that we can not disagree with them, it simply means that HOW we disagree with them matters. Unlike the world around us, we can not simply write people off with labels.

We need to be people who pray for our leadership and fight for unity in the context of relationship building. We must do better in honoring our governing authorities even when we are criticized and dishonored. We can do this because our identity is not in politics, but in Christ.

Our freedom is rooted in our servanthood. It is not a freedom to do what we want, but a freedom to do as we ought.