Waypoint Omaha

This week, Pastor Matthew led us through 1 Peter 2: 1-10.

We need to be people who taste that the Lord is good, and having tasted it, we need to want and crave it more and more.

The people that Peter was writing to had been born again. They had heard the Word, and responded. He was encouraging them to continue to study the Word, to read the Word, to devour the Word and to crave the Word. To continually deepen and strengthen their relationship with the Lord.

He tells them to do this via two things:

Taking off the old clothes.

They, and we, need to die to the old and come alive in the new. We need to get rid of all that is dirty, ruined and soiled as the “clothes” that we wore before Christ are not salvageable. Sometimes our old clothes are familiar and comfortable, but we must be rid of them as they kill and destroy us and our community.

Peter lists the five divisions (“old clothes”) of the church at the time: malice, deceit, hypocrisy, envy and slander.

The church is so powerful because we can be unified in Jesus as we lay down our lives, preferences and opinions for the sake of one another. Our inability to do this today is killing us, as we do not have a message to preach to the world if we as a church are not unified. We need to lay aside the things that disunify us, and we need to pursue relationships with one another.

If we are not hungry for God, we need to check our hearts for these things and get rid of them, living lifestyles of forgiveness to stop bitterness from creeping in. We need to have the mind of Christ and eliminate envy from our lives and hearts.

2.We need to come to Him, and keep coming to Him

We are to continue to come to Jesus. This is what it takes to grow up. The secret to this growing is to keep coming to Him through seeking, repenting and returning. We need to be firmly anchored in who He is, and then who we are out of that.

This week, Pastor Jermaine led us in the third week of our 1 Peter series with “Light in Dark Times;” a look at chapter 1:13-25.

In this passage, Peter looks at three characteristics of a Christ-less life. They are:

A life of ignorance
A life dominated by desire, and
A life characterized by futility

Peter is writing in a Roman world where life was futile and there was no eternal life. He is calling the Christians living within this society to something different, to be holy as God is holy (v.15).

We are called to be unique, different and other as children of God. To be sober minded in our thinking and our actions.

Being a child of God is both a great privilege and a great responsibility. It means that God should have access to every area of our hearts and our lives, and that they must both be infused with the Word of God.

We are to live in fear and reverence before God because the price of our salvation was costly, and we will be held accountable for our actions.

In this dark time, we aren’t to stumble and fumble around – we are to live as children of light, conducting ourselves in reverent fear.

This week Pastor Jermaine continued our series on 1 Peter with part two: Lights in Dark Times. This book was written by Peter while he was in Rome. Peter (previously named Simon) was one of Jesus’s 12 disciples and wrote this letter to multiple communities of Gentile Christians within Asia Minor.

Pastor Jermaine calls us to live our lives courageously - to honor God and have our lives reflect the Gospel. He gave us four major points to consider:

1- Prepare your mind - "gird up the loins of your mind". Peter encourages us to put all the parts of our mind to following Jesus and doing our duty. We need to disengage our minds from all that would hinder us and prepare ourselves for the challenges we will face in the future.
2- Be sober - Peter exhorts us to maintain a balanced mind, being prudent, careful, tactful, and avoiding distractions. We need to think clearly and decisively and allow our minds to be transformed by God's Word (Romans 12:1-2)
3 - Think Hopefully - Peter calls us to be filled with hope in Jesus Christ and endure with confidence, because the faith-filled life is a marathon, not a sprint. We should meditate on things that are good, true, and beautiful (Philippians 4:8)
4 - Shape your conduct - Peter encourages us to be holy, obedient, and attentive to God's Word. We need to be mindful of our actions and be not conformed t the lusts of the world. We need to break the bridle of the world and its influence! Instead of being concerned with where "the line" is, we are called to "be holy in all of our conduct", for God is holy.

Pastor Jermaine shared that Peter emphasized these points because in times of trial or persecution, we need to "be strong and very courageous" (Joshua 1:8) and fully commit to being holy. Instead of hiding our light with our conduct, we need to let our light shine and reflect God's glory in the earth.

This week Pastor Matthew introduced our 1 Peter series with part one: An Explosion of Praise. This book was written by Peter while he was in Rome. Peter (previously named Simon) was one of Jesus’s 12 disciples and wrote this letter to multiple communities of Gentile Christians within Asia Minor.

Pastor Matthew read and took us through the first 12 verses of Chapter 1, in which Peter introduces a type of floor plan for the book. The width speaks to our identity in Christ, the height to God’s mercy, and the depth to suffering, and how it purifies us to respond with praise, glory and honor.

We are dual citizens between this world and the Kingdom of God. We are to be signposts within this reality, pointing toward the next. The whole world should be able to look at us and know there is a God, as the same power that raised Jesus to life is the same power that works within us. With Jesus we are not to simply make it through this life, but to do so with joy and with praise.

This week, Pastor Matthew led us in a sermon called ‘A New World;’ studying the book of Philemon.

Philemon shows us that the Gospel is not just about how people get saved, but a message about the Lordship of Jesus and therefore our everyday lives and decisions. Before we are anything else, we are Kingdom people which puts us in partnership with others. This partnership often extends to those who do not look, think, or act like us which is why we need to live out the life-changing work of reconciliation in our lives. If we are to reach the full measure of Christ, we all need to come together, and grow together in love by listening to the Holy Spirit. As this partnership does good work, it produces in us good things such as new ways of thinking, new ways of living and new ways of being.

Just as Philemon and Paul were bound together by love, partnership and respect we too must be living examples of the Christian practice of reconciliation, as it is the music which will heal our world. The Church is the only body who is equipped to carry this out as we are the ones who have first-hand experience of it in Jesus.

Reconciliation has a cost, but it is powerfully explosive if we give ourselves to it.

This week, Pastor Jermaine and Pastor Matthew sat down to have a conversation about race in response to the unrest and protests happening around the United States.
They spoke about the Biblical process of lament, and how racism is a demonic stronghold in this world. Diversity and change do not happen organically and it takes intentionality to grow and develop in these areas. Therefore we need to lean in with the heart of Jesus and use the gift of reconciliation that He has given us.
We need to respond with compassion, prayer and fasting; drawing near to our brothers and sisters in this time.

This week, Pastor Luke finished up our Wait on God series with 'Wait on God; In Power'.

He spoke about courage, and it being not the absence of fear, but action in spite of fear. Courage is rooted in our ability to overcome and press through, and the whole life and ministry of Jesus and His disciples was an example of this kind of faith-filled courage.

They possessed this kind of bold courage through three things:

They understood Gods presence
They lived out God’s power by faith
They knew how to pray and persevere

The promise of Scripture for the people of God is the presence of God, as He promises He will be with us at the end, and with us to the end. We need this presence because what God calls us to do is impossible in and of ourselves. He calls us to make disciples of all nations, which is impossible without Him and always requires us to take a step of faith.

Our Christian walk is always demonstrated by works done in faith. We need to foster and practice this faith regularly and intentionally by doing difficult things and embracing the discomfort that it brings. We need to meet and share with our neighbors, pray for the sick and regularly share the Gospel as true courage is planted when we give our lives away through our time, money and love for others.

We need to do these things from a place of prayer, as our lives are only as powerful as our prayers. It is in prayer, through prayer and by prayer that we get the perspective and perseverance to keep pushing forward. In order to see our society change, we need to burn for the things that Gods heart burns for, and we need to step out in faith and courageous action toward those things. When the Gospel takes root in our heart, we can’t help but be changed and change the world in faith and courageous action.

This week Pastor Matthew continued on with our ‘Wait on God’ series with ‘Be Filled’.

The message centered on Luke 3:16 and the baptism we receive of the Holy Spirit and fire. Like the burning bush, our lives should be consumed with the fire of God: fully alive, but not burnt up. Living in these strange times we need this fire like never before.

When we are filled with the Holy Spirit we have:

The presence of God.
The purity of God.
The passion of God, and
The power and provision of God.

The Holy Spirit searches us, consumes us and refines us. His presence in our lives should radically and constantly be changing everything about us. His very presence should be setting us aflame from within as an all-consuming fire. If you are filled with His spirit, His presence should be the number one defining thing about you.

This refining process means that the purity of God should be our reality. We need to be open to and listen to the conviction of the Holy Spirit. We need to be careful not to limit what the Spirit of God wants to do in us, and we need to flee from loving the world or the things of the world.

Our God is a zealous God, and when He fills us, His zeal comes with it. Romans 11: 12 says “Never be lacking in zeal, but keep your spiritual fervor, serving the Lord”. Our zeal should be for the things that God is zealous for; for the world to know Him and for His church to walk in His fullness.

As we give ourselves to the service of this hurting world, the provision of the Holy Spirit will be there too. This is what happened in Acts, and what God is calling us into presently.

We need to ask for the Holy Spirit, constantly. We need to fan into flame the gift of God, feeding and nurturing our hunger for Him.

To recognize Mother's Day this week, Amanda Anderson led us in a study on Ruth.
Ruth was set in the time of Judges, a time when "everyone did as they saw fit" (Judges 21:25). This is not unlike our current postmodern culture, where personal autonomy rules and the intended authorship of the Bible has often lost its meaning.
Amanda led us through the story of Naomi; the loss of her husband and sons, her move, and Ruth's dedication to her. In Ruth 1:16 she said "where you go I will go, and where you stay I will stay. Your people will be my people and your God my God."
Ruth's and Naomi's story is one of lament (where God is okay with us being not okay all the time) as well as redemption in the form of Boaz the kinsman redeemer. Christ is our kinsman redeemer, the one who comes to the aid of His people and helps those who need it. In turn, we should go to God in our suffering, pour out our lives for others, and live according to the Word of God (and not whatever is right in our own eyes).

This week, Pastor Jermaine continued on with our 'Wait on God' series with part three; Waiting In Prayer: the Secrets Out.
His four main points were:

- God waits for those who are willing to wait on Him.
- God is at work in you in the waiting.
- God reveals Himself to those who are willing to wait on Him.
- God rewards those who are willing to wait on Him.

God can still use you in your messes and mistakes. He is looking for people who will prioritize His presence in the middle of this season, as He doesn't waste our waiting.
The secret place in the presence of God is the fiery furnace where faith is forged and fortified. We need seek Him in the secret place, as there is a big difference between being still and doing nothing.

In this hour God is calling us back to a place of worship and adoration.
God is looking for promise keepers, as He is a promise seeker. Many of us are not praying from promise, but from poverty. From defeat, and not from power power. Pastor Jermaine encouraged us to to pray instead with faith and expectation as God is looking for those who will remain, abide, stay, intercede and believe.