Have you given thanks yet? The pathway to thanksgiving.

This week Pastor Luke preached on the power of thanksgiving. Giving thanks takes our eyes off of our circumstances and emotions and puts it onto Jesus. It changes our countenance and our perspective, acknowledging that God is working out all things for our good and His glory.

The Apostle Paul was a great demonstration of thanksgiving in all circumstances. He was shipwrecked, whipped, beaten with rods and pelted with stones among many other severe afflictions and yet he was thankful in all things. This attitude should be the goal and reality for followers of Jesus.

Four steps to help us get there:

1. Acknowledge God in your life.

We need to give credit where credit is due by letting go of our possessiveness.

Matthew 5:3: ““Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.”

In other words: blessed are the ones who have broken the chain of the oppressor of self. It is a blessedness of possessing nothing.

Getting to this point does not require a fight but a surrender. We need to open our hands to
God and acknowledge that everything we have is the Lords. This acknowledgement will keep us humble.

2. Learn to trust God

Our journey with God is filled with endless opportunities to grow and learn to trust Him. The Scriptures are filled with people who GREW in their faith. They LEARNED to trust God in every situation.

A lot of people are afraid to go all in with Jesus because they fear losing what they perceive to be good. We need to bring our situations, dreams, hopes and feeling under the jurisdiction of God’s character and purposes. We need to learn to trust Him in each and every circumstance.

3. Deal with your doubt

Doubting is not a sin, but remaining a doubter is. Perpetual doubt is a close cousin to cynicism and comes when we haven’t wrestled with God through our situations. This creates spiritual baggage which takes away the joy available to us and suffocates the life of Christ within us.

Doubt causes ingratitude and maximizes the situation and minimizes God.

We have to remember and live out Psalm 100:4
“Enter his gates with thanksgiving
and his courts with praise;
give thanks to him and praise his name”.


4. Start Thanking

The goal is in everything to give thanks. We need to thank God for anything and for all things.

If you don’t know where to start with thanksgiving; think about and thank God for you your salvation.

This week Pastor Luke preached out of Psalm 139 with a sermon titled: “An ancient answer to a timeless problem”.

The timeless problem is our loss of perspective and the ancient answer is to think on God. It’s really easy in this cultural moment to lose perspective and forget about the power of God.

He broke his sermon down into three parts:

1. Think on God’s Bigness.

God is omniscient and omnipresent. We can never escape Him, and there is nowhere we can go where He is not. God is sovereign, He is in control and we need to cement our lives in that fact.

2. Think on God’s thoughts about you.

Through Jesus we get to enjoy God’s presence in the most intimate way. We get to enjoy the rights and privileges that are only reserved for sons and daughters. We get to walk in freedom and out of our sins. We have the gift of God’s presence.

3. Prize God’s thoughts while dealing with yours.

We need to process our emotions with God and ask Him to reveal to us any areas where we are not in line with Him. This process takes both time and humility. We need to seek and treasure the thoughts of our God.

Our response needs to be one of repentance, relaxation and refocusing.

This week Pastor Matthew concluded our series with the topic of “Relax in Jesus”.

His foundation was James 4:8, that when we draw near to God, He will draw near to us.

We live in a time where we are seeing cascading crises. As a nation, we are more polarized than ever before; divided and buckling under the weight of covid-19, political opinions, mental health issues, loneliness, addictions and stress. We have lost our ability to disagree with others while still loving them, which is relationships 101.

Anxiety is running through our world like electricity, and we as Christians must be the circuit breakers. The only way that we can do that is through truly learning to relax in Jesus.
In John 6, the followers of Jesus ask Him, “what must we do to do the works God requires?” and Jesus answered them, “the work of God is this: to believe in the one he has sent.”
To believe means to put our full weight on, to fully rely on, and to relax in. Jesus models this relaxation and contentment for us in two ways:

He understood the Father’s sovereignty.
He was content in the Father, and the Fathers timetable.

We have to rest in the truth that God is in control. Seven signs we are doing this effectively:

We enjoy daily communion with Jesus.
We listen to our bodies.
We are not easily triggered.
We are aware of the beauty around us.
We have a deep sense of knowing that we have nothing to gain and nothing to lose.
We enjoy a deep sense of “I am okay”.
We know our limits.

Our number one work is getting to a place where we can relax in Jesus.

This week, Pastor Jermaine continued on with our series “how to follow Jesus into today’s world” with the topic of “the cost of Racial Justice”.

Using Paul and 1 Corinthians 9: 19-23 as a platform he broke his message down into three parts:

The cost
The example
The moral

Jesus speaks about counting the cost of following Him, and Paul labels that cost as: “I have become.”

This Greek word for become is ginomai – which means to come into being. We need to become something totally different, a new creation in Jesus. When it comes to racial reconciliation, this means we need to become before we do anything, as doing flows from being and not the other way around.

Becoming is more difficult than doing, because doing costs you something but becoming costs you someone. It costs you, you. It costs us our lives. Saying yes is much harder then living yes when it comes to racial reconciliation.

We can not become what we want to be, by remaining who we are. A lot of people want change without changing. The world wants butterfly results with caterpillar comfort.

We need to ask and answer the question: what does God need to do in us, so that we can be more like Christ in our generation?

Becoming is a journey and not a destination. God needs to change us, to make us more like Christ.

Seven keys to becoming:

Befriend someone of another ethnicity. Intentionally pursue to listen, learn and love them. Spend time with them. Not to change them, but to listen to understand.
Find someone of another ethnicity to mentor you or hold you accountable in a certain area, and truly submit them. Most relationships had by a majority culture to minorities are help-based relationships.
Read books from authors you wouldn’t normally, or those you don’t agree with. Introduce your children/family to novels, movies, histories, and heroes of other ethnicities and learn about them together.
Learn about Black History. Those who don’t know their history, repeat it.
Humbly, lovingly and courageously (as the Spirit leads) confront racial prejudice and stereotypes.
Believe that as you’re being intentional, that it will matter and make a difference.
Prayer and fasting.

The work of becoming is a spiritual work. We need to fight for commonality even when it goes against our preferences. When we do this, we are signing up to take shots, to be misunderstood, and to be confronted with things you didn’t know existed.

If we commit to become, we will eventually overcome. The world can not unconditionally love itself, or solve its own problems. The call to come and follow Jesus was a call to become someone. We are the answer, we need one another and we serve the only one who can make us new.

We need to not simply complain about what’s wrong, but ask God to do a work within us so that we embody what is right.

This week, Bec Isaacson continued on with our series “how to follow Jesus into today’s world” with the topic of justice and righteousness.
Justice and righteousness do not have united definitions within our culture, which is why we have to go back to the Word of God.
In Hebrew, the word for justice is mishpat. It means to give people what they are due, and to treat people equitably. In the Old Testament it had a lot to do with caring for vulnerable people; specifically orphans, widows, immigrants and the poor. This view of justice is also the basic foundation for human rights; the understanding that all people are made in the image of God and therefore possess inherited dignity and worth.
The Hebrew word for righteousness is tzadeqah. It references a persons behavior not only internally, but externally and specifically in the context of relationship with others. Living righteously means conducting all relationships (in family, in society, at work, everyday) with fairness and generosity. Living out daily life unto the Lord. We see these characteristics not just in the Old Testament, but also in the person of Jesus.

Justice and righteousness are paired together over and over again in the Scriptures, and God set up Israelite society in such a way that if they obeyed His laws and did what He said, then the underclass and the poor would virtually have ceased to exist.
As believers, our lives are to be marked not simply by the absence of sin, but by the presence of justice and righteousness; acts of doing that actively care for the poor, the vulnerable, the sick and the immigrant. It is a lifestyle that involves understanding mutual brokenness, living in relationship and giving not only finances but time, friendship, shelter, advocacy, support and care.

This week, Pastor Matthew continued on with our series “how to follow Jesus into today’s world” with the topic of seeking God’s face.

Seeking God and hearing His voice should be normal for the believer of Jesus. It is a practice that takes time and effort. As temples of the Holy Spirit we harbor His presence, and as people of His presence we should be hearing His voice. We need to seek His face, and then respond to what He tells us.

We need to ask God what He wants us to do and not simply assume we know what He wants. We need to be a people who will seek His face and hear His voice first and foremost.

We begin to hear His voice by knowing the Word of God and orienting ourselves towards Him. When we do this, He changes us from one degree of His image to the next. We get to be like Jesus, and that is what this world needs. We do not seek Him to be saved, He saved us and so we seek Him.

Omnipresence is the idea that there is nowhere that God is not. The problem is, there are so many people that don’t feel or experience His presence in day to day life due to their lack of awareness. We want to experience practically what we believe theologically, and in order to do that we need to be better attuned to the presence of God.

We serve a holy God, and we need to remember that; reestablishing the fear of God within our lives. As a church, we can not bow to convenience, or the worlds ways. We must bow to Jesus; seeking His face, hearing His voice and obeying His word.

This week, Pastor Matthew continued on with our series “how to follow Jesus into today’s world” with the topic of Identity and Purpose.
We should do out of who we are. But, our doing will either affirm who we are, or corrode who we are.
In order to ground our purpose and identity, we need to put aside other sources and turn to the source; the Bible.
1. Who are You?
The Bible is the inherent word of God. It is both true and reliable, and we can answer the question of who we are through the Genesis account. If Genesis were all we had it would be enough to tell us what God is like, who we are, and what our purpose is.
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We are God’s creation. We have a maker. He formed us. If we have a maker, then we must look to Him for our purpose. The most important thing in the creation account is the function that God assigns. He and He alone can define our function.
We are created in His image and likeness. We are not God, but we are like God.
We are male and female, that is how He made us and we have to align with His design. We are blessed.
We are the ones who carry His breathe within us.
We were made for His presence. We were made to house the very presence of God.
We are good.

2.What is your purpose?
We were made in His image, so that we would have dominion over the earth and so that we could rule. We are blessed in order to do this; to rule and multiple across the earth.
We need to do everything unto the Lord, wherever we are.
Matthew 28: 18-20 are the last words that Jesus spoke. They are the same command that God gave to Adam and Eve; to spread across the earth as His sons and daughters. That is our purpose.
Jesus is coming back one day. What will He find us doing?

This week, Pastor Jermaine preached on “faith; the vision of the blind: now you see me, now you don’t”.
He took us through Mark 10: 46 – 52, and the story of Jesus healing blind Bartimaeus.

This narrative has two major groups of people; the religious leaders (the Pharisees and Sadducees) and Bartimaeus (the blind man). The religious leaders were jealous of Jesus, and spent the majority of their time trying to discredit His ministry. They physically saw Him, but were blind to who He was. On the flip side, in Mark 10:52, Jesus told Bartimaeus that his “faith has made you well.” Although not able to physically see Jesus, Bartimaeus recognized Him as the Son of God. Where the religious leaders had sight, Bartimaeus had vision; and faith and vision are one in the same.

Similarly, we need faith to actually see the world and its spiritual reality. We are not simply called to see, but to have vision. To view people, circumstances and ourselves not just as they are within the physical realm, but within the perspective of faith, eternity and the power of God. We need to see with the heart and the mind, and not just the eyes. Sight sees what is there, but vision sees beyond what is there, and into what could be.

We need to move toward what we are believing God for, as faith steps out.

This week, Pastor Luke continued on with week two of our series “how to follow Jesus into today’s world” with the topic of Worldview. He broke his message down into three parts:

1. What is worldview?

Worldview is the funnel or filter through which we see the world. It is a combination of our ideas, attitudes, beliefs and basic assumptions about life. It determines how we think and act in the world.

Whether we know it or not, we all have a worldview, and for most people, it’s subconscious; a belief system that we only notice when it gets bumped (such as when we travel, or relate to people from a different country or culture).

The thing that should bump our worldview the most should be putting our faith in Jesus, and consequently reading and applying the Word of God. The Bible tells us that when we put our faith in Him, we are taken out of the Kingdom of darkness and placed into the Kingdom of light. This should entirely change our worldview.

The four pillars of a Christian worldview are:

The Bible. It is the final authority.
God is real. He is personal and powerful. He determins what is right and wrong.
Satan is real, as is the spiritual realm.
Jesus is the only way.

2. Our World Today

The world we live in today globally connected, ethnically diverse and postmodern in thinking.

This postmodern thinking:

a) Provides a new way to understand words. There is no final meaning to words anymore, and an author’s intent no longer matters. The reader is sovereign and determines the meaning of a text. All interpretations are equally valid or meaningless.

We can contrast this with Gods Word in 2 Peter 1: 20-21. There is an author’s intent to the Bible, and it is not about our interpretations. His intent is all that matters.

b) Relativism is the way forward. We live in a world with no absolutes. What is morally right or wrong depends upon an individual’s beliefs. “The real world exists in shades of grey”.

We can contrast this to basically the whole narrative of the Bible, but one example would be Titus 1:10-13. Here at Waypoint we teach sound and unchanging doctrine. We teach absolute truths. We teach rights and wrongs. There is a true and a false; and they are all determined by the Lord.

c) The world has pluralistic views on “truth”. Universalism reigns, and we can pick and choose what spiritual things we want to experience. We build-a-god based on our own specific thoughts, needs and desires.

Contrast this to John 14:6 where Jesus says He is the way, the truth and the life. It is exclusive in nature.

We are fish swimming in the waters of our age and if we don’t stop to intentionally see the water around us, we will mix the worldview of our culture with that of Scripture.

3. How do we follow Jesus into today’s world?

We need to start following Jesus into today’s world rather than following the world with Jesus. When we follow Jesus, that truth needs to be a root level thing within our lives. It needs to determine everything else we do, think and say. We need to self-evaluate and ask: are we actually fully surrendered to Jesus? God wants and requires full surrender.

In order to do this, we need to think and act.

“Discernment is not knowing the difference between right and wrong. It is knowing the difference between right and almost right.” — Charles Spurgeon

We need to wrestle with the questions of life, and we need to think through our faith. We need to know what we believe and why we believe it. We need to have intellectual ground to stand on, as our world is desperate for culture shaping leaders.

We also need to be bridges. As Christians we are a colony of heaven, an outpost on earth. Our job is not to shut out the rest of the world, but to be a bridge between the Kingdom of heaven and the Kingdom of this world.

We were put here to be salt and light, a city on a hill. We need to take up that mandate, and go into the world.

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.