It’s 2022 — the beginning of our 100th year as a church. It’s also the start of another calendar year with the pandemic still upon us.
Our everyday lives have changed in many ways over the years, but even larger changes seem to be taking place in our society. Our world is in desperate need of real hope.
I believe the Church and the Gospel offer that hope.
But the change must begin with us.
The best way for us to help other people experience true life-change in Jesus is for us to experience that life-change ourselves. For this to happen we must learn to think God’s thoughts after Him, to live our life in this world on His terms, and to project His truth into our time and culture.
With this objective in mind, I plan to begin the year with a series based on our core beliefs as a church. I believe many of us affirm these without a true sense of what they mean and why they are important to the living of out of our faith today.
This Sunday will be an introductory message titled, “Why Our Faith and the Church Matter More Than Ever.” Then we will explore the core beliefs below… and why they matter:
The more we come to understand the character and will of God the greater will be our capacity to love Him in our worship and service to the world.
As a church we have so much to be grateful for. Starting with the men and women of many past generations who were faithful to God’s truth and mission as laid out in his Word. Their strong convictions and their many sacrifices have made our ministry today possible.
Yet this gift is also a calling. Our calling to live our faith in a world that has increasingly turned away from the ways of God and the hope centered in the Gospel of Jesus.
As the great Billy Graham once said, “It’s hard to be a Christian.”
It’s hard to be a Christian… Don’t let anyone body tell you it’s easy to follow Christ…
It’s tough and hard in modern, secular, pleasure made, sex-obsessed America to follow Christ and live clean and wholesome and have integrity. Because to conform to the pressures of conformity today are tremendous.
But I will tell you this, if you decide to live for Jesus Christ and go all out for Him, He’ll be in your heart and be there when every moral choice is made to help you over the humps and problems and difficulties and temptations.
He’ll give you a new power and strength to resist temptation and live life as God designed it to be lived.
— Rev. Billy Graham, 1966
That is no less true in our day than it was in his day.
Our faith and our church matter more than ever today because Jesus remains Lord of the all the earth, His Word is the Truth, and His Gospel remains the world’s only hope.
I’m praying expectantly for all God wants to do through us this new year. Let’s make this our best year ever as Browncroft Community Church!
