Element Christian Church

Wisdom in our lives will be shown by how we trust Jesus’ authority not just in the world around us, but over our very lives. The scriptures teach that the key to wisdom is loving God above everything else; 1 Corinthians 8:1 also teaches that knowledge puffs up but love builds up…

In the Gospel of Matthew, chapters 8-9, he shows fourteen distinct ways that Jesus showed His authority. These chapters come directly after the Sermon on the Mount where Jesus speaks and teaches the crowds with authority, so much so that they were amazed. Matthew shows us that it is not only Jesus words that have authority, but also His life in how He responds to every situation with complete confidence and grace. In this story today we learn of a centurion (a Roman military figure that had at least a hundred soldiers under his own Authority), come to Jesus and ask for help. For us, this would be like asking someone you completed disagree, or someone you are sure would not help you, for assistance.

This gospel of grace is amazing, and is made possible because of the goodness of our God. We’ve been reconciled to God, no longer needing to earn or perform for His love and acceptance. Now we have the privilege of testifying to His gospel of grace. Being reconciled we now have a ministry of reconciliation; we get to testify about God’s love and grace, and invite others into this amazing story of God reconciling a people to Himself.

Just like our great God gave His Son for our sins so that we can be redeemed and understand the truth and grace into which He calls us, so we cannot have a redeemed view of sex and intimacy without a redeemed heart/life.

The entire point of good loving marriages is to remind us of our good and loving God. We submit to Him, we respect Him, we love Him because He first loved us by coming and redeeming us from our broken way of life. Jesus is the one we look to first.

Try and keep a level head this week. Remember if someone disagrees with you it is not because they are stupid, chances are it’s because they care about different things passionately.

Tim Keller writes that Jesus says to us, “I want you to reweave the fabric of the world, where it’s ripping, or where it’s fraying. I want you to get out, and I want you to meet their needs and fill their hearts so they then can do the same thing.”

Today we look at the supposed harshness of Jesus calling us to “hate” our father and mother. Many people think of Jesus as a nice guy who did a whole bunch of miracles, hugged people, fed people, welcomed people, and gave people a perpetual ‘thumbs up,’ but if we look throughout scripture we find that Jesus says some pretty intense things. When we look at who Jesus truly was and is we have to re-examine how we view Jesus. Yes, Jesus loves us (and that is an amazing truth), but He says a lot things that cut right through the idea of ‘buddy Christ.’

All sin can be an act of commission (committing sin) or omission (seeing what should be done but turning away from our responsibility). These are the paths of sin that Jesus tells us to avoid at any cost. What do we to do? Cut off our hands? Cut off our legs? Pluck out our eyes? Save ourselves the pain and just give up and end it all? Of course not. Jesus is calling us to be aware of the things that can cause us to stumble – the things that can pull us away from God.

In Genesis, God creates everything, including man, and lays out what is good for man to see. God then tells the man the consequence of sin, breaking relationship with God: he will die. You sin, you die...simple. In Genesis, God separates for the man what is light and dark, truth and lies. God makes the distinction between life and death for the man. This explanation of what constitutes life and death includes the idea that man is free to live and love God and His creation in any way the man sees as most useful.

Jesus knew what the man saw when He was healing him, Jesus asks the question He does in Mark 8 for a purpose, to teach His disciples (and us). It is Jesus who rescues and Jesus who saves. The truth is that we are blind because of our own sin, but the beauty of the Gospel is that Jesus died and rose in our place to bring us back to God so we can be a people who truly see again.

We are near the end of the first half of the book of Acts! We have seen the early church witness the power of God moving in miraculous ways throughout the book. Today we are looking at a Savior that delivers us. Chapter 12 in the book of Acts starts with the death of James. This is a time of intense persecution for the church. Peter was sure to be next, but the church prayed earnestly for Him, and God delivered him.

Most people understand being a “good Christian” as following Jesus, knowing Jesus, and relating to Jesus. This has led many people to the (wrong) conclusion that they can be a “good Christian” without being connected to a church. Today, 80 percent of Americans say they can be what Jesus intended them to be without being connected to a church, a body of believers. The truth is, Jesus lived and breathed and did everything He could to create a community of people called the church. - Ephesians 1 says He rules all things for the church. - John 17 says He sanctified Himself for the church. The church is a big mess with all kinds of craziness, but we can’t get rid of it, because Jesus died and rose for it.

The early church father Augustine once said the real problem we have in our lives is not the rules we are breaking or not breaking, but “inordinate love,” meaning we love the wrong things...or even love the right things wrongly. As an example, you can love your nation (which can be a good thing), but if you love your nation more than anything in the world (including God), that can lead to racism and militarism. Augustine says there isn’t anything wrong with loving your nation; it’s when we love God less than anything else (children, job, spouse). He says the only way that we will ever be healed is if we love God more than anything (including ourselves).

Today we return to focusing on Peter after a few weeks looking at Paul’s salvation story. As a reminder, Element is going through the book of Acts because we want to come face to face with what Jesus called the early church to be, how they at times fell short, and how they learned from their mistakes. We are looking at these things so you can know what a church is called to be in the world today!

Today we return to focusing on Peter after a few weeks looking at Paul’s salvation story. As a reminder, Element is going through the book of Acts because we want to come face to face with what Jesus called the early church to be, how they at times fell short, and how they learned from their mistakes. We are looking at these things so you can know what a church is called to be in the world today!

Today is week 26 of our series through the first half of the book of Acts. In Acts we see the beginnings of the early church, what God did, and how He moved His grace forward. Our hope is that if you someday move away from the area you will know what things to look for in a church because of what we study in this series. A church should love Jesus, teach truth, but also be humble enough to admit its mistakes and strong enough to stand by the vision that God gave it.

Element is currently going through the first half of the book of Acts; this is week 25. Today we are looking at Jesus’ conversion of Saul of Tarsus into Paul the Christian and follower of Jesus. We do not say that “Paul found Jesus,” because that is not how it works, we are the ones that are lost and it is God who finds us by shining forth His light into our souls. Many times this leads us to say that, “We found Jesus,” but it was not Jesus who was lost; it was us, and we are saved by His great grace.

We are nearly two-thirds of the way through our verse by verse journey in the first half of the book of Acts. We are slowly making our way through the book of Acts in order to help us better understand the early church, their calling, their ministry, and their mission so we will also be able to use that knowledge to inform us about how a Church should ideally operate.

We are nearly two-thirds of the way through our verse by verse journey in the first half of the book of Acts. We are slowly making our way through the book of Acts in order to help us better understand the early church, their calling, their ministry, and their mission so we will also be able to use that knowledge to inform us about how a Church should ideally operate.