Element Christian Church

What does the God of the universe does with killers and whores? He invites them to dinner and dances with them. It is the ultimate display of grace and our understanding of that fact should be shown in the response of our gratitude.

Jesus paid every last penny we owed for our forgiveness at the moment of the cross, understanding His grace is how all of our relationships will be restored.

Jesus is not announcing the termination of the Old Testament’s relevance and authority, He is showing forth the entire point.

We are all called to partner with Jesus in the renewing and proclamation of His name and His greatness. His hope, His healing as salt and light in the world.

It is abundantly clear in scripture that God is a Father, and as a Father He sets His perfect example in love. He loves us even when we are unlovable, comforts us when we are broken, pursues us when we are wayward, lets us fail when we need to learn the hard way, and uses everything in our life for a teaching opportunity. He is a perfect father who gives His children what they need, not just what they want. As children of the Almighty God, it is our responsibility, duty, and joy to teach others the way God has taught us. This is especially true for those of you who are parents: God has placed a great blessing and a great calling on your life. Be diligent to discipline and graceful in your approach to parenting. Keep Jesus in the center of your life as God, and not the blessing (your children) He has given you. In all things imitate Christ so that many may see your good works and come to know Jesus.

Bonheoffer’s once said, “Flight into the invisible is a denial of the call. A community of Jesus which seeks to hide itself has ceased to follow him”

The Beatitudes end where they began, with the Kingdom of God and a proper understanding of persecution.

According to a 2004 study, Americans are getting 2 1/2 fewer hours of sleep than people did one hundred years ago. The Centers for Disease Control are now tracking this information; not properly resting can bring on Diabetes and Obesity. Forty million Americans get fewer than 6 hours of sleep per night. In the modern church, we think it is more godly to forget sleep and find more work, but God made us as He did to need to rest. God made us to be finite and fragile. The point of the resurrection is salvation in Jesus alone; but part of surrendering our lives to Him means that we rest in Him. Jesus did not get out of the grave so we could kill ourselves, trying to run, and ultimately ruin, our lives. He rose so you and I could truly experience His rest physically and spiritually. He made us, we must trust Him to know what is best for all of our lives. Surrendering to Jesus means we also surrender our need to control our lives and learn to rest.

When your focus is on the person of Christ everything changes, everything is different, and nothing can separate us from that.

When we become a measure of God’s grace to this world Jesus says we can expect negative reactions; that it does not mean we declare a culture war or pick an issue just to get people mad at us, we declare Jesus and love others.

Believers are especially equipped for peacemaking, and in doing so reflect their heavenly Father’s character.

Scripture, why it can be trusted. Inspiration: means “God’s breathed.” Inerrancy - means the words are without error. Infallibility - means the words CANNOT error. Canonicity - means we have the RIGHT words contained in the Bible. Archeology - means that the words have been confirmed through archeology. Prophesy - the words have predicted future events accurately.

Peace has been made between us and our maker because of Christ. Jesus invites us to go on an interior journey that sees our hearts for what they are and what they can become in Him.

The resurrection of Jesus Christ is the most important historical event in the world. It changed history and Christianity stands or falls on the resurrection. As Paul says, if Christ did not rise from the dead, then his teaching is in vain, our faith is futile and we are the most to be pitied. The historical evidence and scholarly respect for the physical and bodily resurrection of Jesus is overwhelming now but it wasn’t always this way.

Jesus suffered our wrath and gave us grace because of His great mercy. We do not have to stand before God and justify or vindicate ourselves because Jesus took care of us.

Three Main Arguments 1. The Moral Argument 2. The Cosmological Argument 3. The Teleological Argument (“Fine Tuning”) • Argument is not a fight or quarrel • True philosopher doesn’t use arguments for the sake of arguing but for the sake of truth • We use arguments all the time in our lives • Why Philosophy? “To be ignorant and simple now--not to be able to meet the enemies on their own ground--would be to throw down our weapons, and to betray our uneducated brethren who have, under God, no defense but us against the intellectual attacks of the heathen. Good philosophy must exist, if for no other reason because bad philosophy needs to be answered.” - CS Lewis, The Weight of Glory (pg 50) A Christian should be able to give a logos (reason) for belief in the theos (God) of the Bible and this is where philosophy is helpful (1 Peter 3:15). The goal of an argument is not to prove absolute certainty which leads to skepticism but to try and show what is most probable/plausible and makes the most sense when looking at

The beatitude is not: “Blessed are those who hunger and thirst after blessedness?” It is: “Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness.” All life dead ends at the cross, and that also is where life begins.

The word for “defense” is where we get our word apology, it means a defense like you would make in a court of law. This class will cover how to make a defense to various things such as: -the existence of God, -the proof of the resurrection of Jesus, -the reliability of the scriptures, -competing systems of thought, -what some call the “problems” of a biblical position.

When we see the suffering in the world and realize Jesus’ heart for the suffering world, we get a glimpse of hunger and thirsting for righteousness.

A meek person is not a weak person, the word meek is the Greek word which means a tamed wild animal. When we truly own up to our sin, only then do we become free.