Hey everybody, We discovered on Sunday that one meaning of the word, “Radical” (the title to our new series), is “rooted in the source.” The idea is that we are only normal (radical) as we remain rooted to our source. Since our source is Jesus Christ the connection is obvious. We will only be as radical as we are connected to Jesus. Since it’s His desire that we live our lives as He would live our lives, it’s vitally important that we develop habits and disciplines that will keep us connected to Him.
Example: On Sunday, after I gave my talk, I took my kids out for a quick lunch and then we went home. I’ve been living as a single dad while Kimberly is in Uganda. What happened, that my kids so lovingly pointed out to me is that I was “grumpy.” And they were right. So, I decided to concentrate on my responses to them the rest of the evening. Guess what? I acted differently.
My kids were the stimulus God used to point out to me that Jesus probably would not have been responding that way. I asked Him to help me change this about myself. What that means is that He’s going to give me even more opportunities to work on this until the “Jesus response” is my natural response. Folks, this is why our church teaches the way we do. Our teaching style assumes that truth (information) + action (application) = life change (transformation). I got to practice responding as Jesus would.
Sunday I described the difference between being a Christian, a label a person wears, and being a Follower of Jesus, role a person assumes. I had several people thank me for the clarification, and they told me they were going to ask their friends who feel turned off by Christianity to watch the message online. If you weren’t in church Sunday, you might want to watch or listen online. You might even want to forward this email or link to a friend you know who is confused or turned off by the observations they have about how Christians act.
Looking forward to Sunday as we talk about being a Radical Community,
Pastor Ron
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