Jesus said, “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of God.
Jesus is describing how he pushes the reset button in life. He uses imagery that sounds like baptism. Baptism is when someone is washed with water, to show on the outside what God is doing on the inside, washing away the sin from our hearts. When adults are baptized by becoming fully immersed, one can plainly see the imagery of them having died to sin, and then rising out of the waters to new life.
We are baptizing our first RTC member this February. It will be her reset moment. Looking back on her life, she says this represents a new beginning.
In the Christianity 101 course, we illustrate the life of faith with a line with markings at 0, 50 and 100. Whether we’ve run as far from God as possible, stayed close, or jumped around – what matters most is where you go from there. Will you move closer to God by following Jesus, or run away? The 50 point is when someone decides to do this intentionally, and although that moment is important and has a real impact, there are many moments to follow when the Holy Spirit transforms a Christian’s life. New decisions, directions and priorities all come with time and relationship with God through the Holy Spirit.
In this series we’re going to look at a number of ways a “reset” life is different from before. Specifically:
Reset: Goals
Reset: Time
Reset: Money
Reset: Work
Reset: Body & Food
Reset: Sex & Marriage
Reset: Family
Reset: Compassion
Reset: Nature
Reset: Society
Reset: Death
Challenge: If you’d like to reset life, here are some steps to consider. Take our live Christianity 101 in the Cafe Course in Pickering starting next week to explore the first steps. Consider being baptized, to show on the outside the reset that has taken place inside. Just get in touch with Ryan if you’re interested!
Reminder:Coffee hours are tonight at 7:30pm at Starbucks in the Ajax Chapters Store. See you there!
Reminder: We are reading the Bible in sync as one community – so check out today’s reading here.
Reminder: The best way to grow spiritually this year is to join our Christianity 101 in the Cafe Course in Pickering starting January 22nd. Register for you and a friend today!
Read the Bible in Sync Today
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We’re going to take a quick look at a passage from the Sermon on the Mount today, that we actually explored several weeks ago as part of that series. You can find it here: http://bit.ly/14LRCtP
Matthew 6:28-34 ESV says:
And why are you anxious about clothing? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow: they neither toil nor spin, yet I tell you, even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these. But if God so clothes the grass of the field, which today is alive and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, will he not much more clothe you, O you of little faith? Therefore do not be anxious, saying, ‘What shall we eat?’ or ‘What shall we drink?’ or ‘What shall we wear?’ For the Gentiles seek after all these things, and your heavenly Father knows that you need them all. But seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be added to you. Therefore do not be anxious about tomorrow, for tomorrow will be anxious for itself. Sufficient for the day is its own trouble.
Jesus uses a good analogy – beautiful flowers are clothed in God-given beauty. But our human tendency is to see beauty as the product of our own hard work – we need to toil and spin if we want to be beautiful. We have invented entire industries of fashion, consmetics, pharmaceuticals devoted to helping us work for our beauty.
We regularly delude ourselves into thinking it’s all about us, from our beauty to our purpose in this world, and that can make it very hard to rest.
It’s so easy to feel guilty – I didn’t do as much as I should have last week, I forgot this, or I am so not ready for Monday. We always think we should be doing more. It can be particularly hard for entrepreneurs – every sale makes or breaks the company, every contact could be a sale.
So we stay up at night, or check our phone constantly, or just have our mind on work when it could be resting.
True rest means finding ways to put that kind of worry and guilt aside. Tomorrow, we’ll look at one more inner change that helps., then next week we’ll look at some practical hints, but for many this looks like prayer, some kind of different activity, and turning the phone off.
Question: What do you tend to worry about when you’re resting? Do you feel guilty about resting, or taking vacation?
