Hi! Welcome to Redeem the Commute. I’m Ryan, you host for the daily challenges. These daily challenges are meant to help people explore what it means to follow Jesus even during our busy commuting lifestyle. If you’ve never looked into what that means in the first place, I’d really encourage you, check out our Christianity 101 course first. You can take it live in-person or through our mobile app; great introduction to the basic concepts of what it means to follow Jesus that we try to build on in the Daily Challenges.
Every day and week, we follow a rhythm to help us, as one community, learn what it means to follow Jesus even when we’re not physically together. Every Monday,we introduce the idea for the week. Every Tuesday, we see what the Bible has to say. Every Wednesday, we allow ourselves to be challenged in our thoughts. Every Thursday, we try to apply it and live it out in our lives. Every Friday, we take time to pray and reflect on the topic. Saturday is a day for rest and then Sunday is a day for community. We’re going to start gathering together as one community soon. We just recently had a great baptism service and celebration where a number of our members came together in one place to worship God. We’re going to do that more and more often over this year. So, stay tuned for some of our upcoming gatherings.
We’re in a series right now called, “Reset.” We’re looking at how deciding to follow Jesus resets everything in our lives. We’ve looked at a number of areas that it impacts. This week we’re going to look at how following Jesus impacts our view of sexuality and marriage.
Last week, we saw how following Jesus means we see the body and food differently, and how they are good things God created, but can be abused when used in the ways God didn’t create them to be used.
We also saw how following Jesus means his Holy Spirit lives in us, which is why our bodies can be called a temple. This means we can’t pretend to own our bodies, as followers of Jesus, but instead need to show reverence to God’s presence in us by caring for these bodies, using them as their creator intended.
This is going to be a helpful way to see our sexuality, as well. The passage from the Bible’s first letter to the Corinthians that we explored talked about food and the body as a temple, but Paul, the author, was not really making a point about food. He was using food as an example to show how the Corinthian Christians were abusing their gift of sexuality.
He challenges them not to be distracted, and think that sex is the most important thing in their lives, nor their source of identity, comfort or security. He wants them to stay focused on God, and see all other things in life through that lens. He wants them to think of themselves as people on a journey with a purpose, which necessarily means they will be different than those around them who are not on the same journey.
That’s hard in our world – particularly with sexuality, because we are a culture obsessed with sex, and it’s easy to forget there is more to us than biology! Some Christians or churches have responded by never talking about it, making it seem like sexuality and our bodies have nothing to do with God. But Paul takes neither approach; he says our bodies matter to God, because we matter to God.
Sex is clearly on people’s minds. One survey asked Canadians how often they’d like to have sex, more than half of Canadians polled said they’d like at least twice a week. 20% of men said they’d like sex every day, but only 3% actually experience it.
There are some limits in people’s minds: In a Today’s Parent magazine survey, 82% of parents say sleep is more important than sex. The magazine readily admitted their sample was skewed heavily toward parents of young children, and primarily women.
On that note, fifty-seven percent of U.S. women would choose their mobile device over sex, according to another survey.
These represent some curious limits on how much sex people want, but God puts some serious limits on sex, that we’ll explore later this week.
In the meantime, here’s a question to consider:
Question: In what ways is our culture obsessed with sex? Think of commercials, businesses, events, etc. Does our culture place any limits on sex?
Well, have a great discussion. Don’t forget, we’re reading the Bible in sync as a community. So, check our website or app to see what today’s Bible reading is. Have a great one.
Read the Bible in Sync Today
Loading Content...
Share a Link to this Message
The link has been copied to your clipboard; paste it anywhere you would like to share it.
Hi. Welcome to Redeem the Commute. I'm Ryan, your host for the daily challenges, and today is Thursday so it's the day we try to put into action what we've been learning all week. In continuation of our series called "Reset," we've been seeing how Jesus resets our views of compassion from something that we do for personal gain, whatever it might be - political gain or giving volunteer hours or just because it feels like something we're supposed to do - to something that we do because of Jesus, because Jesus has shown compassion to us and because Jesus loves others and wants compassion to be shown to them, as well, and through His followers here on earth. We saw yesterday how we are sent to engage with those who are hurting and harassed and helpless in our world and show compassion in Jesus' name.
So what are some practical ways we can do this? Well, there are many and I'm going to challenge you at the end of the day to try something for the next few weeks. We're in a time that the church has traditionally called Lent, the forty days before Easter, minus some Sundays, and that's been a time that Christians have traditionally tried to refocus their efforts of following Jesus, tried to give something up in order to focus more on God. What I would encourage you to do is not to just give something up but to pick up something new - compassionate service to others. That's going to look different in each context. I'm going to suggest a few things that Redeem the Commute is involved in but you're going to find ways that you can personally show compassionate service to others in your own context as well.
Some of the ways you can get involved right now in Redeem the Commute's efforts to show compassion to others include an even that we're sponsoring in May. It's called Running for Home and another new church starting in Whitby sponsors this race every year and we're one of their church sponsors who help them put on the event and it's a run that raises money for Habitat for Humanity. Maybe you're familiar with them; they build homes for those who might not be able to have a home any other way. You can obviously show compassionate service by getting involved in Habitat, helping build a home or by raising money by being part of the Running for Home race or you could volunteer with Redeem the Commute in helping make the event happen.
Now, Redeem the Commute also offers some direct compassionate service to people in our community. We run a few major events and the formula we seem to have at all our events is that we do something fun and family related, that we make sure we are showing generosity and care to others like we've collected food bank donations and toy drive donations, and also that we always include the reason we do it - the Gospel. We're going to be using that again in planning an Easter event soon. If you'd like to be part of planning that event, and showing compassionate service to others through it, get in touch with me. I'd love to have you as part of our team as we bring together what looks to be a really fun event this Easter. We also have opportunities to get involved at the event. If you'd like to come and just enjoy the event you'll have an opportunity to give and serve others through that, just like our other events.
Now, these events cost money and so one way you can show compassionate service to people in our community is by supporting Redeem the Commute. Our mobile ap and website directly help people's marriages and parenting skills when they're under a lot of stress from the busy lifestyle of commuters. Or, you can support us in order to support some of these events that we put on. At our Christmas event, we calculated it cost about ten dollars a family to host and so you can find ways to support us in putting on our Easter event, as well. Watch for information coming out soon on how much it costs per family and how you can sponsor a family in enjoying our event.
I mentioned food banks earlier that we've supported in the past and a food bank is a great way to show compassionate service to others. If you live in Whitby, there's the Deacon's Cupboard at All Saint's church. If you live in Ajax, there's the Salvation Army Hope Community Church and if you live in Pickering, there's the St. Paul's on the Hill Pickering Food Bank. All these are great ways to directly give compassionate service to others in our community who might be hungry.
And, finally, you're probably aware personally of those you meet every day, who might seem risky, but who you're called, by Jesus, to serve with compassionate care. Find a way bless them in some way; bring them some food, bring them some baking. Ask if you can help them shovel their driveway or clean up from the ice storm. Whatever it is you're probably aware of something they're struggling with and a way you can help as a follower of Jesus even if they never know it's coming from you.
Challenge: So your challenge for this week is to intentionally commit, during the next few weeks leading up to Easter, to show some kind of weekly or daily rhythm of compassionate service. Find something you can do each week, or something you can do each day, that will bless and serve others simply because Jesus loves them like He loves you.
Have a great one. Or discuss maybe with your group how your going to put this challenge into practice and don't forget we're reading the Bible in sync as a community so check our website now to see what today's reading is. Bye for now.
When our computers get bogged down and unmanageable, we know to hit a reset button to simply start over. Wouldn't a reset button be great in life? We know it would be complicated, with all our responsibilities and routines to consider, but imagine the freedom and refreshment of a new start in life! What would you do differently? What would you pay more attention to, and what would you ignore? How would you avoid getting bogged down and broken again?
The great news is, in coming to earth as Jesus Christ, God has begun to "reset" our universe, our world, and even us. We're invited to start over with him, in what he calls his kingdom. We're invited to start a new life with a clean slate.
What gets wiped clean, and lived differently, when God resets our lives? We'll explore how God resets these key areas of our lives:
Reset: Goals
Reset: Time
Reset: Money
Reset: Work
Reset: Body & Food
Reset: Sex & Marriage
Reset: Family
Reset: Compassion
Reset: Nature
Reset: Society
Reset: Death
Join us for the next several weeks, and invite God to reset your life.