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
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Yesterday, I introduced the idea of grace with a diagram. We will build on that now, so if you missed it, go back and watch Tuesday’s content.
Grace is the most powerful force in the world, it is what makes Christian faith stand out like a jewel---the world craves it---people are so hungry for grace, often desperate for grace---and grace is there for all people.
Imagine grace in Syria, imagine grace in Iraq, imagine grace in a time of marriage breakdown, in your workplace. Just imagine grace everywhere…grace says there is nothing I can do to make God love me more, there is nothing I can do to make God love me less…how would that change the way people act in our world?
Imagine grace in your life…a fresh start, forgiveness, a relationship with God, and hope for the future. A certain way of life, of obedience to God’s way of living is an important part of this, but as outcome, the thanksgiving for God’s love, rather than a way of earning it in the first place.
We’re invited to practice living in God’s kingdom now. This affects many areas of our lives. It reorders our priorities, views of success, sex and marriage, money and possessions, and the poor. That is a big, loaded list.
From the outside, although it looks strange and different, those who practice living God’s kingdom here and now in these ways find that it’s exactly what they were created for – that they’re living according to the script written for their lives and their world, and it’s a natural fit like none other, even though it’s new and different.
We all want to be free, and so sometimes when we hear about laws, living a certain way, we think someone is trying to control or take away our freedom. But imagine a train, that gets bored running up and down its tracks, and looks at countryside, longing to be “free” of the rails. If it does hop the rails, it will meet with disaster and destruction, not happiness and freedom. A train is not designed for fields, but designed for tracks. A train is never more free than doing what it was designed to do...run on tracks.
It’s the same with humans, we’re designed by creator with a specific way of life. For best results, follow maker’s instructions.”
Question: Have you ever gone off the rails in life, thinking you were enjoying your freedom? What helped you get back on track?
Reminder: Last week we talked about worship, and asked you to complete our online survey about worship here: https://www.surveymonkey.com/s/8TS7K93
Reminder: Earlier in this series, we saw the importance of reading the Bible together in sync, so our new daily bible readings start today in our mobile app and web site.
