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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This week we’ve studied four practices of the first church community. Should we copy them?
Some try – indeed sell everything, gather daily, etc. just like in this book. But most don’t.
Most Christians agree this sets a pattern and principles, and those principles are what is meant to be emulated, not the exact circumstances.
Churches in our world today will take on these practices in various ways.
The Apostles’ Teaching and Fellowship
Some churches have many readings from the Bible, a short sermon. Some have one short reading, and a very long sermon about it. Some focus on studying the bible in groups at home, others in groups at church, others in groups on GO Trains like us. What matters is continuity with the apostles’ teaching.
Breaking of the Bread
Some do this weekly, others less frequent. Some have one common cup, or even a precious chalice, while others have individual portions in smlall cups. Some consider it a symbol and reminder, others see it as a precious moment of heaven touching earth when God’s actual presence is made tangible.
Prayers and Worship
Some churches focus on common prayer – many people praying the same things at once. Others focus on individual prayer, everyone praying using their own words and thoughts.
Common Life
Some churches try to live this out verbatim, but not many. I know some people building a co-living building, where many families will live in their own spaces, but share eating and cooking areas, playrooms, etc. They are trying as much as possible to share life in this way. But others see this as a practice of generosity – retaining ownership, but sharing as others have need.
There is lots of variation within each practice. What matters most is that the practice is preparing them for their mission…living and telling the good news of Jesus in the world.
These practices are essential to being a church, a community of people following Jesus. You might have been surprised, many of the most visible elements of modern church life are missing!
But for any church, these are the principles they need to continually recover and refocus. Our church is going the opposite way – starting with these practices, preparing us for our mission in the first place, and then our challenge comes later in maintaining this focus.
Challenge: With whom can you gather to start adopting these practices? As a small group, and as a large group. Which of these four would you find hardest, and easiest?
