Retreat!!!

Our retreat less than a week away!
Here is a letter to the Gathering from our guest speaker:

Dear Friends of the Gathering,

Though we have not met, you each continue to be in my thoughts and prayers. Just thinking of you fills me with joy. I am excited for the upcoming retreat, but regardless of whether or not you are able to come, I pray you can be encouraged, empowered, challenged, and reminded daily how much you are loved.

I realize that the question running through all of your minds is who am I? I do not come with a name everyone has heard of, I do not have a reputation of great acclaim, so who then am I? I am many things. I am a friend, a brother, and a son. I am a student and a teacher. I am a retail associate and a youth minister. I am a speaker and a listener. I am a dwarf of physical stature and a giant of heart. I am Eric. But the focus of this retreat is not me. We come to this retreat each of us along a journey of faith. Some are just beginning, others have labored the road for years. But as we come may we come as family to fellowship, worship, and grow.Yours in Christ,

Eric

Jesus is Stripped and Nailed to the Cross

Over the last two Sundays we have seen Jesus stripped and nailed to the cross. Although Jesus was stripped of his clothes physically, we also see that Jesus emptied himself voluntarily, not considering his divine status as something to use to his own advantage. And so...Jesus was nailed to the cross.

We look at the cross and we can see one of two things. We can either see a man who was a liar and a failure, or we can see the Son of God who spoke truth and accomplished his purpose. And what was that purpose? Freedom! But the freedom Jesus came to bring about went beyond the scope of overthrowing the Roman empire, like the other Jewish freedom fighters that had come before and after him. Jesus had an eternal perspective, a spiritual perspective. Jesus was a freedom fighter, but unlike the others, he was fighting a spiritual battle.

The people taunted Jesus while he was on the cross. They told him to save himself and come down from the cross if he was who he said he was. But if Jesus would have come down from the cross, then Satan would have won. If Jesus came down from the cross, he wouldn't have been any different than the other freedom fighters before him. So Jesus stayed on the cross, knowing that he was not fighting for freedom from the Roman Empire, but for the freedom of your soul and mine.

On the cross Jesus took our sins and our death, the two things that Satan had over us. But staying on the cross meant victory over sin and victory over death, and ultimately victory over Satan. So it is when we come to the cross, die to ourselves, and let Jesus in to be Lord, then we find breakthrough and healing and forgiveness in our lives. When we come to Jesus we are saved, and as we commit with all we are to following Jesus, daily dying to ourselves and walking with him, then we begin to have victory. In all this we can be confident that he who began a good work in us will carry it on to completion.

Those nails might have been the weapons people used to stop who they thought was another political and social nuisance, but when we get an eternal perspective, a spiritual perspective, we see that those nails were the weapons Jesus used to defeat Satan and set us free to experience forgiveness, peace, love, joy, breakthrough and healing in our lives.

Praise God!

See you all next week at the Gathering.

Blessings,

-Tim

Knowing Christ

As we continue on our journey to the cross with Christ, we encountered a scene where Jesus is weak, and Simon is commissioned to carry the cross. At first glance one might assume that Simon loves Jesus, is a follower of Jesus that has come to his aid. But most likely Simon is simply a Jew in Jerusalem to celebrate Passover, not a close acquaintance to Jesus. Probably unknowingly Simon was carrying out Jesus' teaching. Jesus taught that if a soldier asks you to carry his gear for a mile, then carry it two. It is ironic that Jesus is now the beneficiary of such teaching.

I see in this a danger that can be a reality for every Christian. The danger is that we substitute doing the things that Jesus taught for actually knowing Jesus. We can take our relationship with Christ for granted and get caught up in creating a long list of good deeds to the neglect of our relationship with Jesus. It is one thing to do what Jesus says, but an entirely different thing to know the Jesus who says it.

We know that Jesus should be at the center of all we do, so we hold onto him as we reach out with the other hand to do his work in the world. But soon there is so much to do, so much life responsibility, so many deadlines, etc, that we have to use both hands to all the work. The problem is, using both hands means letting go of Jesus. And if Jesus is at the center, then to use both hands we have to turn our backs on Jesus.

I pray that we would never take our relationship with Christ for granted, and that we would never do anything in this world without first and foremost getting connected to Jesus, the source out of which true and holy work will flow. There is no point to anything unless Christ is in it. May we, individually and as a community, seek to put Christ at the center of it all every day, and continue that habit on into eternity.

Blessings in Christ.

See you next week at the Gathering!
-Tim