Talks

We all want to be loving, joyful and peaceful, but most of us are hesitant to ask God to make us patient. Because patience means that we’re admitting there are wrongs in our life, and that we have to face them: in our families, in our workplaces, in our churches. But God shows us the perfect example of patience by looking wrong in the eye, and committing to see it through to the end. Even to the end of sending his Son to die on a cross, to save a world full of people he’s been patient with for thousands of years.

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How can we burn in the Spirit without burning out? How can we be offering our bodies as living sacrifices, without dying from exhaustion? In view of God’s mercy, we’ve been given a Spirit of zeal. And because of Christ’s finished work, he promises to give us rest for our souls. But how can we balance our lives with zealous service and rest? In this topical talk, Mitch unpacks this idea, of how to live a life of zealous, sustainable sacrifice for God, in view of his mercy.

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We all want to be loved with complete devotion and sincerity, but we also know how difficult it is to do. In the face of all of our half-hearted love, this passage says: “Let love be sincere;” literally, without hypocrisy. In view of God’s absolute, proven sincerity of love in the gospel, we’re called to pour that love out to others with complete sincerity of heart. It can be costly and painful, but God pours his love into us, and so he is transforming us into a people who love each other with utter devotion and sincerity.

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Are you gifted? It’s easy to feel like you don’t have much of a gift, or that you have much less to offer than others. But in Romans 12, we hear that in the community of Christ God gives gifts to everyone, and everyone is valued. And all of these gifts are given to us from the Giver, to give to one another, and to bless one another. In the gospel, we belong to one another–our gifts are to lead us to humility, not pride.

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It’s so easy to be passive, and to become like the world around us. But in the gospel, we’re called to be distinct–to be transformed by grace, for our whole lives to be made new by the mercy of God. In this talk, Sam walks us through some of the challenges in this, as well as some of the great blessings that come with this transformed, new life.

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As we begin our series, looking at how the gospel transforms our community, we took a whirlwind tour through Romans, looking at sin, wrath, faith, grace and the new people God is creating. After all of this, Romans 12:1 says “therefore,” in view of everything that has come before, this is how we are to live as Christians. In view of God’s mercies, it’s reasonable and rational to offer our bodies as living sacrifices, holy and pleasing to God. This is the first idea Romans 12 calls us to grasp as a gospel community: our entire lives, 24/7, 360 degrees, are to be lived in worship to God.

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