Essential Elements of Life in Christ (Page 2)
Community is often under-prioritized, because we naturally tend to gravitate towards hanging out. But are we building the right community, the community God intends for us to have with one another. In this lesson, we are first going to look at how the early church (Acts 2:42-47) built their community together. Second, we are going to read through 1 Corinthians 13, at how the church at Corinth needed to shift the priority of their community from valuing talents and gifts to valuing Love above all else. A love the leads us back to Christ.
there are three primary aspects of the Christian walk: knowing God, abiding in God and obeying God. We cannot neglect any one of these aspects or we will be in danger of becoming either legalistic, heretical or a hypocrite. The Christian walk should be found in the conflux of these three thinks—knowing, abiding and obeying. As we maintain this balance and grow in all three areas, our Christian walk will be characterized as being mature. As I have evaluated all these elements of the Christian walk, I felt strongly that prayer and Bible study are the two spiritual disciplines that are absolutely indispensable. Beyond these two, I believe that there are four more disciplines that should be practiced daily, including community, worship, service and solitude. Those elements will be our focus over the next four weeks.
The Bible teaches us that the purpose of salvation is to be conformed to the image of God’s Son—Jesus. The process by which that transformation happens is called “the Christian Walk.” There are many elements that are essential for that transformation process to take place. This will be our focus
for the next several weeks. The first of these is the element of PRAYER!
In this message, we want to focus our attention on the effect of Christ’s sacrifice on the cross. According to the passages we just read, what happened as a result of Jesus’ death, burial and resurrection?
It did not take long in Scripture before God clearly communicated His plan for the salvation of the world. We cannot forget that the Bible says that “without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness of sins” (Hebrews 9:22b). And that is where we want to pick up in the Book of Genesis today, to see God reveal to His chosen people what His plan was for their salvation.