This Is Eternal Life

And that’s really what we’re supposed to be all about, isn’t it? If you open your bulletins, and look on the inside cover right at the top, you will see the “We Welcome You!” box. Right under the name of our church you will see the purpose statement of Parkside, and if you’ve never seen it before, or never considered what it was all about, let me read that for you this morning. The purpose of Parkside, our reason for existing, that which should be undergirding all that we do, is “To know and worship Jesus Christ and make Him known,” to the world. Why? Because according to Jesus’ own words, this is eternal life.

So in light of these things I want to leave you with a challenge this morning. I want to challenge you, as an individual, as a couple, as families, to be deliberate, to be intentional, to be mission minded. And your mission is this: to know the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom He has sent, better tomorrow, than you do today, more personally next week than you did this week, to be growing in Him daily.

Ann Dunagan has written an article about parenting that I quite appreciate and I want to share with you a little quote from there and apply it to what we’ve been talking about this morning. She writes this: “In a mission-minded family, there's a God-infused energy. There's a focus on God's worldwide purpose. There's a passion for the lost. There's a spiritual depth and hunger that reaches beyond the maintenance mode of cultural Christianity. A mission-minded family emphasizes leadership, calling, and destiny. There's a prevailing attitude of self-sacrifice and an emphasis on total submission to God's will. And there's an unmistakable and contagious joy.” (www.kyria.com, Become a Mission-Minded Family, Ann Dunagan, August 3, 2012) And I would add, for it’s in knowing Christ in this way, that we come to know the peace that surpasses all understanding, a hope that is never ending, and an abundant life, filled by the Spirit, pleasing to God.

Let’s pray …