What Does Love Require Of Me?

Intro

Well good morning Real Life… My name is Curtis and it’s so great to be here with you!

We are going to continue going through our series called Home. In this series we’ve been looking at what it means for us to call this place home and what each of our roles are in this home.

For the past several months we have said over and over again… We are the church. It’s on our t-shirts it’s on our Facebook posts, and we say it in passing conversation. It’s kinda become our rallying cry. In this series we want to start breaking down what does this actually mean. How do we actually live this out.

If you call this place your church, or your home, this is a great series because as in any home there are expectations and you can see what those are throughout this series.

If you are new here, and maybe you aren’t even sure who this Jesus guy is this is still a great series for you! You can get an inside look at what church is and into what Jesus has said about some of these things. You can see who we are and get a feel for what it means to be apart of a church.

Now I’m not sure the kind of home you grew up in. But one thing that I do know is that your house had some kind of expectations. I remember when I got my license and got my first car, a 1998 Subaru Forester… What a car… When all that happened my parents laid down some expectations for what this new freedom meant and how I could use it. They had some rules like I couldn’t listen to the radio for the first month, I couldn’t drive friends for 6months, and I couldn’t do anything “unsafe” (whatever that means). I interpreted all these expectations as I can’t do any of those until I get to the end of the street. Than anything is fair game!

This theory worked for awhile until one day I was driving with a few buddies and I thought it would be fun to drive through farmers muddy field. I had visions of kicking up dirt and doing donuts and it was going to be great. I’d wash my car after and my parents would never know. So a few friends and I veered off into the mud. And it was great… For about 100 feet… Until my car sunk to above the bottom of the door frame into the mud. Luckily we knew someone close by that had a truck they agreed to pull us out on one term. I had to call my parents… having no other options, I reluctantly agreed, called home and to my surprise no one picked up. So I left a message. I still had hope!

?I got out and I flew home hoping to get there before them delete the message and hope that my friends never said anything. I mean my plan was fool proof. But I walked through the door there my parents where sitting at the kitchen table…

I thought for sure I was going to get grounded, lose my car, and get in a lot of trouble. But rather than do that my parents told me about all the damage I could have caused my car. The damage I could have caused the farmer. And what it could have cost me. It was in that moment I realized that those expectations my parents had of me driving were actually for my benefit.

And that’s what we hope you see in this series. We aren’t trying to guilt anyone into doing anything. In fact if you feel guilted into something, you should definitely not do it! But we believe that this 4 things we are talking about are in your best interest. We believe if you serve, love others, give, and live in community you will grow spiritually and be better equipped to face whatever life throws at you. We believe this is the life that Jesus is calling us too…

Not only do we believe that this is what is best for you. We believe when we all play our part that we can do things we can’t even imagine together. We believe the impact that Real Life Christian Church can have on this community is huge. But we can’t do that unless we all play are part.

That’s why we are doing this series. Not to guilt you into doing something. But to show you the way God says is best to live your life. That’s what’s best for you and what’s best for our church.

Tension

In this series we’ve been looking through the story of Nehemiah. And I think this is a very applicable story for us in our current season. I think we can find some common ground with them. The story starts with the walls of Israel destroyed and peoples hopes down. Without their walls they feel vulnerable and afraid. Nehemiah comes along and is convinced they can rebuild. So he leads them in this process through ups and downs. Good and bad. He leads the nation through this process and that requires work and sacrifice from everyone. Everyone has a role to play for this to happen.