Christ Community Church - Leawood Campus - SUNDAY MESSAGES

When we are at our worst, it is often because something has deeply hurt us. Hurt people hurt people. But what if the opposite is also true? What if loved people love people? This is the point the apostle Paul is trying to make in Ephesians 5. Paul knows we will never love each other, our neighbors as ourselves, until we know how loved we are. He calls the church, those who follow Jesus, beloved children of God. For those of you who have children in your lives, you know the look on a child’s face when they know they are loved. There is a delight, an ease when a person feels like someone takes a genuine interest in them. A safety that you are in the love and care of someone else. Loved people love people. Sermon Notes: https://www.bible.com/events/4897058422.10.23

I meet people who their entire lives have never been taught that God cares about their work, but actually he has called you to serve Him there. More than that, he actually put you there to do something only you can do. As we have been learning in Ephesians, as Christians, we are called to take off our old self and put on our new self to live out our calling in all areas of our lives, not just church on Sunday. Whether paid or unpaid, our honest work produces something good. God is a worker, and he created us to work, and Jesus redeems us to work, not only as a means to provide for ourselves, but of worshiping Him and serving our neighbors. He not only calls us to work, but He is in our work with us. All work that produces good things not only honors God, but serves others. Our faith matters in our work.Sermon Notes: https://www.bible.com/events/4896701622.10.16

I think it is fair to say that our contemporary culture is one marked by an identity crisis. We don’t know who we are anymore. In our modern quest to know ourselves, we have become more anxious, confused, isolated and despairing. As members of God’s family and the Christian faith, we are knit together in community. Like changing our clothes, we are called to put off our old self and put on our new self. We are not to live as we used to live because we are not who we used to be. We are a new family with a communal code of ethics tied to the relational outworkings of joyful Christian love. Paul points out three distinctives of our new family, the new us, the true us. We must be wise with our words, good at anger, and radically forgive others. These disciplines are not only about experiencing God’s power to change, but more to deeply encounter his abiding presence with us moment by moment.Sermon Notes: https://www.bible.com/events/4896328822.10.09

As a church, we are the body of Jesus. When people see us individually or collectively, they should see Jesus. We should be able to say to people, if you want to see Jesus, look at us. We are His body. Often though, we do not look like Him but instead look like the rest of the world in our values, behaviors, and attitudes. As the church, we are called by God to oneness; that is one Body of Jesus. To make oneness possible, we must be humble, gentle, and patient with one another. We all need each other. We can’t grow up alone. We can only become the fullness of Christ together with God’s help. It’s not always easy, or pretty if we’re honest. But we are growing up into something glorious, something eternal, something more like Jesus. Sermon Notes: https://www.bible.com/events/4895963922.10.02

Paul describes the local church as a holy temple, a dwelling place for the Triune God by (in) the Spirit. If we are followers of Christ our very individual bodies and collectively as the body of Christ, are a people, a place where God’s presence dwells. The Holy Spirit is the one who somehow brings that reality into time and space. God’s divine presence and supernatural power of Trinitarian love is experienced in time and space, both individually and collectively. To in joyful submission, heartfelt obedience, and contagious hope allow our embodied lives to be increasingly empowered and controlled by the Holy Spirit. To be spirit-filled individual apprentices of Jesus, to be a spirit-filled local church where the fruits of the spirit are manifested in our relationships and experienced in our relationships. The fruit of love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. The local church is not only a prayerful community, it is also a supernatural community, created, empowered, and sustained by the Holy Spirit.Sermon Notes: https://bible.com/events/4895580922.09.25

As modern westerners, we live in a pretty materialistic culture. We tend only to trust what we can see with our own eyes. That is actually a pretty unusual way to look at the world historically. But in a biblical worldview, there are powers that have influence in our world for good and evil. When you consider the depth of evil we see in the world, and the unexpected moments of healing, joy, or grace, it’s not hard to imagine that there are powers we cannot see who nudge our experience this way or that. These powers speak of God’s ultimate wisdom, brilliance, and magnificence. When God looks at us, he sees his most brilliant work of art. We are the victory of God. We must not lose heart because Jesus has overcome the world.22.09.18

Sermon Notes: https://www.bible.com/events/48948509Ephesians 2 gives us a soaring vision of the church as a new family. Something surprising the Triune God is building for his glory and for all eternity. Something also rather messy, yet amazingly and beautifully diverse. Jesus calls us to a different way of seeing one another as a family but also seeing ourselves differently. Not one with a posture of superiority, but one of centered humility. We are a family. In grace, Christ not only reconciles us, breaks down the dividing walls, but also gives us a new identity. We the church are fellow citizens of a kingdom with all the privileges, loyalties, and responsibilities of that kingdom. We the church have a new king and we have been given a kingdom agenda.22.09.11

Grace in the Bible is the free gift of God. There is nothing we can do to earn it. We can either accept it or reject it, but if we accept it, it doesn’t leave us the same. It changes us from death to life. We cannot build our faith on anything less than this. When we don’t know God or haven’t accepted his gift of grace, we are dead. We are not only dead, but we are guilty. We are guilty before God and his standards for us, but God’s judgment is different from the judgment we know towards one another. God’s judgment is rich in mercy. His gift of grace is a gift of mercy. He offers to us the payment for our guilt if we would only accept it. When we place our trust in Jesus, his life becomes our life. Whatever is true of Jesus, is true of us. Whatever good is in him, is working itself out in you. And whatever Jesus is, in life and death, in mountains and valleys, in darkness and light, wherever Jesus is, you are with him. And nothing can change it.Sermon Notes: https://www.bible.com/events/4894485422.09.04

Sermon Notes: https://www.bible.com/events/48941176We are anxious people living in anxious times. The many challenges of pandemics, climate, technology, overwhelming information, and political and governmental concerns seem to “seep into our collective consciousness, building on an increased sense of insecurity and powerlessness…an anxiety over an uncertain future.” Prayer is God’s most powerful antidote to anxiety. Prayer helps us regain a hopeful perspective. Prayer helps us remember who is really in charge. Prayer helps us reconstruct a more communal faith. As creatures made in God’s image, we were created to pray. We were always meant to have an ongoing communion with our Triune God who we increasingly know and are increasingly known by. We pray to Jesus, the one that is really in charge, the one who has all authority. The one who loves us more than anyone and has the sovereign and omnipotent agency to act on our behalf and to intervene in our lives and in a fearful, anxious, and uncertain world.22.08.28

Deconstruction is a process by which we question what we know, or at least what we have been taught. When it comes to deconstructing our religious beliefs, our faith, we’re talking about things of ultimate significance. If we are going to reconstruct, to build something that will stand the test of time, it all starts with God. His plan was set in motion from the foundation of the world and stands the fullness of time. And there’s even more to God’s plan. It’s news for all people. It’s grace that forgives sin and adopts us into God’s family. God’s plan is about more than just people. God's plan is to unite all things in him, things in heaven and things on earth. There is nothing in all creation not touched by God’s plan. Because God’s after all of it. Everything. And he’s calling us into all of those spaces to participate with him in his work of redemption and renewal. It’s all for his glory, not yoursSermon Notes: https://www.bible.com/events/4893759222.08.21