Good Morning, New Beginnings! New Beginnings-wow. That seems to me even more appropriate now. With Dan Shapley's moving on to the new ministry he's been called to, our church is at a time of new beginnings. We get to see where we are and where we want to be, or more truthfully, where God wants us to be.
My first thoughts to today were to look at the letters to the seven churches mentioned in Revelation, to see if there was anything there that might point the way. And like a lot of Revelation, it was a bit confusing! But here's the basic breakdown:
Ephesus: pros-good works, tested and rooted out false apostles, enduring patiently
cons-abandoned your first love
Pergamum: pros-holding fast even in Satan's home
cons-followed the ways of Nicolaitans
Thyatira: pros-good works, love, faith, service and patient endurance
cons-listened to Jezebels false prophets
A couple of the churches came out pretty well:
Smyrna: "You will have tribulation, but remain faithful and gain a crown of life"
Philadelphia:- good works, held fast, kept His word and not denied His name
And then:
Sardis: You have works, but are dead not alive
Laodicea: You are neither hot nor cold. You are like warm and I will spit you out of my mouth.
Wow. Trust me, you do not want to get into a spitting contest with God. You WILL lose.
So, what can we take away from this? Does New Beginnings want to be a church of good works? That sounds wonderful, and was praised in most of these churches, but most of the churches with good works were also still found lacking. The trouble with good woks is we often can lose sight of Who we are doing these for. We can begin to believe that We are contributing to another person, when we as a church are supposed to be reaching out to show God's love to the world, not our own. By the way, did you know Satan loves good works? He loves anything that can keep you so busy, you don't have time for God.
But doesn't the book of James say "Faith without works is dead?" Yes, but he is saying that good works come out of your faith. Good works in themselves cannot produce Faith. First Corinthians mentions we can have all sorts of good works and gifts, but without love, we'd be just so much noise. Think Buddy Rich on a cymbal rampage!
Are we then to follow strict rules and laws to achieve holiness? Aren't we supposed to be Holy as He is Holy? Yes, we are, but there are problems with this approach too. First off, we can never achieve holiness through the law. Paul says in Romans that law is there to point out our sinfulness, to show that no one can reach God's level of holiness. ALL have sinned and ALL fall short of the Glory of God. Second, we forget that these laws are for us, and try to force them on others, when we can't follow them ourselves. Remember don't try to remove the mite from your brother's eye, without first taking the log out of your own? As to righteousness, Christ said no one was better than the Pharisees, and you know how that ended up. So, if we are to be Holy as He is Holy, it has to come from something or someone other that what we can produce ourselves.
Back to the churches. Several times, it is mentioned they have abandoned their first love and need to return. So, what does that mean exactly? Does it mean returning to that euphoria of when we first come to Christ? I don't think so. Not everyone experiences Christ in the same way. Some have an overwhelming sense of peace, some a joyful excitement. Charles Wesley experienced a "warming of the heart". I myself felt as if my heat had God's hand on it, and turned it around in side of me. like night to day. With some it's not even a single moment, but a gradual acceptance. So, to return to our first love, we have to go deeper than ourselves, deeper than something we can produce.
I John 4:10 says "In this is love, not that we have loved God, but that He loved us and sent His Son to be the propitiation for our sins." (Looked up the word - Jesus was the atonement, He came to pay the price for our sins. It's as if someone were found guilty of a crime, and received their sentence, but someone else served that sentence. Our sentence from sin was death, and His death paid that price for us)
So if we are to return to our first love, it goes beyond us, and into the one whose total, complete and passionate love was FIRST there for us. Why do we need to be based in God's love for us? It seems simple but is so often forgotten. The next verse in I John says "Beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another." Does that mean just other Christians? Nope. Check out the next verse. "No one has ever seen God, if we love one another, God abides in us, and His love is perfected in us." We are here to share God's love with the world. Not just with good works, because good works without God's love, is just trying to look good in front of others. Look what we did! Not just with righteous lows, because following laws of God without God's love is just oppression, of ourselves AND others, and Jesus came to set us free.
So how does New Beginnings return to its first love? By understanding love is not based on us, but on God. Not having God as a part of us, but us being wholly inside of God. When we return to our first love, we are not returning to an emotion, but to a person. A living person, the total embodiment of that first love, Jesus.
John 1:1 In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.
Colossians 1:18 He is the beginning, the first born from the dead, that in everything He might be preeminent.
1 John 1:1-3 That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we looked upon and touched with our hands, concerning the Word of LIfe - the life was made manifest, and we have seen it, and testify to it, and proclaim to you the eternal life, which was with the Father and made manifest unto us - THAT which we have seen and heard we proclaim also to you, so that you too may have fellowship with us, and indeed OUR fellowship is with the Father and with His Son, Jesus Christ. And we are writing these things so that our JOY may be complete.
So, what will be our "New Beginnings"? It must come through prayer, through listening to God above, not what we just want to hear, and it must come through His Love.
So Faith, Hope and Love abide, these three. But the greatest of these - is Love.
