FCC Etown Podcast

The tyranny of what others have said about you is not what's most important. The words you say about yourself tend to resonate and roll around in your head in those dark moments; what you say about yourself is not what is most important. What God has already said about you is what is most important to you.

The Father of Lies is looking for someone to devour and masquerades as an angel of light so he can kill, steal, and destroy. One way he does that is by getting us to make decisions solely based on how we feel, believe things that we feel are right even when ignoring facts, and base our identity on how we feel in the moment. Real life, however, comes through living life in the Spirit, who leads us to love, joy, and peace.

The Father of lies wants you to believe you are what you've done. He wants to fill you with shame. But Shame has an enemy. And the enemy of shame is amazing grace. Amazing grace lifts our heads. Shame is the language of the father of lies. Amazing grace is the voice of Jesus in the dirt with you telling you you are worthy of love and deserving of forgiveness right now; not later, not after you fix something, not after you prove that you're worthy of love, but right now, in this moment, just as you are.

We have an unseen enemy who wants us to believe things that aren’t true so stay in the struggle. But, our Heavenly Father wants us to know and live in the truth. The truth is He is the wisdom of the wise, the power of the powerful, and he's the ancient of days, he's the ruler of rulers, he's the leader of leaders, he's the overseer of the overcomers, he's the sovereign Lord of all that was and is and is to come.

Easter is an incredible accomplishment by God. But Easter is a moment of Hope for you. He is offering you a gift—the gift of grace, the gift of hope, the gift of the Holy Spirit, the gift that washes away sin, regret, mistakes, and bad choices and gives you hope for life and death. This is a moment of hope.

Walking around this world can sometimes feel like we have stepped off on another planet or gotten out of a time machine somewhere in the future where nothing makes sense. And we get offended. And we can choose to get offended, draw the lines between us and them, decide that this place is just crazy, and hole up only with people who think like us. Or, we can seek to understand, share to be understood, and speak the truth in love.

The momentum of the church and the Holy Spirit is happening in significant ways and crazy ways and unexpected ways. And it is pretty clear that the Holy Spirit still works this way. But it’s not always according to our plan. It’s about flexibility. The longer we have followed Jesus, the longer we are a church in the community, the harder flexibility is, and the more we have to work at it. But the mission and the message never change. But there are still plenty of spaces and places to be flexible.