In2Freedom: June 2018

Friday, June 29, 2018

Home Church Video: Staking Our Claim on Freedom in Christ ~ Study 17C ~ The Valley of Freedom ~ Step Four: The Satisfaction of Righteousness

God designed us for joy, so it is no surprise that he consistently speaks of what most satisfies the human soul.

Each of the Beatitudes in Jesus’ sermon on the mount directs us along the path to freedom in our Savior. When Jesus comes to the fourth Beatitude, “Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be satisfied,”[1] he directs us to the greatest satisfaction of all, to be like him.

In our third look at this Beatitude, we focus on allowing ourselves to hunger and thirst for righteousness the way a blind man expressed his desperation to see, and to anticipate satisfaction the way a blind man wanted his sight restored.

Join us as we pursue the gracious gift of satisfaction in righteousness that is ours through faith in Jesus Christ.

Unless otherwise noted, Scriptures are from the English Standard Version (The Holy Bible, English Standard Version. ESV® Text Edition: 2016. Copyright © 2001 by Crossway Bibles, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers.)

[1] Matthew 5:6

Saturday, June 23, 2018

Home Church Video: Staking Our Claim on Freedom in Christ ~ Study 17B ~ The Valley of Freedom ~ Step Four: The Heart of Righteousness

It should mean a lot to us that God wants everything to do with his work in our lives to touch our hearts. While people may not care how we are doing on the inside, our inner condition is God’s primary concern.

God isn’t impressed with our role-playing and pretense. He isn’t fooled by our masks. He identifies our inner needs while we are trying to pretend they aren’t there. All in all, the fact that God cares so much for our hearts should be a great comfort to us.

In this home church video, we take another look at what it means to hunger and thirst after righteousness under the promise of God blessing us with satisfaction. Our focus is on the significance of experiencing both the hunger and the satisfaction in our hearts, rather than looking for superficial righteousness with superficial fulfillment.

Join our home church as we seek God’s will and his help in finding this hunger and thirst for righteousness as the real longing of our inner selves.

Saturday, June 16, 2018

Home Church Videos: Staking Our Claim on Freedom in Christ ~ Part 17 ~ The Valley of Freedom ~ Step Four - Hunger & Thirst for Righteousness

“Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be satisfied.”[1]

How does it make you feel to know that God blesses those who are free to hunger and thirst for the righteousness they do not have?

Many people who think they are already good enough for God, while many others face their shortcomings by trying to do better. Neither is blessed no matter how much they think so.

On the other hand, the poor in spirit who have mourned their unrighteousness, who have meekly come to the end of themselves in trying to fix it and see in Christ the one on whom they can depend, freely let their hearts hunger and thirst for the righteousness they see in him.

The fact that this righteousness is offered as a free gift of grace to all who respond to Jesus in faith makes the hunger and thirst for this righteousness the most hopeful thing in the whole wide world.

It is God’s own promise to carry on (what the Bible calls sanctification) to completion (what the Bible calls glorification) the good work God has begun in his children (justification).[2]

All of this is to say that his determination to make a creature in his own image and likeness,[3] has already fixed the sin-problem that stood in the way,[4] so that now even the gates of hell cannot stand against the church Jesus is building.[5] And, one day, this church will be presented to Jesus as his bride,[6] completely pure and blameless in his sight,[7] to live forever in the satisfaction of love-relationship greater than anything us humans have ever known.[8]

No wonder God’s Book encourages us with such words as this:

Now to him who is able to keep you from stumbling and to present you blameless before the presence of his glory with great joy, to the only God, our Savior, through Jesus Christ our Lord, be glory, majesty, dominion, and authority, before all time and now and forever. Amen.[9]

That is the righteousness we long for even now, and this home church video should encourage you to let your hunger and thirst aim in that direction.

[1] Matthew 5:6

[2] Philippians 1:6

[3] Genesis 1:26-27

[4] II Corinthians 5:21

[5] Matthew 16:18

[6] II Corinthians 11:2; Revelation 19:7-9

[7] Philippians 1:10

[8] John 3:16 compared with John 17:3

[9] Jude 1:24-25

Sunday, June 10, 2018

Home Church Video: Staking Our Claim on Freedom in Christ ~ Part 16 ~ The Valley of Freedom ~ Step Three ~ Meekness

“Blessed are the meek,

for they shall inherit the earth.”[1]

As you hear of Jesus’ blessing on the meek, do you consider it a description of the kind of people who earn God’s favour, or do you receive it as a description of what a person will look like when they are under the favour of God?

When we consider that meekness is a description of people who have come to the end of themselves and now depend on another, it can hardly fit the picture of someone trying to depend on themselves to do something to earn God’s blessing.

The very nature of meekness is that people see in themselves nothing by which they could ever deserve anything from God at all, and yet they see in Jesus everything they could ever need, and so their hearts reach out to him in faith. This is a significant part of receiving Christ in salvation, that we have come to the end of ourselves and see in Jesus the person on whom we want to depend.

However, meekness is also a significant aspect of freedom in Christ since it describes the way we stop depending on ourselves and begin depending on Christ for what we need. Whatever we have previously handled in sarky and self-protective ways have not worked, and so we genuinely desire to trust Jesus to do what he has promised.

This home church consideration of meekness encourages us once again with the gracious activity of God to lead us to rest in his grace. I hope you will join us on the journey.

[1] Matthew 5:5

Saturday, June 2, 2018

Home Church Video: Staking Our Claim on Freedom in Christ ~ Part 15C ~ The Valley of Freedom ~ Step Two - The Fellowship of Comfort in Mourning

If you have been following along in our journey through “the Valley of Freedom”,[1] you will know that we have been focusing our attention on the necessity of experiencing God’s work in our inner selves.

I hope by now we all understand that the “inner self” is a biblical reality, not some worldly psychological concept.[2] Once we recognize the difference between relating to God and life from our inner selves, rather than any of the outer layers, we are able to understand why all our attempts to keep things focused on externals never lead to true freedom in Jesus Christ our Lord.

This is our third look at what we call step two of the Valley of Freedom. Jesus promised, “Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted.”[3] First, we considered the necessity of letting ourselves mourn in our inner selves, and then we took another study to explore how God comforts us in our inner selves. This third study aims to show the necessity of fellowship in the church through which God can administer his comfort from one part of the body of Christ to another.

I hope you will join us in the video version of this message to gain the encouragement you (or others) may need to receive God’s comfort through the fellowship of the church. Whether this comes in the form of one person especially gifted to help, or a prayer group that can walk through whatever comes up, or any variation of fellowship our heavenly Father brings together, God has some way to fulfill his own will that we “rejoice with those who rejoice, weep with those who weep.”[4]

The bottom line is that, if we seek to be a congregation where we experience God comforting those who mourn, we need to present ourselves to God so we are eager and willing participants in however he wants to accomplish this in the Spirit-filled life of his church. Looking at these things together will certainly help us along our way to both know and express the greatest comforts that are possible this side of heaven.

[1] Referring to the Beatitudes at the beginning of Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount in Matthew 5:1-12.

[2] Proverbs 20:17; Isaiah 16:12; Romans 7:22; II Corinthians 4:16; Ephesians 3:16

[3] Matthew 5:4

[4] Romans 12:15

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