VISION - RooTing IDENTITY
To be rooted among a family,
in Christ, producing real fruit
for the glory of God and
the joy of all peoples.
EXPLORING WHAT this meanS
Rooted among a family...
Following Jesus Christ is personal and intimate. You are in Union with the One True God, but this relationship is to be lived out with others.
The truth and pattern of Scripture is that God's people are not just a group, but are a family so unified that they can be described as The Body. When we are adopted as children of God through God’s Grace to us by believing in Jesus, we are welcomed into a Family called The Church. Family can mean a multitude of things to people because of their personal experiences, but the Family of God looks very specific and shouldn’t be confused. In fact, one of the sure ways the church should be identified is through the marked way in which they love each other. So amazing should this self-sacrificing, Jesus-born love be that others outside of the church see it and know that we must be followers of Christ. True, deep love is fostered, consistent and committal; not lazy, superficial or circumstantial.
As members of Christ's family, we strive to love each other, the way the Word of God describes for us to. The people of God are the Family of Grace and it is in our humility at the feet of Jesus that we might be known by our love for one another.
In Christ...
This is the crux of our faith, life and church. Jesus Christ of Nazareth claimed to be one thing - God. You cannot mistake him for a mere teacher, good human, or prophetic voice. He claimed to be the "I AM" of the Old Testament; the God of the Hebrew Bible that called Abraham out and led the Israelites from slavery in Egypt. He claimed to be the only "way, the truth and the life" for all of humanity. His statements in Scripture matter because they demand a response. His claims are so bold that we have to deal with them. To relegate Jesus into a category He and his followers never would have put Him in, is to entirely misunderstand, misinterpret or ignorantly approach the person of Jesus of Nazareth. We have to do something with Jesus. We must either "crown him" to be who he claimed (God), or "kill him" as a lunatic.
As Christians, we have seen the only option. We have had our eyes opened by the Word of God through the Power of the Holy Spirit to see Jesus Christ rightly. We see him for who He is - Lord and Savior of a broken world ravaged by sin, that he will restore one life at a time, until he returns to make all things new. Being “in Christ” means that we have confessed our need for Jesus to save our souls from sin & death and therefore have surrendered and accepted the reality that He is the only answer to our problem and we must have Him as Lord over our life.
In this repentance from the old life, we are, by the power of the Holy Spirit, United With Him and he imparts His life to us. His life covers our sins, enables us to stand in His righteousness, rescues us from the dominion of darkness, removes the required penalty that our life of sin deserves, and most importantly, destroys the barrier (sin) that separates us from the One and Only Creator God who we were made to live for.
By His Grace Alone, through Faith Alone, in Christ Alone - the only way has been made for us to live.
It's here that your new life in Christ begins.
Producing real fruit...
A tree is known by its fruit.
An apple tree is known by the apples that it produces. No one would ever argue that a tree that has apples growing on it is a peach tree. It would make no sense! A tree is known and understood by what it produces. Jesus uses this truth to describe the life He imparts to Christians. If there has been new life imparted to you by Christ, your life will begin to bear fruit that looks like the example of Christ. Your whole life will begin to change as a result.
The commands of the Lord will become sweet to you, you will begin to desire and to talk about Jesus, and your life will begin to bear the fruit of the Holy Spirit’s work (love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control). There will be real evidence that this New Life you have been given is inwardly transformative from your heart and mind - not just rogue “good acts”.
As mere people, we cannot peer into a someone's heart, but we can see the overflow of their heart by their actions. God is either producing the likeness of Christ in you and the fruits associated, or He isn’t. It’s here that we can see and discern the life of Christ at work in the lives of people. We specify “real” fruit because people can fool themselves and each other. People can look right but be doing it out of contrived motivations. Whatever the reason for it, contrived fruit will eventually be shown as false by the Truth of God’s Word. As Christians we cannot produce real, lasting or effective fruit on our own. It is our union with Christ that enables us to be used so that the real, eternal fruit of God might be produced in our lives and in the lives of others. Our simple responsibility is to spend time Abiding In The Life, Presence and Example of the One who came to save us and who withheld nothing from us.
It is here Real Biblical Fruit is born.
For the glory of God...
This is what it is all about – worship.
Whether you try to or not, you are always giving your worship to something, because worship is what you do with all of yourself. What you center your thoughts, time, money, energy, identity and life around, is what you worship. It could be as simple as your career or your cat. Your retirement or your next high. We pursue things with all of ourselves because we desire something to fill us, to make us whole. But that’s the whole problem. We spend our days filling ourselves with temporary things which inevitably leave us empty or let us down.
When we think of "worship" we picture some ancient culture or civilization falling down before a wooden statue or a stone carving. In our modern society we think that we are above these old practices, yet just as they centered their lives around what they believe to be true, so do we. We have just replaced these “primitive” things for anything we personally believe will bring us ultimate things like joy, comfort, hope, satisfaction, power, or control. By nature we pursue and fall for these things that only temporarily satisfy us. We want so desperately to control and live out our lives the way we want, yet this runs in total contrast to the way we were made and what we were made for.
The truth is we weren't made for ourselves, we were made for God. God intentionally created you for a specific purpose. That specific purpose is to reflect and show who He is to the world because you know him to be the only ultimate thing worth living for in all the universe. Anything less than this will not do...and humanity sees this every time they are broken or let down by people, the world, or themselves. As we were created in the image of the One True God, we are only at home and satisfied when we are united with him and living out the purpose for which we were made.
And the joy of all peoples.
It is sin that has ravaged, marred and taken away from the beauty and purpose of God's design. It's why we see brokenness all around us. It has invaded to such a degree that literally every human being in the past, present and future - has, is and will taste the harshness of this reality under the dominion of darkness and the sting of death. When we walk out our purpose in the new life Christ has given us, we are a part of God's redemptive history and current story to reconcile the world back to himself. God will restore all things and by the power of the Gospel of Jesus Christ, he will fulfill his plan and we will participate - seeing the life of Christ spread by the restoration of souls to the true image of God (Christ). When truth is established, sin pushed back, brokenness healed and the life of Christ displayed in us, God's purpose advances and every human on earth benefits.