Sunday Gathering at 10am
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Community meal & Story
Every Monday of the Month, 6 pm
Ypsilanti Free Methodist
1800 packard rd Ypsilanti, mi 48197
734-482-2055
Copyright ©2024 Ypsilanti Free Methodist. All rights Reserved.
06
Jun '18
Identity
06
Jun '18
In the spring of 2006, Linda Avey, Paul Cusenza, and Ann Wojcicki met together to discuss how they could market personal genomics and biotechnology to the consumer market. Based in the fertile tech environment of Santa Clara County, California, the company they formed would provide genetic testing and genealogical DNA research for the individual consumer. Though there would be bumps along the way, the company they formed, 23 and Me, would eventually boast over 5 million customers and be valued at over $1 billion, allowing individuals to learn about their genetic health and ancestry; about who they are at the cellular level.
Identity matters.
Though the term has become a buzzword, there is certainly power behind knowing who we are as a community and as individuals. Knowing who we are provides a bedrock that remains firm and allows us to base our decisions and choices on something other than immediate pressures and shifting winds.
As Christians, our identity needs to come from somewhere other than ourselves. Simply crafting for oneself an identity based on whims or even strongly held beliefs will always leave us wanting when the pressure on our life becomes too great.
After enumerating his familial and liturgical resume, Paul, in his letter to the Philippians, states: “Indeed, I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord.” Paul’s identity was not rooted in anything that he brought to the table either in lineage or personal achievements. Instead, his entire identity was contained in knowing and being known by Christ.
Knowing our identity in Christ provides us with the foundation to live a life as foreigners and exiles in this world. Only when we are rooted to the person of Jesus Christ can we navigate the affairs of the day. By understanding what is true of us as children adopted into the family of God we can navigate the challenge and nuance of living out that truth.
Beyond this, an understanding of our identity provides a greater impetus for behavioral change than willpower or discipline ever could. These efforts, as necessary as they are, must be bound in an understanding of our place as believers. The early Christians, who heard and treasured their Lord’s parting assertion that they “will be my witnesses” naturally bore this out in the way they established the church and became evangelists for their risen Lord. In the same way, an understanding of who we are in Christ will organically influence our actions and decision-making. Once we know who we are, we are then free to live out that identity.
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23
May '18
Follow Christ Together
23
May '18
Follow Christ Together
There is going to be a day (or many days) when you are going to ask yourself why you even bother to be part of a church at all. It’s going to happen. No matter how mature the community of believers or how orthodox the theology, there are going to be moments when you’re just want to run off and head for a solitary cabin in the woods. It’s inevitable. It’s inevitable because every single person in your church is just like you, flawed, imperfect, and often unintentionally hurtful.
So even with all of our eccentricities and failings, why keep at it? Why continue to follow Christ together instead of on our own?
We were designed to GATHER together in community.
The short and definitive answer is that we were designed by God to meet together and experience Christ together. Based on their understanding of corporate worship and communal spiritual life in the nation of Israel, the earliest believers implicitly understood that gathering together was critical to their realized faith in Christ. So to it is for us.
In fact, the writers of the New Testament seemed to take involvement with a larger group of believers as a given and spent little time exhorting believers to be part of a church. What they do spend a considerable amount of ink on, is encouraging believers to live together in unity. The church is the first place that we demonstrate our love for each other. It is not enough to love in theory. The church is where we are able to love in practice and deed. The church is that opportunity.
We GROW best in the context of community.
Beyond being an outlet for the love we have been given in Christ, the church is our opportunity to be encouraged and encourage others to follow Christ more closely. Through experiences such as worship, preaching, discussions, and prayer (among many) we grow and are stirred towards obedience by the words AND witness of fellow believers. The church is not simply a location for believers of Jesus to congregate but rather an entity in which the Spirit of God ministers to the individual and the corporate.
We are sent to GO out in mission from a place of community.
In addition, the church serves as a jumping off point for ministry and missions; a place for believers to be equipped for ministry as we fulfill our individual and corporate command to go into the world and make disciples.
We follow Christ together because it is the way we were made. We follow Christ together because it is how we best grow. We follow Christ together because in doing so, we honor Christ by loving each other.
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23
May '18
Love All People
23
May '18
Can we be honest for a moment?
Sometimes we have a people problem.
Oh, we like people— sometimes, but we like them on our terms. At our most cynical we tolerate people for what they can do for us. Even at its most benign, our concern for others can be a tainted mixture of motivations. Our hesitation is not without cause though.
We live in a world in which war, terrorism, injustice, politics, and crime are inescapable. Even those we choose to love grieve us with offenses both trivial and heinous. If we love, it is a guarded love and in spite of ourselves.
The problem, for Christ-followers (and it is a big problem) is that Jesus, on multiple occasions explicitly ties together loving God and loving our neighbor. When asked about the greatest commandment He naturally answers, Love the Lord, but then problematically adds on “love your neighbor as yourself.”
Often, quite often, in fact, we operate as if our faith in Christ is independent of other people. Sometimes it is easier to love the Lord than it is other people. We know the trustworthy character of the Lord but people— well, we know the track record they have going, and it’s not good.
For those who choose to follow after Christ though, the command to love others is inescapable. We aim to love not only those who deserve it but all we encounter. In loving our neighbors regardless of what they have or haven’t done, we model the way Christ loved us. He did not choose us when we were holy people with our lives perfectly arranged (we’re not even those people yet) but loved us while we were hopeless, wretched, and lost.
So we make it our aim to love through action our neighbors— strangers and brothers alike, always acknowledging that it may be difficult, painful, and messy but also keeping our eyes fixed on Jesus who, quite inexplicably, loved us first.
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23
May '18
Love God
23
May '18
We love to say that we love things; lots of things: TV shows, sports teams, and of course, people. We’re naturals when it comes to loving things. Granted, the depth of our love varies. We don’t love pizza the same way we love our spouse (or at least would never say so). At its core, what we call love is a sort of a transaction: emotion and intent manifested through action. We love our spouses so therefor we choose to spend time with them and make sacrifices for them. Yet as quick as we are to say that we love things, we also know the fragility of these loves. Sports teams lose. TV shows drop in quality (usually around the fifth season). Even relationships, in which we have invested so much, can cause us incredible pain.
We are, it would seem, created to love. The question then, becomes what we love.
Jesus was once asked which the greatest command that God ever gave was. Without hesitation, Jesus answered, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the first and greatest commandment.” This phrase, known to the Jews as the V’ahavta, part of their statement of faith, Jesus says is the very foundation of most of the Ten Commandments. It underpinned all other acts of obedience.
Jesus tells us who our love is meant for. We were created to love God; not in the way we ‘love’ an activity or a movie franchise, but with every facet of our being. Jesus tells us to love the Lord in a way in which we are willing to sacrifice everything about ourselves (our thoughts, our time, our money, and even our lives) to demonstrate our affection. To those who first followed Jesus, this means sacrificing homes, families, livelihoods, and ultimately their lives. What are we willing to sacrifice? Better still, our love finds its ultimate fulfillment in the Lord. When we love the Lord we are using love for its intended purpose. Unlike all the other things that we ‘love’, the Lord— and only the Lord will never fail or forsake us.
Our aim here at YFM is to be a community that lives out that first, greatest commandment in all that we do and all that we are both individually and corporately.
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