Mercy Church - Charlotte, Nc

Believing for the long haul means your eternal destination sets your present course of action.

Titus is instructing those people who have received God’s love on how to encourage one another to grow into the men and women God is calling them to be. And today we look at what God says to the women of the church.

How do you build your life on something that the majority finds to be a silly myth? That’s what he really focuses in on in what we are covering today.

We mentioned last week that one of life’s most basic questions is what happens when I die. And that belief shapes how you live now. And certainly we Christians get mocked regularly for believing in God and that Jesus died for our sins and then rose again. But everyone believes something. The end of your life will come and you have some kind of belief about what happens when you die. And that belief shapes a great deal about how you function in everyday life.

Over the next couple of months we are going to walk through a letter the apostle Paul wrote to a young pastor coaching him in how to help the people in his church develop a faith that would last for the long haul.

The church reveals an incomplete understanding of the gospel when it proclaims a sacrificial love it does not demonstrate. That maybe there is a hole in our gospel we need to open our eyes to and even repent of.

We the church, we are not saved not to sit but saved to be sent. So here is hope for our time today, I want you to walk away knowing that God has sent you.

Church isn’t a program you attend it’s a people you belong to.

Show you how your current way of operating in the world is deficient and then offer you a better way. That’s what Jesus still does today. To those just listening in and to those who follow him his words show you a better, more fulfilling life by first turning yours upside down, then rebuilding with a better foundation.

At the core of Christianity is not a set of doctrines, at the core is an event. The death and resurrection of Jesus; this is what Christianity hinges on.

As Christians, we don't obey God in order to earn favor, we obey God because we have favor. God's commands are good, but when you obey out of religious duty it smothers your love for God, and you could eventually fall into the trap and you will say things like, "well, I tried this Jesus thing, and it just didn't work for me. I did everything Jesus asked. I'm a good person, why do I feel so empty?" You feel empty because you need to understand this new kind of obedience.

God. Loves. You. Inside of those three words is the victory over anxiety and fear. If you believe that statement in its fullness you will be set free today I promise you. Now Jesus is going to take 9 verses to press this simple truth into our hearts. In fact, threaded in here are God’s promises for anxious people.