Over the past few years, I've done a lot of teaching on the subject of faith and especially concerning faith, our faith in God. I've shared with many people about how this faith in God requires certain things on our part. Namely, there are three different areas. I believe when we say we are having faith in God. There are three areas that I believe that we are what we are confessing to. I believe that when we say we have faith in God, that we are trusting in who God is, in other words, his character.

My prayer today is that we're able to really deliver the message that I believe the Lord wants us to share this morning. I've been in full-time ministry for, let's see, let's do the math, 20 plus years now. I asked the Lord many times, why did you call me to the pastor? I kind of envision Moses sometimes like, Lord, why did you put me in charge of these people? But those of us that have been in ministry, that's been pastoring, we know the analogy that pastor is a shepherd caring for a flock. And in order to do that, you have to have what we call a shepherd's heart, a pastor's heart.

Obey and obedience, those are foreign words in our culture today. As a matter of fact, in this, “my truth generation”, nobody can tell me anything. Matter of fact, a few years ago, the number one song was “Can't Nobody Tell Me Nothing”. Obey and obedience is foreign to this culture. It signifies things that they don't want to do: follow rules, adhere to authority, follow instructions. It's something that goes against the foundation of our culture today that's taught to be self-reliant, that's taught to be rebellious to authority, that's taught to follow their own so-called intellect and wisdom.

As we said before, those who belong to Jesus are called to a community of believers who share a common experience in salvation. The scripture we just read tells us that this community is to never stop praying. Other translations say to pray without ceasing. To never stop praying or to pray without ceasing means to have our minds always on the things of God and to be in constant communication with Him.

If you look at that term community, it's defined in many different ways. Depending on how it's defined, it could indicate anything from a group of people as a whole or it could describe a feeling that comes from such a group of people. And I tell this community has, in the theological, scholarly, theological realms has fostered many discussions. They have been interesting, even in my seminary life, how much we can discuss what the nature of community is and means.

Speaking of the spiritual, we often receive the things of the spirit as it's being filtered through our flesh. Like when we listen to a sermon, we all have a desire to be spiritual, but we have all the reality of fighting with all these fleshly things that's going on in our minds and bodies. In order for us to become spiritual conduits of spiritual revelation, we have this filter of the flesh. And so sometimes, we are struck or mesmerized or concerned or overly concerned about the outward appearance or how something looks or how something sounds before we even get to the content of what we are going to receive.

You know, repentance is the path to forgiveness and salvation. Pastor Brian alluded early this word, repent. Repentance has gotten a bad reputation in church. That's because more often than not, we have gotten a picture of someone yelling at us, "repent!" or coming with a harsh tone of repentance and wanting to repent. And as a leader in God's church, I want to take time to ask you to forgive us for that.

I want to read something to you. I believe in giving credit where due, so I didn't come up with this, but this is some information that comes from the Pew Research Center. It says, since the World Health Organization declared Covid 19 a global pandemic, three years ago, observers of religious life in America have wondered whether and how the upheaval would impact religious worship. Would the temporary shuttering of churches and other houses of worship accelerate the long-term decline in attendance, especially if many people who stopped attending religious services in person during the pandemic never go back? Or could the widespread introduction of virtual services extend congregations’ geographic reach, increase their appeal to young people and help them attract new audiences? These are some of the things that the Peer Research Center were gauging because of what we went through in the past three years with the pandemic.

Before the world began, God had a plan to reconcile himself to those that was sin against him. This would be accomplished by the sacrifice of Jesus Christ. And because of this sacrifice, now sinners are saved and their sins are forgiven, and they become part of what we call the body of Christ. And that body of Christ is also called the church.

Today is Palm Sunday. During the beginning of Jesus' last week of earthly ministry, he rides into Jerusalem down the slope of the Mount of Olives. This is a true historical event. We have historical records.  Amongst Bible scholars and the like, this entrance into Jerusalem has been labeled the triumphal or triumphant entry. There were many people that welcomed Jesus in Jerusalem that day as he rode down the slopes of the Mount of Olives. Many that welcomed him then believed that the hour of his triumph had come. They believed that he was about to assert his royal authority and begin his divine reign over Jerusalem. 

We have a burden in the church today to cry out to people, to cry out for them to come and to be a part of us. That's a good mandate for us to have. Many, you hear this cry louder amongst the churches, and I mean the church, big seed church, the corporate church, the body of Christ. Sincerely, many of those churches believe that they are mimicking the Lord when they are crying out for the call to come and to be a part of him, just like he did for them to come and to be a part of him. But if we are really honest with ourselves, I think the evidence shows that although the call to come is there, the lingering question remains, what happens when the people come?

One of the things that we are trying to establish through our ministry is just bringing us into a different place, a different level in Christ. To do that, there are some things that we have to reexamine within ourselves in the way that we do things. One of those things that we need to reexamine in our lives is in the area of tradition or tradition. I want to talk today about the traditions of men versus biblical truth. There are traditions of men versus biblical truth. If you look at kind of a textbook definition, I went online and looked at some definitions, and one of them, it says, "A tradition is a long established custom or belief that has been passed on from one generation to another." The Britannica dictionary says that a tradition is a way of thinking, behaving, or doing something that has been used by the people in a particular group, family, society, et cetera, for a long time. So tradition, we all have them. We all have traditions, whether it be on eating seafood at New Year's Day, or some of our families eating black-eyed peas for good luck.

It behooves us today to talk about, and we are going to talk about some issues, especially, there is a lot of pressing issues today concerning the sanctity of life. But we are going to talk today on four areas pertaining to human life. The first thing is foundational to me; we are going to talk about is being created in the image of God. Secondly we are going to talk about the beginning of life. Thirdly, we are going to talk about the end of life. And then lastly, we are going to talk about the treatment of children and the disabled and the elderly. 

I'm a teacher of the word, and God put a burden in my heart in my teaching, to focus on what we call the whole narrative of the Bible, the whole story. Because oftentimes when we see people stumble at the mention of Jesus is because they don't have the whole story.

What a strange title: strength and humility. Strength and humility. What really is humility? There are many definitions, but we are just going to take common definition here for a minute. Humility can be viewed as the opposite of pride, arrogance, and an inflated sense of our importance and talents. It is based on a fundamentally caring and compassionate attitude toward others. That's humility. When we are talking about a strength in humility, the world doesn't understand it. The world doesn't equate humility with strength. But just because the world doesn't see strength in humility, let's not think that humility is a weakness either. The world views humility as a weakness, and that's because the world's culture is full of pride. to be blunt about it.

Truth, integrity, honesty, transparency, respect, responsibility, being kind to others, all of these things are not foreign to those of us who follow Christ, but these are the very things in which this world culture is tremendously lacking. But these are the very things that should be the trademark of the followers of Christ.

There are no prerequisites to the gospel. There are no restrictions to the gospel and those of us like Hope Community, we embrace the gospel message. We even have signs around on the wall that says, "come as you are amen". There are churches today that have the moniker of come as you are, because there are no limitations or restrictions for the invitation to come to Jesus Christ, but__ everybody say, "but" that message is incomplete without his tagline. That tagline goes something like this' come as you are, but leave transformed by him. That's the title of our message this morning, because it's not simply about coming and being a part of some fellowship or some social club.

It's time to move from lip service to actually looking like what we believe in Christ. There was a song by Tina Turner that says, "What's love got to do with it?" Well, Ms. Tina, when it comes to the church of Jesus Christ love has everything to do with it.

A major thing that we were blessed with from the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ, is the ability to now choose to live a life that's pleasing to God, or we have the choice to live a life that's dominated by our sinful desires. Yes, if you are in Christ, you now can choose to live this life to live right before God or not.

I believe as pastors, preachers, ministers, servant of the Lord, we have specific assignments in the earth. We have specific assignments overall, the reason why we are here, and then when we are in a ministry setting, we have different assignments to do in the Lord. Those assignments change from season to season. I believe that one of the assignments or the mandates that the Lord has for us at this season is to help the body mature. The Lord has burdened our hearts to see where we are at as a church community to show us, not in a condemning way, but to help the body grow up. One of the areas that we see that the body needs to grow up in is this fruit-bearing aspect of our lives.