Thursday, April 15, 2010

Our Identity Thread


PAX is entering a new stage of spiritual growth. Over the last few months we have seen the development of three Value Discipleship Groups (Value D-Groups). These are community groups for peer to peer discipleship and a place to live out and apply God's Word in our lives together. However it is not the forming of new groups or a new ministry that truly determines a new stage of spiritual growth. In the last few months we have seen God's Spirit moving to draw us to a greater application of the Gospel into our lives and to begin to work that out in an everyday way.
There is a sense of excitement and joy as we have seen several people come to a fuller understanding of knowing Christ in their life- for both salvation and renewal. This also brings discomfort because the Gospel will not allow us to hold on to a false sense of self, or self worship. The Gospel brings renewal out of humility. We are no longer allowed to gain our identity from a broken past or a religious present our identity thread is founded in God, redeemed in Christ and remade through the Holy Spirit.
In the next few weeks we will be looking at the Gospel according to Paul- through the first 8 chapters of Romans. Here we find, in the power of the Gospel, what our identity looks or doesn’t look like [next week]. How we are released- bringing freedom of heart, spirit, life- and more than this; to know that it is from God [week3], through Christ [week 4] by His Holy Spirit [week 5] frees us from trappings/crisis in identity [week 6] allowing for us to live in a confident spiritual assurance for everyday no matter what our past, present or future looks like [week 7]. The reality is, the application of these passages will take much longer than 8 weeks- but will be a place of reforming of our entire life.