This week’s sermon might have hit a nerve. It might have felt tricky and you might still be thinking about it. And, that’s great! We want you to not just be a part of our services on Sunday, but we want them to shape and challenge you throughout the week as you reflect on the teaching and how it affects your life. This week we talked a lot about rights, which is a hot-button topic in the most innocuous situations, much less in today’s world, where rights and freedoms are discussed, debated, and deconstructed on just about every level every single day. It’s so easy, isn’t it? To say that you have a “right” to do this or that, to say this or that, to act like this or that. With our strong feelings about our rights, we risk making our rights more important than the responsibility we all have to lead people to Christ. When what we think are our rights take center stage in our life, we move our gospel-mandated responsibility to love people and reveal the beauty of Christ to the world.
My favorite part of the message was when Shawn said, “followers of Jesus build bridges to reach people, not walls to keep them out.” We have to be willing to meet people where they are, as they are, if we really want to share the message of Jesus with them. We have to see people as dearly loved, cherished, and part of God’s bigger story. Judgment is reserved for God – we are called to love people. And, you can only do that if you go where the people that most need Him are, and speak to them not of your rights, but of God’s love. It’s a huge challenge in our world to put aside the things that might lead to division and instead focus on grace.
So, the question really is – where is God asking you to lay down your “rights” so that you can lead someone in your life to Him?