I decided today that this will be a regular feature on here-what I took away from my time at church. Do you attend church regularly? Do you remember what impacted you the most once you leave the building? I leave with these impactful statements written on a bulletin that I never look at again. This series is my solution to that.
In Sunday School we are watching the Ray Vanderlaan series, “That the World May Know.” This series takes you to different areas of Israel and explains how the geography or culture of the times impacted what we read about in the Bible with faith lessons interwoven.
Today we talked about Samson and how his failure wasn’t just in violating his Nazareth vows but in failure to fulfill the role God had given him. Faith lesson: Failing to carry out a role God gives you leads to problems. This also circles back to the fact that the Philistines would not have been where they were if the tribe of Dan had killed all the Canaanites that were residing there like they were told to when they given the land by God.
Secondly, Samson was attracted to the culture to the culture he was supposed to confront by being set aside for God. Faith lesson: We are to live in confrontation of the culture around us – not assimilate to it. We are to be an example of being set apart for God bu being different than the world around us.
During the opening of service Joel shared a post about harvest he had read this morning and then challenged us to think about God‘s harvest is here, what is our role in that harvest? Are we in the tractor? Keeping the home fires burning? Support staff? Jump in and help as needed? What is our role in the harvest?
Finally, Mike is doing a series on the prophecy of the end times. Today’s lesson was on the Antichrist with scripture from Matthew 24, Daniel 9 and Revelation 13.
Takeaways were: History is His Story-God is in complete control of present and future. The world as we know it does have an end set by God. This is why knowing God and accepting His free gift of salvation is so important. Heaven is real and so is Hell. Where will you spend eternity? John 3:16. Think about what the world is like right now-what will happen when Jesus returns and takes all the believers away? When there is no constraints on culture? Do you want to be here for that?
I felt like the lessons of the day came full circle. Someday the culture that we are called to confront will have no restraints. What happens then?
Diffusing Hope 