The Launch part 3 // rethinking perfection

Read This // Ephesians 2:1-10 (The Message)
1It wasn’t so long ago that you were mired in that old stagnant life of sin. 2 You let the world, which doesn’t know the first thing about living, tell you how to live. You filled your lungs with polluted unbelief, and then exhaled disobedience. 3 We all did it, all of us doing what we felt like doing, when we felt like doing it, all of us in the same boat. It’s a wonder God didn’t lose his temper and do away with the whole lot of us.

4 Instead, immense in mercy and with an incredible love, 5 he embraced us. He took our sin-dead lives and made us alive in Christ. He did all this on his own, with no help from us! 6 Then he picked us up and set us down in highest heaven in company with Jesus, our Messiah. 7 Now God has us where he wants us, with all the time in this world and the next to shower grace and kindness upon us in Christ Jesus. 8 Saving is all his idea, and all his work. All we do is trust him enough to let him do it. It’s God’s gift from start to finish! 9 We don’t play the major role. If we did, we’d probably go around bragging that we’d done the whole thing! 10 No, we neither make nor save ourselves. God does both the making and saving. He creates each of us by Christ Jesus to join him in the work he does, the good work he has gotten ready for us to do, work we had better be doing.

Watch This // Slides

Launch Slides ( numbers below match their slide number)

1. Most people don’t go to church because they are afraid they have to change before they can go. The reaction People have to church is that their not good enough to be a Christian so why go at all. That’s like saying I’m too dirty to take a shower. That’s the whole reason you take a shower, to get the dirt off. The church is not a museum of saints, but a hospital for sinners.

2. When you view God as a dictator, it removes any form of relationship. So the only way to please him Is by keeping all the laws and commandants. So the only way to convince someone to become a Christian is to prove there is a God, by being perfect. “See I’m perfect, and God can make you perfect too”.

3. As if we are ants and God is the bully with the magnifying glass. The problem is that if God is just waiting for us to mess up so he can wipe us out, we’d already be dead.

4.Being a Christian for me use to be about what you weren’t aloud to do.
You can’t:
… smoking
… swear
… drink
… having sex
… listen to secular music
… watch R rated movies
… go to bars or clubs
… be friends with people who are not Christians

5. But everything Changes when you change your belief about God. The reason the world sees a angry God is because to many Christians are angry, about something I assume. But Jesus talks about a God that loves, and cares, and feels our pain. He compare God to a loving father, that works in the best interest of his children. About how he loves to give his kids gifts, and loves when they spend time with him. It doesn’t sound like he wants to squash us.

6. it’s less about trying to prove God exist and more about telling People What Jesus has changed in me, and inviting them to experiencing that. It’s about being ok with who God made you. The gospels talk about how we are his workmanship. God takes great delight in creating each one of us differently.

7.Luke 5.31 says Jesus didn’t come to save the Perfect (Righteousness) he came to save those who know they need a saviour. Notice in the gospels what hacks Jesus off the most isn’t the poor people, or the uneducated. It’s the Religious know it alls. The Pharisees who use their education and religious power to make others feel shameful about them selves.

8. Col 3 …Your old life is dead..
instead of beating your self up because you messed up, slipped, caved in whatever it is, maybe the thing to do is to hit your knees and declare to God ” that’s not who I am, That’s a habit or addiction of my old self, That persons dead..”

9. It doesn’t mean we get a free pass to sin. Like Paul says you don’t sin more just so you can receive more grace. You have a responsibility as a follower of Christ to pursue the very best God has for you.

10. The disciples didn’t go around trying to prove the existence of their God. They spent there time talking about this transformation that happens inside of you when you become a Christ follower. They invited people to walk with them in their pursuit of God.

11. when you ask Jesus to be your Saviour, The first thing he does is erase all your debts. Scripture says you literally become a “New Creature” something that’s never been created before. You still have your physical body, but whats living on the inside is reborn, remade, restored into something new.

12 If we could save ourselves, we would of done it by now.

13. I spent my whole high school life trying to force myself to be perfect, I thought I had to, to be a “Good Christian”. I spent 4 years walking around with my head down feeling guilty because I could never be good enough.
If you take all that energy you used trying to stop doing things, and focus it on what you could be doing. I’m convinced you’d see more growth in your life.

14. Isn’t our biggest fear about following Jesus that we aren’t good enough.

What happens when we fall, when we say something we didn’t mean, when do something that hurt a lot of people.
The beautiful thing about Jesus is he can use us in any condition. Even Paul says he was the worst of the worst, but because of the grace and mercy of Christ look at what God did with his life.

Answer This //

Do you really think God is waiting until your perfect before he can use you?

Why do Christians feel like it’s not ok to have problems?