Love, the Cross and the Power of Another Life

We have been continuing our journey of discovering the challenges of loving God and loving one another. The key verse this week is Galatians 2:20 "I have been crucified with CHrist; it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me; and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself for me". Kate's message this week (can be heard by clicking on the Listen tab and then on Sunday talks - dated 2011-05-22) focused on the story of the Exodus from Egypt and linking it to our crossing over from the kingdom of darkness into the Kingdom of God by the cross, with the forgiveness of our sins. She then discussed a further crossing - for the children of Israel into the Promised Land with an exchanged life for us, when we live not by our own effort but by the power of Christ in us. This is something that is little known and hard to grasp as our natural inclination is just to try harder. However there are for all of us areas of sin that we can't just try harder to deal with and it is only the power of Christ in us that can live the life that we can't live. We will continue to talk about this together as it is an amazing truth that we need to understand together.

Love and Life Together in Him

As we grapple as a church with how to love one another, we have continued looking at the Word of God in relation to love. This last Sunday we focused on 1 John 4:7-21 which calls on God's church to "continue to love one another for love comes from God." The passage goes on to say that "All who confess that Jesus is the Son of God have God living in them, and they live in God". This is an extraordinary statement and at the heart of this is the realisation that we have the power of another life living in us to help us to love one another. The challenge for us is to "abide in Christ" and to access the power of His life in the challenges of life including loving one another. In fact we can only obey the commandment to love one another if we abide in Jesus. The amazing fact of the gospel is that Jesus did not come only to forgive our sins but to offer us an exchanged life - where His life in us can enable obedience to do the things we can't do ourselves. This is the focus of the message at Boloco church on Sunday 15th. You can listen to it by clicking on the Listen tab and then Sunday Talks. We will date all talks from now on by the year, month and date so they can be found more easily. The talk also is called Love 3.

Love, God's Purposes and True Fellowship

Our little church community has been grappling with how to love one another. We have looked at 1 Corinthians 12 and 13 relating to gifts and the challenges of love. We learnt a song that focused on 1 Corinthians 13:3-8 and this is on the website under the Listen Tab and Sunday talks - it is called Love. The song uses the words directly from the New King James Version and as we learn the song together it will be the source of provision of God's word to us to build us up in love.

Last Sunday we discussed the bigger picture of God's purpose for His church on the earth and the centrality of love and the difficulty of doing this together. God is refining us all and as we come together as His church part of His purpose is to knock the rough edges off us for His kingdom purposes, looking toward eternity. The message relating to this can be heard under the Listen tab on this website and the title of the talk (under Sunday Talks) is Love, God's Purpose and True Fellowship. Some of the material covered in the talk can be viewed on this link:
Presentation on Love God's Purposes and Fellowship