Connect: We are offered

The Church is a Noun, Verb and Adjective / Colossians 3:12–17

As we let God into our lives, we offer our lives back to God. What God gives is how we live.

• This Sunday we are looking at the idea of Connect. That the church remains connected to God and one another. We are called to remain connected to God. We are called to be connected to one another.

• This sets the church apart more than any other value. Because other organizations can be hospitable, other organizations serve, they lead, and they have vision. But it is the church that remains connected to God. It is the church that is committed to one another.

› – The old self runs on putting you before every other relationship.

› The new self puts God’s view and understanding of relationship first

Colossians 3:8–10 ESV

But now you must put them all away: anger, wrath, malice, slander, and obscene talk from your mouth. Do not lie to one another, seeing that you have put off the old self with its practices and have put on the new self, which is being renewed in knowledge after the image of its creator.

We offer lives filled with compassion as we have been offered compassion

Colossians 3:12–14 ESV

Put on then, as God’s chosen ones, holy and beloved, compassionate hearts, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience, bearing with one another and, if one has a complaint against another, forgiving each other; as the Lord has forgiven you, so you also must forgive. And above all these put on love, which binds everything together in perfect harmony.

Colossians 3:11 ESV

Here there is not Greek and Jew, circumcised and uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave, free; but Christ is all, and in all.

We offer lives filled with gratitude and worship as we are offered the very peace of God

Colossians 3:15–17 ESV

And let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts, to which indeed you were called in one body. And be thankful. Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly, teaching and admonishing one another in all wisdom, singing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, with thankfulness in your hearts to God. And whatever you do, in word or deed, do everything in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him.

› Allow the peace of Christ. Allow the word of Christ.

› This is good news for us.

• If the passage says the phrase, “let the peace of Christ.” “let the word of Christ.” then we can assume those things already exist.

• But the Scripture is telling us that We don’t have to make them for us. We just have to allow them in.

Revelation 3:20 ESV

Behold, I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in to him and eat with him, and he with me.

• We are invited to let the peace of Christ in. And when it comes in to rule. When we let the peace of Christ in, it means that the peace of Christ calls the shots. He rules.

• But we need to turn to God for His peace. We need to know God in His word

• If we are going to be the church then Christ’s peace must rule in our hearts. There is no other way. Christs word must dwell in us richly. There is no other way.

• You are here because you have something incredible to offer to God and to others.

• We as the church have something incredible to ffer to God and to others