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    Dec 15, 2024

    You Don’t Make Your Peace With God

    You Don’t Make Your Peace With God

    Passage: Romans 5:1-2

    Speaker: Patrick Lafferty

    Series: 2024 Advent - Peace On Earth: The First and Lasting Promise of Christmas

    Keywords: faith, grace, peace, glory, rejoice, boast, access

    The peace from God–introduced at Christmas, manifested in Jesus, accomplished at Calvary, and sustained by the indwelling Spirit – what does something so high-sounding look like in the most ordinary moments? What makes for this peace, both in its causes and effects. But moreover, what are the marks of this peace?

    CENTRAL TEXT:  Romans 5:1, 2

    Therefore, since we have been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ. 2 Through him we have also obtained access by faith into this grace in which we stand, and we rejoice in hope of the glory of God.

     

    PREPARATION: Psalm 37:1-4, 37

    LEADER:  Fret not yourself because of evildoers; 
    be not envious of wrongdoers! 
    For they will soon fade like the grass 
    and wither like the green herb.

    ALL:  Trust in the LORD, and do good; 
    dwell in the land and befriend faithfulness

    LEADER:  Delight yourself in the LORD, 
    and he will give you the desires of your heart.

    ALL:  Mark the blameless and behold the upright, 
    for there is a future for the man of peace.

     

    PRAYER/SCRIPTURE READING/CONFESSION OF FAITH:  John 14:1-4, 25-27

    LEADER:   Let not your hearts be troubled. Believe in God; believe also in me.  In my Father’s house are many rooms. If it were not so, would I have told you that I go to prepare a place for you?  And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and will take you to myself, that where I am you may be also.  And you know the way to where I am going.” . . . .“These things I have spoken to you while I am still with you. But the Helper, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, he will teach you all things and bring to your remembrance all that I have said to you. Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you. Not as the world gives do I give to you. Let not your hearts be troubled, neither let them be afraid.

    The Word of the LORD

    ALL:   Thanks be to God

     

    CELEBRATION OF THE LORD’S SUPPER

    CONFESSION OF SIN:  

    LEADER:  Let us confess our sin to God.

    ALL:  You made us and rescued us to have Your peace. But we tend to rest ours on what is frail and fragile, which is no lasting peace. And yet we persist. Forgive us our stubborn will to create what cannot last. Forgive us our stubborn refusal to receive what we cannot lose.

    ASSURANCE OF PARDON: Colossians 1:19, 20

    LEADER:    For in him all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell, 20 and through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven, making peace by the blood of his cross.

    ALL:   Thanks be to God!

     

     

    DISCUSSION QUESTIONS: 

    1. Under what conditions do you find yourself most at rest and peace? Why those do you think?
    2. To be justified is more than a matter of being pardoned; it’s related to being seen by God as beloved. Who most in your life has demonstrated that kind of regard for you–willing to forgive and willing to adore despite all? What has that required of them?
    3. To have access to God could mean….what? Think of what it might mean. Use other Scripture to justify your answer. What does that kind of access look like in ordinary living?
    4. When you were younger, what do you remember being most proud of about you–even something no one knew or similarly appreciated? The kind of thing that made your lungs fill and your eyes brighten? Why that? That, in the language  of Scripture, is your “boast”--or in our translation, about which you might rejoice. What’s one response to some circumstance or relationship of life that would demonstrate your joy–your boast–being in sharing fully in the glory of God?

     

    ILLUSTRATIONS:  

     

     

     

    QUOTES:  

    • So, as for the anxiety advice. Maybe we don’t need to relax more. Maybe we don’t need more time to ruminate. We need a framework to follow. We need moral direction. Not just arbitrary boundaries to avoid being hurt, but something to live by. Because all this anxiety advice is worthless if you are aiming the wrong way. Do all the breathwork you want, repeat all the affirmations you like, but without strong morals you will keep stumbling into situations and relationships that make you anxious and miserable. Try loving yourself, but I doubt you’ll get far if you don’t do anything to earn it. Without moral direction, our lives seem to be a mix of anxiety and guilt and shame that we can’t make sense of, and maybe we’ll get diagnosed, maybe get some medication, maybe talk to a therapist. But the anxiety will not go away. The world will continue to feel out of our control. We won’t trust ourselves. Let alone get anywhere near loving ourselves.
      - Freya India

    • There was a Person with me in that room, directly present to my consciousness – a Person so real that all my precious life was by comparison a mere shadow play. And I myself was more alive than I had ever been; it was like waking from sleep. So intense a life cannot be endured long by flesh and blood; we must ordinarily take our life watered down, diluted as it were, by time and space and matter. My perception of God lasted perhaps half a minute.
      - Joy Davidman

    • The radicality of Christianity is that the assurance of salvation by grace is the only thing that can free you to do good works entirely for their own sake. That ability to do good purely for the sake of the good done is a crucial dimension of Christian freedom.
      - Will McDavid

     

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