Journey to The Journey

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As we learned this week, Jesus' gave these instructions to his followers shortly before his ascension into Heaven and they include four imperatives: go, make, baptize, and teach. So, what practical implications do these imperatives have for us as we seek to live in obedience to Christ? Let's look at them each, one at a time.

How could any christian not be fascinated with the book of Acts? This book of the bible tells us how church began. In our study we'll get to see the amazing works of the Holy Spirit in and through the hearts of God's people. The message in this book is beautiful, inspiring, messy, and at times even startling - afterall it is about the church. I expect that as our understanding of the initial explosion of the gospel message grows as will our commitment to spreading the gospel through the church today!

Don't let this book's position in the Bible fool you, there's more to Amos than you may realize. Amos is located in a section of your Bible known as the "writing prophets" or to label it as Jesus did "the prophets" (Matthew 5:17, Luke 24:27). Now typically when we think of Old Testament prophetic books the big-dogs come to mind like Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel and Daniel (the major prophets). Beyond those major prophets are twelve smaller prophetic books (Hosea - Malachi) known as the minor prophets, they're labeled "minor" ONLY because of the length of their books in comparison to the larger major prophets. In fact, the Hebrew Bible lumps all of these minor prophets into one book called "Book of the Twelve."

This week in our study over Paul's letter to the church at Philippi we got to take a look at the Apostle's extensive religious credentials: "circumcised on the eighth day, of the people of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew of Hebrews; as to the law, a Pharisee; as to zeal, a persecutor of the church; as to righteousness under the law, blameless." His point was simple, if our standing before God is based on our merits, then he had plenty of reasons to feel pretty confident. However, the message here, and throughout the entirety of scripture is clear...our greatest human accolades and religious accomplishments are rendered worthless before a perfect and holy God.