When Jesus first called His disciples, He was clear they were being called to something more than listening to Jesus teach. The vision of Jesus was always to make disciples who would make disciples. A church with Jesus as the head is a church committed to multiplying and making more disciples of Jesus. At Forward, this means we will intentionally build bridges with our neighbours by serving them and seeking their good. We will be unashamed in proclaiming the Gospel of Jesus as the hope for every person. And we are committed to planting other churches and being a multi-site church.
When Jesus first called His disciples, He was clear they were being called to something more than listening to Jesus teach. The vision of Jesus was always to make disciples who would make disciples. A church with Jesus as the head is a church committed to multiplying and making more disciples of Jesus. At Forward, this means we will intentionally build bridges with our neighbours by serving them and seeking their good. We will be unashamed in proclaiming the Gospel of Jesus as the hope for every person. And we are committed to planting other churches and being a multi-site church.
Every house is built on a foundation and so is every life. The question is not whether you will have a foundation but what that foundation is and whether it’s worth building your life upon. The only life that will withstand the storms and troubles of this world and be left standing at the end is the life that is built on the firm foundation of Jesus. If we build our lives on anything else our lives will end up in death and destruction
In these verses Jesus nears the end of his sermon by offering some ominous warnings. Not every teacher who claims to speak for God does and not every person who claims to be a child of God is. How can we recognize false teachers and how can we know if we’re a true follower?
Most of us are so familiar with the golden rule we don’t consider how radically transformative it is. What would it truly look like for us to treat others in the way we wish others would treat us? How radically would that transform our homes, workplaces and churches? How on earth could anyone actually live this way?
These verses hold one of the greatest promises in the bible and also one of most misused. What is Jesus really promising when he promises that “everyone who asks receives, and the one who seeks finds, and to the one who knocks it will be opened?” He’s promising that when we ask for and keep asking for his empowering to live out the things to which we have been called in the sermon on the mount, if we seek and keep seeking for God, if we knock and keep knocking on the throne room of heaven we can be assured he will answer.
In most situations, the default response of the human heart is to judge others sins while we justify our own. Jesus calls on his followers to reverse this response, to instead look at ourselves in the mirror and examine our own hearts before pointing the finger at others.