Today at The Gathering we began a brand new series entitled, “HOW.” This is my effort to just make the gospel and life with God as plain and simple as I know how.
Here is what I am afraid of: that a lot of us celebrate Easter and Christian holidays year after year after year and lose their meaning or never find it in the first place. So in this series we are going to be talking about practical “how-to’s:” how to put feet on your faith, and how to close the gap between belief and behavior.
Since today is Easter I thought it would be a good day to start with “How to Make Peace With God.” I don’t think any of us should assume that all of us know how that is done.
We made the distinction between peace with God, and peace of God. And that, is that the peace of God is not possible without peace with God; that there is such a thing as those who are right with God, and those who are not. And you need to know, for your own sake, where you stand.
If we’re going to make peace with God, we also need to understand that the peace, joy, generosity, and redemption that we all celebrate so often is not owed, and cannot be earned.
We talked about the five steps along the path to peace. It’s always dangerous to make conversion a formula, but at some point you have to simply help me understand how to do something that I desperately want to do. So today’s talk was about guilt, consequences, getting in the way, confirming that you have right standing, and then who you are.
This was an important talk today, and I was overwhelmed by the number of people who came up and said it was exactly what they needed to hear.
Also this Tuesday, our Gathering 4 Guys will launch. It’s not too late to sign up on The Gathering web site.
Also we’re seeing more and more interest being generated in our “Making Marriage Fun Again” live event on April 30th. If you know someone who is looking for some help and encouragement about how to build an amazing marriage, not just a mediocre one, then this might be the event. This would be a great getaway weekend for anyone living in or around the Nashville area; not just to attend the live event but stay over in Nashville and spend some downtime, and even come worship with us at The Gathering.