{"id":677,"date":"2008-05-23T19:49:59","date_gmt":"2008-05-24T00:49:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/192.185.166.32\/~davidfoster\/?p=677"},"modified":"2009-10-16T19:51:46","modified_gmt":"2009-10-17T00:51:46","slug":"today-the-gathering-march-23rd","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.davidfoster.tv\/today-the-gathering-march-23rd\/","title":{"rendered":"Today @ The Gathering &#8211; March 23rd"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>It\u2019s hard to believe that this is only our second Easter @ <a href=\"http:\/\/thegatheringnashville.com\/\">The Gathering<\/a>. It was awesome to see great crowds of people coming in with great expectations, and leaving, celebrating the real hope that we have in the here and now world of Jesus Christ.<\/p>\n<p>We launched our new series, <span style=\"color: #00ff00;\">\u201c7 Ways Weird Families Work\u201d<\/span> today, explaining that Easter is all about 2 important, world-changing ideas: the idea of redemption and reconciliation.<\/p>\n<p>Jesus died and was resurrected in order to complete God\u2019s plan of redemption, to buy back that which was lost through separation and sin; and then once redeemed, to reconcile. These are the two fundamental tools we all use in our relationships today.<\/p>\n<p>In today\u2019s message we gave three stark contrasts about Easter.<\/p>\n<p>1.    <span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\">Easter is about <span style=\"color: #00ff00;\">relationships<\/span>, not <span style=\"color: #00ff00;\">religion<\/span>.<\/span> Religion is about rules. It\u2019s about coming to God your way. It\u2019s man\u2019s attempt to bully God. Christianity is about a relationship made possible by redemption through Jesus Christ.<\/p>\n<p>2.    <span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\">Easter is about <span style=\"color: #00ff00;\">redemption<\/span>, not <span style=\"color: #00ff00;\">reform<\/span>.<\/span> Religion is about moralism, trying to do better. Christianity is about ethics. It\u2019s not what we do for God, but what God has done for us. In other words, Christianity is spelled, \u201cdone,\u201d while religion is spelled, \u201cdo.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>3.    <span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\">Easter is about <span style=\"color: #00ff00;\">reconciliation<\/span>, not <span style=\"color: #00ff00;\">restitution<\/span>.<\/span> This is key when you think about your core relationships in life, your inner circle, your family. Because if restitution is what you demand, separation is what you\u2019ll always get. If revenge is in your heart, then there will be no joy or connection in your family relationships.<\/p>\n<p>As you follow along in this 8-week journey, one of the ways we\u2019ve made it easy is to create a web site, <a href=\"http:\/\/weirdfamilies.com\/\">weirdfamilies.com.<\/a> Go there, sign up, and receive all eight weeks of this email series to discuss with your family, or in your small group.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>It\u2019s hard to believe that this is only our second Easter @ The Gathering. It was awesome to see great crowds of people coming in with great expectations, and leaving, celebrating the real hope that we have in the here and now world of Jesus Christ. We launched our new series, \u201c7 Ways Weird Families &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.davidfoster.tv\/today-the-gathering-march-23rd\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;Today @ The Gathering &#8211; March 23rd&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[],"series":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.davidfoster.tv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/677"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.davidfoster.tv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.davidfoster.tv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.davidfoster.tv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.davidfoster.tv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=677"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.davidfoster.tv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/677\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.davidfoster.tv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=677"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.davidfoster.tv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=677"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.davidfoster.tv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=677"},{"taxonomy":"series","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.davidfoster.tv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/series?post=677"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}