In Ephesians 5, the Apostle Paul spends some time talking about the covenant relationship of marriage between a husband and wife. The conclusion he reaches at the end of this discussion is quite odd when you read it for the first time or with fresh eyes. Paul says that our marital relationships are actually a picture of how Jesus relates to us, as Christians, collectively called the Church. Paul says in Ephesians 5:30, “We are members of his body” referring to us mysteriously being part of Christ’s Body in the world. This is an idea he continues to flesh out in 1 Corinthians 12. In this passage, Paul vividly describes for us what it means to take a covenant approach to how we relate to the rest of the Body, the other members of the Church. He will stress that our collective relationship with one another as Christians is imperative to our relationship with Christ Himself.

Tim Keller in his new book called The Meaning of Marriage says that we as a society have experienced a dramatic shift when it comes to how we understand the purpose of marriage. Keller says many people believe in their hearts that marriage exists for their own personal happiness and fulfillment; some actually believe their happiness is better served by giving up on the idea of marriage altogether. This shift coincides with the fact that many people in our culture today think a marital relationship is all about romanticism (being “in love”) rather than covenant love. These shifts in our culture seem to get at the root issue many marriages face today, which is we have forgotten the true purpose of marriage. It’s only by recovering God’s original intention for marriage that we can reclaim what it means to have a “covenant marriage.”

An idea that runs throughout Scripture is that God is a relational God and He calls us to live out our faith in the context of covenant relationships with the people around us. The friendships we have with people of the same gender are the first opportunity we get to model the covenant life God calls us to. Covenant    friendship    is    different    from companionship, and we get a clear model of what covenant friendship looks like when we study David and Jonathan’s relationship in 1 Samuel 18:1-4. It’s in this passage that we see these two friends express loyalty to one another, and we see Jonathan sacrificially love David by laying down his right to be the next King of Israel.

Many people look at the state of marriages in America today and get worried about the staggering divorce rate. While divorce is a big issue in our culture, it seems to be a symptom of a larger issue going on in the world today. What is more alarming than the divorce rate in America is the large number of people giving up on the idea of marriage altogether. People in our culture today are moving further and further away from the idea of taking a covenant approach to their relationships. The problem for Christians who buy into this way of life is that we follow a God who is a covenant God. We see in stories like Hosea that there is no limit to His love for us. Because God is a covenant God, He, in turn, calls us to be a covenant people. It is time we put down deep roots and recapture what it means to take a covenant approach to life.

In Mark 5, there is a story of a man that desperately needed his life to be changed. He had so many spiritual and mental issues that he had resorted to self-mutilation. As soon as this man encounters Jesus, he experiences one of the most dramatic stories of transformation that we have in the Bible. This transformation allows the man to see himself as valuable, to think of himself as forgivable, and to even see himself as a saint. This is the same transformation that is available to us as Christ-followers today. Transformation for the already-believer involves understanding and living up to our identity in Christ. Jesus is still involved in life transformation and is calling all of us to experience His power in a real way.

There are a lot of cultural dynamics going on in the world today that have opened the door to new opportunities to spread the Gospel. The best way we learn how to effectively do this is by going back to Jeremiah 29 and learning from it. In this chapter we see God calling His people to take an “Incarnational approach” toward ministry. An Incarnational approach toward spreading the Gospel first means putting down roots in our mobile society. After putting down roots, an “Incarnational approach” learns to “speak the language” of the surrounding culture. Finally, an “Incarnational approach” to sharing the Good News means Christians must seek peace (or “shalom”) wherever they go.

Most people who attend Harris Creek know that the church’s mission statement is “seeking the welfare of the city.” What many people may not know is “why” this is the mission statement of the church and “how” we believe we are called to put it into practice. Our mission statement comes from one of the most important chapters in the Bible, Jeremiah 29. Jeremiah 29 was written during one of the lowest points in Israel’s history, the Babylonian Exile, and marks a time when God begins to do something new amongst His people. God tells His people that He is responsible for the Exile and calls His people to seek the welfare, or well-being, of their mortal enemies. This radical message of grace serves as some of the first seeds for the Gospel that Jesus preached during His earthly ministry. Most importantly, Jeremiah tells God’s people they must find ways to live with faith and hope even during periods of Exile.

In Matthew 2:1-16, a group of foreign magi follow a star to Jerusalem in search of “the king of the Jews.” The search of these pagan magicians is a well-known story in the Bible and is the source of much scandal and mystery in the Gospels. Part of the scandal (or shocking nature) of this story is that the religious leaders in Jerusalem are hardened to the ways of God and these “outsider” magicians are sensitive to what God is actually up to in the world. Herod and the chief priests are so engulfed in their own agendas and preconceived notions of God that they missed Him even though He was right in front of them. Probably the most frightening thought in this story is that, despite the fact that the Jewish people were groaning for the coming Messiah, they missed the signs that pointed to His coming. The challenge for those who desire to follow God is to remain sensitive to His voice and leading so that we, like the magi, can fall at the feet of Jesus and worship Him fully.

Part of almost every Christmas season is a subject that few want to talk about, and it is the subject of “unmet expectations.” Whether it’s something trivial like not getting the gift you were hoping for or something more serious like feeling lonely when you were hoping to connect deeply with loved ones, unmet expectations often play a major role during the holiday season. Perhaps this is typically something we experience during Christmas because it is something that was a part of the first Christmas. The circumstances surrounding the birth of King Jesus were not exactly fitting for a king. From the very beginning, the Son of God is marginalized and identified with the lowliest things imaginable. This sort of entrance leads Frederick Buechner to say, “Those who believe in God can never in a way be sure of him again. Once they have seen him in a stable, they can never be sure where he will appear or to what lengths he will go or to what ludicrous depths of self-humiliation he will descend in his wild pursuit of humankind.”

The circumstances surrounding Jesus’ birth have been the subject of rumors and scandal from the very beginning of Christianity. Some of the earliest rumors about Christians in the first 300 years of Christianity were about Mary, the mother of Jesus. This is because Christ came into this world in a way that is hard to comprehend with our finite minds. Because no one had ever heard of a “virgin birth,” Mary certainly had to endure all types of rumors about her character. As Philip Yancey says, “Nine months of awkward explanations, the lingering scent of scandal – it seems that God arranged the most humiliating circumstances possible for his entrance, as if to avoid any charge of favoritism.” Because Mary was “highly favored” by God, she would have to endure the rumors of scandal her entire life. She gives us yet another example in Scripture showing that when God calls someone, it brings both great joy and great pain to your life. Mary’s story proves that sometimes your reputation will suffer when you answer God’s call on your life.