Jesus

What's your next step?

This week at Restore we had FOUR people (Terry, Jenny, Caleb, and Alex) take their next step with baptism!! 

What's your next step? Pastor Marc taught us this week from Ephesians 2:4-10 on how we can take the steps to having a better relationship with God. Here's what you missed!

“God said, ‘I want you to be Mine and I want to be yours.””
— Marc

SPend time with God

The more time that we spend with God, the more we come to realize how perfect He is and how far we are from Him. But that isn't supposed to discourage us, it's supposed to encourage us to strive to be more like God in how loving, merciful, and gracious we are with other people.

Jesus has called you to change your world

Our focus shouldn't be to change the whole world, but to change our community, our workplace, our families, and ourselves for Jesus.

it starts with your relationship with god

Before we can change our world God has to change us first. God wants to rescue you from who you were. God wants to redeem you into who you were called to be. And through you God wants change the world.

 

Here's a video of this weeks message.

What's your next step?

This week at Restore Pastor Marc taught from Matthew 14:22-33 and challenged us to take our Next Step. Here are a few takeaways from this week.

WHEN SHOULD I START MY NEXT STEP?

Anytime life calls us to step up in any aspect of life our first inclination is to wait till things are just right. But we don't live in a perfect world. More likely than not things will never be "just right" for us to make our next step. In Matthew 14 Jesus made his disciples leave by boat before he spent some time alone to pray. Directly after this we read that his disciples were being tossed by the waves. They were terrified that they wouldn't make it out alive, but during this storm that they were passing through Jesus appeared. WALKING. ON. WATER. But during all of this Peter asked, "Lord, if it is you, command me to come to you on the water." Jesus replied, "Come." 

We can't wait for things to be perfect. Jesus knew that this storm would come and he still commanded his disciples to go ahead of him. They thought that they were alone and doomed, but Jesus knew all along that he would come to lead them out of disaster. 

BUT WHAT IF I FAIL?

When Peter trusted Jesus, he walked to him. ON. THE. WATER. But as soon as Peter began to doubt in fear he started sinking. He cried out, "Lord, save me." Jesus immediately reached out and took his hand. Failure is a real thing. It happens, but we can't be afraid of failure just because it may happen. There are times that Christ calls us out to do miraculous things that we can't begin to comprehend and all we have to do is trust in Christ.

Jesus told Peter to come to him on the water and Peter walked to him. What is he calling you to do?

HOW LONG HAVE YOU BEEN ON THE STEP YOU're ON?

 

Here's a video of Pastor Marc on how we make our next steps.

Four Ways to "Love Your Neighbor As Yourself."

We sure love to quote Luke 10:27, but do we know how to really love our neighbors as ourselves? Here's where we need to start.

 

WHO IS MY NEIGHBOR?

Typically when referring to our neighbors we often only think of those living directly next to us. Though this is true, Jesus taught us in Luke 10 that we should treat all people as our neighbors regardless of age or ethnicity. We are taught to love ALL people.

I Love Me Some Me

Have you ever caught yourself saying this? Probably not, but most likely you've caught yourself thinking this. Maybe you've caught yourself thinking, "I'll love my neighbor, but not as much as I love myself." We have to rid ourselves of that kind of thinking and we have to start believing that we love our neighbor as much as we love ourselves, just as Jesus taught us to. We have to say, "I love me some people."

Help your neighbor

This is where we do look to help those that live next to us. Well why can't we help ALL people? We should strive to reach out to as many people as possible, but we simply can't reach all seven billion people alive today on our own. Our goal is to hone in on our community where we live. The reason being is we can affect our community greater where we live, rather than what we can do for a neighborhood on the other side of the globe. We can do this because we can see their physical needs day in and day out. Be intentional. Look for ways you can help them.

Pray for your neighbor

Although it is good to pray for ourselves and for our needs, as Paul writes in Phillipians 4:6-7, we likely tend to ONLY pray for ourselves. Remember your neighbor in your prayers. Pray for your next door neighbor, pray the people in your city, in your state, in your country, and in this world.