O is for the only one—–ah, sing it Mr. Nat King Cole

As we launch into looking at the Fruit of the Spirit (Galatians 5:22-23), we’ll notice the primacy of love as that which the Holy Spirit produces in our lives.

“It would have sufficed to list only love, for this expands into all the fruit of the Spirit.”  –Martin Luther

Timothy George says, “Before love is the fruit of the Spirit in the life of the Christian believer, it is the underlying disposition and motivating force in election, creation, incarnation, and atonement.”

  As CS Lewis put it so well:
“God, who needs nothing, loves into existence wholly superfluous creatures in order that He may love and perfect them. He creates the universe, already foreseeing – or should we say “seeing”? there are no tenses in God – the buzzing cloud of flies about the cross, the flayed back pressed against the uneven stake, the nails driven through the mesial nerves, the repeated incipient suffocation as the body droops, the repeated torture of back and arms as it is time after time, for breath’s sake, hitched up. If I may dare the biological image, God is a “host” who deliberately creates His own parasites; causes us to be that we may exploit and “take advantage of” Him. Herein is love. This is the diagram of Love Himself, the inventor of all loves.”

A driving force behind the decision to move to a new schedule was a process of thinking through the question:

“What is the purpose of our weekly gathering?”

The leadership of Christ Community emerged from reflecting on the Scriptures to say that worshiping God in community is central to what we do each week—AND central to what every Christian needs each week.  To gather with God’s people to offer Him praises and hear His word.

Let me encourage you to pray about two practical goals:
1.) I will orient my life around a weekly service of worship with God’s people.
2.) I will take the necessary steps to be in the sanctuary prior to the start of the service, whether at 9am or 10:30am.

I firmly believe that these radical and simple commitments could bear all sorts of fruit in us, individually and corporately.

Psalm 84 gives a wonderful picture of the great benefits of a life centered on gathering to worship God corporately.  We need to bring him our praises and our pain, our hopes and our hurts.  For in His presence we are ransomed, healed, restored, forgiven.  We move from strength to strength.

How lovely is your dwelling place,
O LORD of hosts!
My soul longs, yes, faints
for the courts of the LORD;
my heart and flesh sing for joy
to the living God.
Even the sparrow finds a home,
and the swallow a nest for herself,
where she may lay her young,
at your altars, O LORD of hosts,
my King and my God.
Blessed are those who dwell in your house,
ever singing your praise! Selah
Blessed are those whose strength is in you,
in whose heart are the highways to Zion.
As they go through the Valley of Baca
they make it a place of springs;
the early rain also covers it with pools.
They go from strength to strength;
each one appears before God in Zion.
O LORD God of hosts, hear my prayer;
give ear, O God of Jacob! Selah
Behold our shield, O God;
look on the face of your anointed!
For a day in your courts is better
than a thousand elsewhere.
I would rather be a doorkeeper in the house of my God
than dwell in the tents of wickedness.
For the LORD God is a sun and shield;
the LORD bestows favor and honor.
No good thing does he withhold
from those who walk uprightly.
O LORD of hosts,
blessed is the one who trusts in you!
(Psalm 84 ESV)