As if verses 3-14 weren’t deep enough, Paul seems to go deeper but for good reason. Paul wants the church to realize, to see, to have a spiritual awakening and experience of the spiritual blessings we have inherited. Paul thanks God for the church because of their strong faith in the Lord and love for one another, but it doesn’t stop him from praying specifically that the church gains spiritual wisdom and experience these spiritual realities.

We dug deeper into Ephesians 1:3-14 today. Pastor Ryan helped us understand that this portion of scripture in the greek and original manuscript is one very long sentence. Some say it was Paul’s hymn of praise. When we read these 12 verses in their full context we get a better understanding of how critical Jesus is to our lives.

Pastor Ryan unpacked the truth that Jesus, the Prince of Peace, and Emmanuel, God with us came to earth. In Jesus, we find peace for our journey through this life. We’ve had a challenging year. The promise of God is while we will have trouble here on earth, Jesus overcame it and lives with us…

In this series so far we’ve learned how important it is to build bridges. This week Pastor Ryan started to break down how we build bridges and even shared a powerful video testimony to show us a method we can use. Between last week’s story in John 4 and today’s scripture, we see Jesus was successful at building bridges by doing the following:

Pastor Ryan unpacked portions of John 4 showing us the intentionality and the purposeful love Jesus had for the people of Samaria. We learned that historical and cultural barriers can be broken down if were willing to stop avoiding and start embracing people different than us. Jesus shocked the Samaritan woman and his own disciples through this encounter at the local well in Samaria. Jesus built a bridge by going through Samaria and caring for one woman.

Pastor Ryan starting building further into the series by showing us how we are called to build bridges too. We learned from John 1 that God uses people to build bridges or point and show the way to Jesus. Last week we learned Jesus is the bridge to God, this week we learned we are like bridges to Jesus. Some of us may not feel all that worthy...

Pastor Ryan did a soft launch to our new series today as we celebrated lives who have crossed over from death to life. Pastor Ryan showed us the heart of God for sinner’s in Luke 15 and how much He loves when we repent and the lost is found. We learned that Jesus is the way to God, He is the bridge.

The beauty of the family of God is how diverse and different we are, but what unites us is Jesus Christ. We all have our unique personality and identity, but when it comes down to it the way Jesus thinks and loves is also the way the church should too. Pastor Ryan challenged the church to be united in a world that is divided. His main point was

Pastor Ryan poured out and communicated a burden God put on his heart for the church in America. In a nutshell, we’ve been blessed with freedom from sin and death through Jesus’ sacrifice and we’ve been blessed to exercise our faith freely in our great nation. Pastor Ryan was challenged by God that we’ve taken those freedoms for granted and the time to steward them well is now.

Pastor Ryan continued to cover essentials to the Christian faith and things we need to carry on into life as it reopens. COVID 19 sparked a renewal in prayer at Calvary and in our personal lives. Pastor Ryan said we’ve had more time to pray and more things to pray about. It doesn’t mean we all grew in our prayer life, but it definitely rose to greater importance in the church, as a whole.

Pastor Ryan shared the powerful statement that Jesus gave his disciples in a troubling time, “I am the way, the truth, and the life.” Jesus was clear, the way to the Father, to God, was through faith in Him. The chaos, confusion, and uncertainty of our nation have us overwhelmed and frustrated. The certainty of Jesus in just one sentence gives us comfort, strength, and clarity in our current world.

Identity matters…Identity is who you are or how others know you. Your true identity comes from God, but sin stole or caused us to lose who we were truly meant to be. The only one who should have a say in who we truly are is our creator. In order to figure out who you are, you have to know whose you are. You are God’s creation and when Jesus died and rose again for you, God was paying the ransom, cleaning you up and claiming you back from sin and this world. God is calling you home to be more than His creation, but His child that He dearly loves. When our identity is resurrected so is our understanding of who we truly are, who we were always meant to be and all the blessings that come with being a child of God!