What Are You Building Your Life On? (part 2)

June 3, 2018

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I was offered two weeks in a row to teach at Hayward Wesleyan. The first week was called: What Are You Building Your Life On? I originally was planning on talking about the foundation we build our lives on, Jesus, which I did in the first week, and then what are we building our lives with, which comes from Paul’s teaching in 1 Corinthians 3:10-15. However, after the first teaching, I sensed that I wasn’t supposed to go on to the “building with” idea, but further tease out what a life looks like as one who “repents and believes.”

So the second teaching ended up being part 2 of What Are You Building Your Life On.

What Are You Building Your Life On? (part 2)

This message had several components to it:

I wanted to sort of summarize Jesus’ words in the Sermon on the Mount in a way that wasn’t a mere review of the words, so I started the teaching with “Imagine a world if…” to sort of illustrate and paint a picture of what our world would look like if we actually put into practice what Jesus’ taught.
Then we reviewed the teaching from the previous week: wise human and foolish human, Jesus’ words in Matthew 5-7, specifically the ones on persecution and anger/murder, and Jesus’ central thesis of repent.
We then looked at the response Jesus got from the crowds after he was done teaching in Matthew 7:28-29
We then looked to what another gospel writer, Mark, said about Jesus’ thesis (1:14-15) as well as Peter’s words (Acts 2:28) and Paul’s words (Acts 26:20).
Then I asked the question, what folks’ experience was like the past week as well as in general in life around the practice of repenting and believing. I gave some options around why we humans find it difficult to repent.
The main thrust of the teaching was to locate the act of repentance and belief in a person, Jesus. Not an idea, a philosophy, or even a religion. Christianity is a way of living life surrendered (repent) to a person: Jesus.
My wife, Amanda, had an experience she relayed to me this past week that was helpful to illustrate this.
We looked at an account in Luke 5:1-10 where Jesus is teaching (sharing his words) and he is with Simon Peter. They go out fishing and they catch a lot of fish. But it is Peter’s interaction with Jesus and Jesus’ words back to Peter that is helpful for those who want to be a part of Jesus and his kind of world (the kingdom of heaven).
Finally, I brought forth an illustration of putting all this together. The kingdom of heaven is like a car. The gospel is like the engine of the car. Our human act of repent and believe is what activates and fuels the engine that allows the car to move.
And then we moved into communion