God’s grace just changes everything.   This story uses a giving event to show off the power of God’s grace.  This is not rich churches giving to poor churches, as we would expect should happen, but really poor churches giving to other poor churches.    The churches of Macedonia are giving liberally to the churches of Jerusalem to help them out in their time of need but they themselves (Macedonian churches) are described as people in deep poverty.   Some exciting highlights of this story are that their affliction should have brought pain, yet they were joyful.  Their deep poverty should have been a reasonable excuse for them to ignore the offering plates when they passed, yet they begged Paul to receive their offering.  So how was all this possible?  Because grace writes exciting stories out of hopeless situations.

Jesus gave first.  II Corinthians 8:9 says that Jesus (who was truly rich) made Himself poor so that we could be rich.  The believers at Macedonia then gave themselves back to Jesus (II Corinthians 8:5) then to all other believers.  This is how the grace of God guides the story and changes all the rules.  The pain of my affliction is now swallowed up in joy, and my poverty is no match for my generosity.  I have my own abilities plus all of the grace of God at my disposal!   Our teenagers should not go it alone and try to write some story themselves, or worse, let a lost world write it for them.  The grace of God changes everything and the next big thing that God wants to do includes our young people and us.  They should see the work of grace in us and hear our exciting stories of how it changes everything.

Contact John Pearson at john@mjvi.org , 770-265-7846 or Sandy Pearson sandy@coldriveram.com , 770-377-5518 for information about the high school class at Vision.

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The Parent Corner is one of the ways we endeavor to help keep you informed in the lessons and material being taught to the teenagers of our church. Here is the lesson taught to our high school students on the first Sunday of September.

• I Corinthians 11:17-34
• September 6, 2015  
• John & Sandy Pearson – HS class

What our teens should know about it. 

It’s not a bad thing to be invited to the reading of someone’s will.  It usually means that you are included and that you will receive something.  Jesus invited His closest disciples to meet with Him in the upper room, where He presented His will and Testament to them.  It left to them and to all the world the forgiveness of sins and eternal life in heaven with Him.  After He presented His Testament, He went to the cross and died.  A Testament is not an agreement between parties, but the power that a person has to give what they possess to someone else.  It doesn’t go into effect until the one making the Testament dies, but once activated is cannot be undone.  It is irrevocable.  Jesus left us the forgiveness of sins, then went to the cross so we could have it now.

The Lord left an open invitation to us (as often as ye eat this bread and drink this cup, I Corinthians 11:16) to meet back at that same table and celebrate again that we received the New Testament from Him.  He also wants us to think often about the fact that He will soon return for us.  It is a solemn supper; not like a fellowship meal which sometimes can cause problems (I Corinthians 11:17-22) but a place where we focus on the awful destructive power of sin and the cost of redemption from it.  Then we sing and thank God for the New Testament we received in His blood.  To misunderstand the solemnity of the supper is to risk the chastisement of God.  The Lord’s Table is a place of self-examination and honesty before God.  It is the table where Jesus revealed His Testament to us then went and died so we could have what He left us.  Our young people that know Christ and have followed Him in baptism should be invited often to attend that supper with us.

Contact John Pearson at john@mjvi.orgor at 770-265-7846 for information about the high school class at Vision.

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What You Think of the Cross Determines your Wisdom or Foolishness

I Corinthians 1:17-31 

May 3, 2015

Knowledge is the collection of things that you know.  Wisdom is the power or ability to properly use what you know.   A person may know a damaging fact about someone.  That is knowledge.  Wisdom is the decision to tell it to others or keep it to themselves.  Our teens get the chance to hear all sorts of things about Jesus in our services and classes.  Their knowledge of who Jesus is gets fed regularly.  Our greatest gift to our young people as parents and spiritual leaders is to demonstrate the wisdom of putting the cross of Christ first in our lives.

The pressure to study and go to college is on them in their high school years.  The teachers of worldly information put great credibility on grades and degrees.  While they should do the best they can, and we should encourage them, it is vital that they understand God’s truth about the wisdom of words (I Corinthians 1:17) and the influence of worldly wise people.  While they will seek to preach that that the cross and the crucifixion of Christ is foolishness, God has already shown the wisdom of this world to be false in both Old and New Testaments (I Corinthians 1:19-20).  Whether our young people end up was wise or foolish will depend solely on what they think of the cross, and what they think of the cross will depend largely on what we think of it.

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Mature Christians Imitate Christ by Serving Others. 

March 28, 2015 Romans 15

This chapter continues the discussion from chapter 14 on strong versus weak Christians.  The strong are those that understand the liberty they have in Christ and how to use it to serve Him, while the weak are those who feel the Christian life is a set of rules and abstinences they follow as a way to please God.  The strong are to bear the infirmities of the weak (help them) and not to please themselves.  This is a lesson on service and against selfishness. We waste time with our selfishness trying to control situations instead of using our liberty to serve and help our brothers in Christ to mature.

God tells us in the chapter (Romans 15:4) to read our Bible and learn how He does things.  Learn how Jesus took our reproaches on Himself and how He received us flaws and all.  He also tells us that in the Scriptures we will find the God of patience as well as the consolation we need to deal with whatever the current life challenge is.  Sometimes that challenge is a who not a what.  Most of all, we will learn how to receive one another without being selfish and glorify God together.  He deserves to be glorified.   So if you want to know how to show yourself as a spiritually mature Christian, learn how Christ served others and then imitate that.

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Text: Romans 10:14-21

February 8, 2015

Romans 10:14 “How then shall they call on him in whom they have not believed? and how shall they believe in him of whom they have not heard? and how shall they hear without a preacher?.”  Our young people have to be the preacher in this verse for their friends, or they at least have to be the one that gets them to the preacher.  They will not be saved by accident.  We know two basic things about evangelizing our neighborhood and the world; first, it is an intentional act and second it’s only good news if it gets to those that don’t have it in time.

One young lady in the high school class took that verse very much to heart last week and decided to invite one of her friends from school to come on Thursday night.  The young man heard the Gospel and made a decision to trust Christ.  How beautiful are the feet of those that bring the Gospel to their friends and family or even to those that they do not know.  How will they believe in Him in whom they have not heard and how will they hear without one of us that already know that will testify about what Christ has done in our lives.  We that have the truth owe a debt to those that do not to make sure they hear.

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Don’t Waste Your Advantage!

Text: Romans 9:1-3

You had the advantage and you wasted it!  That is Paul’s message to Israel in Romans 9:1-3.  He is grieved to the point where he offers to trade his salvation for the salvation of the Israelites.  Though that wasn’t possible, it demonstrated the measure of his grief over the fact that his people had blown the greatest advantage ever given to a nation.  They were the nation chosen by God to take the Gospel to the world.  Because of that, they had all the advantages of the covenant, the law, the tabernacle the lead in all the worship and above all, they were the nation through which God sent us Jesus.  They had all the things that pictured Christ, but when Christ came they rejected Him.  They totally wasted their advantage.

God has given the church the advantage today.  Though just for this time, it is still the greatest advantage a body can have.  We have the truth of the Bible, the fellowship of the body of Christ and most of all the blessings on the work of the great commission.  God is for us which means that nothing that is against us measures up.  God is using His church in this age to do His work.  Anyone that has been made His child and become a part of His church has the advantage of His blessings while they live out their new life in Christ.  To live any other way is to squander the advantage that we have and not to learn from the lessons of men like Esau (Romans 9:11-13) who traded his birth right advantage for one meal.  He was sorry afterwards, but it was too late.  Don’t be sorry, take advantage of your advantage.

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More than conquerors through Jesus (Romans 8:28-39)

There is a great story in the Old Testament about a mighty man named Benaiah (I Chronicles 11:22-23).  Benaiah, among other great acts is known for taking a spear away from an Egyptian and whipping him with his own weapon.  Benaiah was more than a conqueror because he took the enemy’s weapon away from him and destroyed him with it.  In the last eleven verses of Romans chapter 8 we see the long list of things that will come against us as Christians.  We also are told that God is for us and He will work all things together for our good.  That means that even the bad stuff brings victory in our lives if we trust God to take us through them.  That makes us more than conquerors.

Jesus faced all the things listed in these verses in Romans 8.  He was in distress, persecuted faced peril and the sword and had the powers and principalities of this world come against Him with all their furry.  He arose victorious over them, and if we be dead with Christ then we are also raised in newness of life with Him.  Our salvation doesn’t prevent those things from coming our way, but we can rise up against them in the power of God and see that He will work all those things together for our good.  We are more than conquerors in Jesus which means that in the midst of the trial or temptation is both the way of escape (I Corinthians 10:13) and the tools of a great victory in Christ.

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We have heard from our childhood that we are what we eat.  It’s pretty easy to see who is eating the right stuff and who isn’t.  Romans chapter 6 tells us we are who we serve.  If we serve sin then we are the servants of sin, and if we serve righteousness then we are the servants of God.  The chapter is about what choice Christians will make about who they will serve.  Will we go back to serving sin with our Christian life, even though we know that the things we did in that life brought shame and death, or will we serve righteousness and holiness which is what our new life is designed to do?  Either way we are guaranteed to see the fruits of our service, good or bad manifest themselves in our lives.

When we were under sin and the law, before salvation, we did the thing that came naturally.  That is, our nature reacted to our sinful appetites by yielding to the temptations we thought would satisfy us.  Though it brought shame and ultimately death, it was what we knew and we were comfortable doing it.  In Christ sin no longer has that dominion over us and we can respond to its promptings with what we have learned in Christ and have victory.  We can chose to disobey the old master and serve God.  We have learned that real victory in our Christian life comes through the crucifixion and resurrection.  What used to stimulate us to react to evil can now be used as a signal to respond with godliness.

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Romans chapter 5 leads off with the peace we have with God and the access we have to God.  These are two of the chief benefits of our legal standing before God which is described in the word – justification.   Those that have placed their faith in Christ are described by the word justified more than by their nationality, profession or social standing.  Justification is possible only because of the unusual nature of God who takes those that are His enemies and too weak to even battle against Him and shows them mercy instead of judgment.  Mercy is available to those who have sinned and have no other remedy because Jesus took the judgment on Himself.  No other god, king or man has ever done this for His enemies.

Justification then, changes everything.  Those who put their faith in Christ now find an instant change in their legal standing and they are declared righteous, and no longer a sinner.  It changes everyday life also in that tribulations are no longer the pathway to failure and shame for the child of God but the chance for God to glorify Himself in their victories.  Tribulation now has purpose and benefit for the justified.  It teaches us how to wait and be patient, it gives us a chance to experience our faith and see it work and it answers a longing in our life to have relief in its hope.

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Romans chapters 1, 2 and the first part of 3 teach that the wicked man, the moral man and the man that ignores the truth of the Bible will all face the same tragic fate.  These chapters make a clear point that all are born in sin and no one has a good excuse to refuse the Gospel.  That is the Roman’s “negative” lesson which is designed to bring someone to a realization of the mess they are in without Christ.   More often though, our saved teenagers are dealing with an insecure and ineffective relationship with God because they may not fully grasp the Roman’s “positive.”

The positive aspect goes way beyond salvation to the point that it becomes the cornerstone of a secure and effective Christian life.  It goes like this; God declared that He would satisfy His own self in our salvation and Christian life.  In other words, I don’t have to worry about whether or not God is pleased with me.  The reason is, that He provided Himself (the propitiation) as the satisfaction for our sins and redeemed us with His own blood.   License for us to be sinful and lazy in our faith?  Stop thinking like that!  Not license but liberty to live a Christian life without fear and regret in the love and grace of our great God.

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