What is this life we are called to that requires death?
On one level, it is a calculation of short term sacrifice for the long-term gain of eternal life, but there is more. We are called to live life to its fullest now, bring Christ’s kingdom to life in our lives now.
All this requires death. Death to vanity. Death to complacency. Death to busyness. Death to procrastination. Death to security. We must imitate Christ, not merely admire Him.
Are you willing to die in order to live, or are you living just to die.
Seed Church has iterated on the philosophy of our motto, “dying to live” and had developed four key themes that will be driving our work going forward: know God, experience freedom, discover your purpose, and make a difference.
Knowing God means through informational knowledge: through teaching, reading, study. We believe that the scriptures are the supreme authority for doctrine and conduct, and that they must be taught with care and intention. But simply informational knowledge is not sufficient. Plenty of unbelievers have plenty of that sort of knowledge.
So it also means relational knowledge, which Jesus describes in John 15. We are told that we are not merely God’s pupils, but His friends. In order to demonstrate His love, we must live in that love.
That then results in experiential knowledge, seeing and being Jesus throughout our life experiences.
Experiencing freedom, as it relates to being a Christian, is not immediately obvious. It is not about the secular freedom to say, do or think whatever we want. So what is the freedom Jesus offers? He spoke of it in Matthew 11, as a light burden and easy yoke. It is the freedom to follow the spirit of God, freedom from sin – both those we are forgiven for, and from the power of sin in our day to day lives. Aligning ourselves with the gospel moves us from living with sin and self to experiencing wholeness together with God.
Discovering our purpose: we do this as we see ourselves in the story of Jesus, and live out that story as commanded in Matthew 28, to spread that story to every people, nation and ethnicity. We will suffer as Christ did, and in that suffering, we will experience the sufficiency and supremacy of Christ. As we make much of Jesus in the world, it is inevitable that we will suffer in this way.
We must also make much of Jesus in the church, by living as His body and pursuing, identifying and using our gifts to live out the gospel.
Making a difference: as Christians, we are called to neither optimism nor pessimism, but rather a realistic hope and, more importantly, an understanding of our opportunity to make a difference ourselves even in seemingly small ways. We are to bring wholeness to others by living out the kingdom values of God, revealing Jesus by entering into suffering and serving in tangible ways. At Seed we do that both corporately, especially by supporting specific organizations, and individually, loving our neighbors in various ways.
This is the vision that will be guiding Seed Church going forward, both in old and new ways, with tangible ways that we can engage in knowing God, experiencing freedom, discovering our purpose and making a difference.
– Sermon Notes, Brent Rood, John Lehigh, Sean Tavern, Brian Bailey, Dave Lester, Jeff Krabach, Seed Church, Lynnwood, WA, January 7, 2018