September 20, 2019 | Dear Editor Adventist Today is my favorite magazine. I try to support it financially and encourage my Sabbath School class to do the same. Loren Seibold’s article “God’s Grace for Pastors” (Summer 2019 Adventist Today magazine) spoke to my concerns regarding a loving God and His answers, or lack thereof, to […] Source: https://atoday.org/is-god-concerned-with-the-here-as-well-as-the-hereafter/
Sunday: Agents of Change
We have seen in the early chapters of Acts how the first Christian believers established a different kind of community, caring for those in need among them, and together reaching out to those outside the community, offering them help where needed and inviting them to join in with what God was doing among them.
Community
Adding to Jesus’ descriptions of salt and light, Paul uses a number of metaphors to portray the church’s action in the world. Among others, he describes those who live as God’s people as a sacrifice (see Rom. 12:1), Christ’s body (see 1 Cor. 12:12-20), as ambassadors (see 2 Cor. 5:18-20), and as perfume (see 2 Cor. 2:14-16). Each of these images talks about a role as representatives or agents of God’s kingdom even now, even amid a world ravaged by the great controversy.
Review each of these “representative” descriptions above. Which best describes how you would like to represent God and His ways in your community, and why?
Each of these images has action associated with them, not as a means of being acceptable to God but as people already accepted by God through Christ’s sacrifice, who have responded to God’s love and grace by being His agents in a hurt and dying world.
But they can also be considered on a still deeper level: because God’s love and grace is what the kingdom of God is about, when we act in such a way, reflecting to others in love and grace, we enact and participate in that eternal kingdom, even now.
In international law, a national embassy is considered part of the nation it represents, even when physically located in a foreign country, perhaps a long distance from the home nation. In a similar way, enacting the ways of God’s kingdom offers glimpses of that eternal reality here and now and, as such, points to and is a foretaste of the final defeat of evil. And by so doing—as Christ’s ambassadors, as Christ’s agents—we can experience the reality of His love and justice in our own lives, in the church, and in the lives of those we seek to serve.
Read 2 Corinthians 2:16. What is the difference between the two aromas, and how can we know which one we are?
Amen!
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(0) Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/SabbathSchoolNet/~3/voPfU8EX-6M/
Genesis 2:3
Then God blessed the seventh day and made it holy, because on it he rested from all the work of creating that he had done.
http://feedproxy.google.com/~s/dailybible/main/?i=http://dailybiblepromise.com/verse/2019/09/21
Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/dailybible/main/~3/JyaVRGRrYhE/21
General Conference Sues Nairobi Cosmopolitan Conference over Use of Adventist Trademark/Logo
20 September 2019 | The General Conference (GC) of Seventh-day Adventists is suing the recently-formed Nairobi Cosmopolitan Conference (NCC) over the use of the Adventist trademark and logo. According to the Standard Digital, the GC, via the East Kenya Union Conference (EKUC), is asking Kenya’s High Court to ban the NCC from operating as a […] Source: https://atoday.org/general-conference-sues-nairobi-cosmopolitan-conference-over-use-of-adventist-trademark-logo/
Why I’m Suspicious About the End of Compliance Committees
By Loren Seibold | 20 September 2019 | Elder Wilson’s first sermon to the world church in 2010 was predictive of the kind of leadership he would practice. Beyond a few manufactured trivialities (reading non-Adventist authors, meditation) he showed that his leadership style would involve enforcing upon the church his personal understanding of Adventist orthodoxy. This […] Source: https://atoday.org/why-im-suspicious-about-the-end-of-compliance-committees/
