The Social Network: It's What We Are

Here is sermon #2 in my series on community. This was preached 4/14/2013.

---------------------------------------------------------------------

Last week we began a series called The Social Network. I said last week, that we are talking about a social network that has little to nothing to do with Facebook or Twitter or Pinterest, but everything to do with the person to your left, your right, in front of and behind you.

Last week I shared with you a quote from John Wesley that served as an inspiration for this series. Wesley wrote, “Solitary religion is not to be found [in the gospel of Christ]. ‘Holy solitaries’ is a phrase no more consistent with the gospel than holy adulterers. The gospel of Christ knows of no religion but social; no holiness but social holiness.” In other words, the Christian faith is not something we can do on our own. Living as a follower of Jesus Christ has a distinctively social aspect. I also gave you Wesley’s definition of what he means that Christianity is a social religion. He said that our faith cannot survive without living with and sharing with other believers. In other words, our faith is dependent on community.

So during this series we are talking about the importance of community. And this is actually something we talk about all the time, probably without thinking too much about it. We often talk about being a community of faith, but what does that mean? We talk about being the body of Christ, but, again, what does that mean? That’s going to be our focus today. What it means to be the body of Christ and what it looks like to live as the body of Christ.

In our scripture this morning Paul talks about the body of Christ. Paul uses this metaphor again and again in his letters. He talks over and over about the church as the body of Christ. We read an example of that last week. In Ephesians 4:12 Paul we are all given gifts and have a responsibility to use those gifts to do the work of God to “build up the church, the body of Christ.” It is a metaphor we see throughout the New Testament. As the church, we make up the body of Christ. It is more than a metaphor, we are the embodiment of Christ. We are to be the eyes and ears, the hands and feet, the voice and the heart of Jesus for the world.

Through our baptism, we are initiated into the body of Christ. We become members of that body. But it’s more than membership in an organization. I read an article this week that talked about the church as an organism versus an organization. That’s the way we should think about the church. As a living organism. One point that article made is that an organization has many heads, the church has only one head. Ephesians and Colossians both talk of the church as the body of Christ and Christ as the head of that body.

So instead of members of an organization, we are members of the body, just as our hands and feet, arms and legs are members of our body. And just as we use our members – our arms, legs, hands, and feet – to move and work in the world around us, Jesus uses us the members of the body of Christ to work in the world.

There are three aspects of the body of Christ present in our scripture that I want to focus on as we think about what it means to be the body of Christ and how we live as the body of Christ.

The first of these goes back to the quote from John Wesley I read earlier. “Solitary religion is not to be found in the gospel of Jesus Christ.” If we are a part of a body, the we are dependent upon one another. Paul speaks of the church in terms of a human body. The many parts make up one body – and so it is with the body of Christ. When we talk about the human body, we know that no part of the body can survive apart from the body.

When I was growing up I remember seeing a Michael Caine movie called “The Hand”. Has anyone else seen it? In that movie, Michael Caine’s character had his hand cut off in a car accident. Actually, I think he was sticking it out the window in a fit of road rage and it was knocked off. Well, for the rest of the movie, that malevolent hand tormented Michael and the rest of the cast.

In reality, if you were to lose a hand or a finger, it can be reattached, but doctors say that it must be within 6-12 hours because the tissue begins to deteriorate quickly. And, of course, the thing would not reanimate on its own.

The same is true for us as members of the body of Christ. We cannot survive apart from the body. Our faith, our growing closer to Christ is dependent on being with other Christians. It is dependent on being connected.

Jesus uses a similar metaphor to the body in John chapter 15. There he says that he, Jesus, is the vine and we are the branches. In other words, we are all connected through Jesus. He goes on to say in verse 4, “For a branch cannot produce fruit if it is severed from the vine, and you cannot be fuitful unless you remain in me.”

I know what some of you are thinking. “I can remain connected to Jesus without being connected to the church!” “I can feel just as close to God on the golf course or in a tree stand or running or hiking or”, you name it. I would argue that you cannot stay connected to Jesus without the church. On our own, we start to depend on ourselves instead of others. And that leads to depending on ourselves instead of depending on God.

And, as I mentioned last week, we are created for relationship. A defining characteristic of God is the trinity – Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. That is community. It is relationship. This is the image in which we are created. We are created to be in community. We are created to be in relationship with God and with one another.

The second thing we learn about being the body of Christ is that in the body, we are all connected to one another and through that connection, no one part is more or less important than another.

One reason Paul wrote this letter to the church at Corinth was because of arguments among the members about who was more important. In verse 13 Paul attempts to settle this argument. “Some of us are Jews, some are Gentiles, some are slaves, some are free. But we have all been baptized into one body by one Spirit, and we all share the same Spirit.”

In other words, in the body of Christ, we are all equal. It’s odd that in the 2000 years since this letter was written, these same issues are still lingering. We still deal with issues of race, gender, social status, economic status. All of these are things that divide us, things that in some cases turn us against one another. All of them are things that Paul tells us don’t matter one bit in the body of Christ. In Ephesians 3:6 Paul makes this same argument. He wrote,  “And this is God’s plan: Both Gentiles and Jews who believe the Good News share equally in the riches inherited by God’s children. Both are part of the same body, and both enjoy the promise of blessings because they belong to Christ Jesus.”

In the body, no part is more important than the other. And something else to remember. It’s not up to the parts of the body to determine who is and who is not a part of the body. Paul reminds us that some parts that seem the weakest and least important are actually the most necessary. It’s not our job to decide who is on or out of the body. It’s our job to work as one body. To be one body. Paul says we should be in harmony so that all of the parts care for one another.  

Which leads to the third thing we learn about the body of Christ. That when one part suffers, the entire body suffers. When one part rejoices, the entire body rejoices. Our passage ends with an emphatic statement – “You are the body of Christ.”  James Boyce says that in light of this passage that verse is more command than statement. He says, “we are meant to hear that this calls us not to some assertion of privileged status, but rather to the recognition of our responsibility for mutual care for the members of this body.” We are meant not to simply have sympathy for those around us, but to have empathy. Do you know the difference?

I’m going to show my geekiness. Is anyone a fan of Star Trek: The Next Generation? Do you remember counselor Deanna Troi? Troi was an empathy. Her mother came from a planet of mind-readers, but her father was human. So instead of reading someone’s mind, she could feel their emotions. She was an empath. She literally felt what they felt. That is what it means to have empathy.

If we have sympathy, we feel sorry for someone. If we have empathy, we feel their suffering. When is the last time you had empathy? True empathy? When is the last time you suffered with someone. I saw it put like this. When I have an ear infection, the rest of my body suffers. But when Ms Eloise is widowed I don’t really suffer, when frank gets a cancer diagnosis, when the Smyth’s baby is still-born – occasionally I feel a pang of something. Maybe I breakdown and cry for a few minutes. But then I go about my life. I certainly don’t suffer with the suffering.

The best way to do that is going back to the second point. We are all connected to one another. But we tend to build barriers between us that keep us from truly feeling what the other is feeling. In the body of Christ we have to let those barriers go. We have to open ourselves to God and to one another.

To do that, you have to make your faith about more than 11am-12pm every Sunday. You have to make church about more than sitting in these chairs once a week surrounded by acquaintances and then going back to real life when the service is over.

To truly be the body of Christ, you have to know the rest of the body. You have to spend time together. You have to share with one another. In order to truly be the body of Christ, you have to make Christ the head of you. What does the head of a body do? It directs the body. Tells it where to go and what to do. It senses pain and joy from the different parts and lets the rest of the body feel that as well. To connect ot one another we have to first connect to Christ.

But then we have to connect to one another!

Amen.

The Social Network: The Social What?

A couple of months ago I preached a sermon series (titled The Social Network) on our need for community and its vital role in our faith. I'll post a couple this week and a couple next week. This sermon was preached April 7, 2013.
------------------------------------------------------------

Ephesians 4:11-16

New Living Translation (NLT)

11 Now these are the gifts Christ gave to the church: the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, and the pastors and teachers. 12 Their responsibility is to equip God’s people to do his work and build up the church, the body of Christ. 13 This will continue until we all come to such unity in our faith and knowledge of God’s Son that we will be mature in the Lord, measuring up to the full and complete standard of Christ.

14 Then we will no longer be immature like children. We won’t be tossed and blown about by every wind of new teaching. We will not be influenced when people try to trick us with lies so clever they sound like the truth. 15 Instead, we will speak the truth in love, growing in every way more and more like Christ, who is the head of his body, the church. 16 He makes the whole body fit together perfectly. As each part does its own special work, it helps the other parts grow, so that the whole body is healthy and growing and full of love.

The Social What? 

Today we are starting a new sermon series titled “The Social Network.” When we think of a social network, most of us think of social media. Things like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram. That’s not the social network we’re going to talk about for the next few weeks.

But the series title is a play off of that thought. When I began thinking about this series several months ago, I came up with some great sermon titles. Some ways to play off of social networking, and specifically, the names of some popular social media outlets. Here’s one:  “Get your face in the book” 

Nice, right? How about this one?  “Don’t Twitter Around with Jesus”. 

Even better, I think. Here’s another –  “Make Jesus your (P)interest”. 

And finally – “Get Linked In to Jesus.” 

Those are great, right? I’ll admit, they are purposely cheesy. And they really have nothing to do with this series of sermons. They have little to nothing to do with what I really want to talk about for the next few weeks.

We are going to talk about a concept that, like it or not, is vital to our faith. Community. The social network we’re going to talk about has nothing to do with Facebook or Twitter, but has everything to do with the person sitting on your right and your left, and in front of you and behind you. It’s about us.

The truth is, we need one another. We need community. The concept of community seems foreign to our modern sensibilities. Instead we are a society based on individualism. But there is still an innate need, and a longing for community. And here’s where social media will make a brief appearance. Because for many of us, Facebook has become our community. Actually, I should say: Facebook has become a substitute for community. In reality, I think it may have done more harm than good in terms of connecting people.

I’m going to get on my soapbox for a minute. Well, I guess that’s what I do every week, isn’t it.

Let me start by saying that I use Facebook. Facebook has some great features and some wonderful qualities. BUT – Facebook and other social media sites have developed what I would call a false community. It’s people offering impersonal happy birthday wishes and sharing either the mundane moments of everyday life or just sharing how wonderful their kids and husband and in-laws are. It has become our personal hype machine. “Look how great my life is.” But don’t ask me how things are going. Just “like” my status when I share the latest wonderful life event. I’ll tell you, I have kids. They are not always angelic and wonderful. Sometimes they are selfish and bratty. I’ve been married for 18 years. Misty will tell you that every day with me is not a walk through the roses. Maybe that’s a cynical view of Facebook, but it irks me a little that this is what we know as a social network – this is what some people call community. Being in community means that we live together. It means we share life. Good and bad. It means having a real connection to one another.

I found a couple of definitions of community that I want to share. The first is a sociological definition. It says that community is a social unit larger than a small village that shares common values. Yawn. That is little more that a group of people in proximity to one another. That doesn’t sound like a community to me.

The other definition comes from biology. It says a community is a group of living organisms interacting and sharing a populated environment. OK, that sounds like my idea of a community. Not simply living near one another, but interacting, conversing. Living together.

The way I see it, something like Facebook doesn’t promote community. It promotes individualism. It’s not about living together or interacting. It’s about me and what I want to share and how I feel and what I think is important. Again, I’m being a little cynical. I know there are other aspects to social media that are helpful in connecting us. But our true connection should be real. It should be face-to-face. It should be with people, not websites.

I shared part of a quote from John Wesley with you last week. I want to repeat it this morning. This is part of the inspiration for this sermon series. In the preface to a book by John and Charles Wesley called Hymns and Sacred Poems, Wesley wrote “Solitary religion is not to be found [in the gospel of Christ]. ‘Holy solitaries’ is a phrase no more consistent with the gospel than holy adulterers. The gospel of Christ knows of no religion but social; no holiness but social holiness.”

The last sentence, and especially the last phrase, of that quote has been taken out of context and misused for a long time. You will often hear ‘no holiness but social holiness’ as a call for the church to be involved in social justice issues. There might be a connection to make there, but it’s a stretch. What Wesley is really talking about is Christianity as a social religion. Wesley went on to explain that phrase in a sermon later in life. He said that by social religion he means “it cannot subsist at all without society, without living and conversing with other [believers].” In other words, our faith is meant to be lived out in community. Not only that, but our faith depends on community.

Unfortunately, we live in a society that thrives on individualism. Individualism is the idea the individual is of primary importance. It emphasizes the virtues of self-reliance and personal independence. It’s a concept and an attitude that has been taught for a long, long time in this country. And there is a lot of good in the concept. Individualism promotes self-confidence. It promotes the idea that you are a person of worth and importance. Individualism should promote equality of all people. It allows us to have our own opinions and allows us the freedom to share those opinions. Individualism tells us that we can be successful, that we can accomplish things.

But there is a flip side to individualism. Individualism also teaches that we should rely on ourselves. Instead of equality, it sometimes goes to the extremes of “I’m the most important, so I’m better than the rest.” It creates people who, to contradict Barbara Streisand – who don’t need people, but still consider themselves the luckiest people in the world. Individualism teaches us that we can do it on our own, which leads to the attitude that we should do it on our own. That if we can’t, then we are a failure. And those who can’t succeed, they’re just not trying.

And this attitude of individualism seeps into our church life. Maybe it’s less “I can save myself” than “I can be saved alone.” But still it’s an attitude that believes in self. Church becomes about me and what I need. I go to church to save my soul. I go to church so I can feel better about myself. I go to church for me. For my needs. For my soul.

I love how the Holy Spirit works. I’ve been planning this series for several months now. But this week, one of my professors said this: “We are much more interested in an individual faith – ‘Getting my soul right with Jesus’ – than we are with notions of talking about the community of the church. We need to reclaim the notion that we are never Christians alone, but we are only Christians and we are only faithful, insofar as we are faithful to God with one another in the community of the church.” This is exactly what John Wesley means when he says that our faith cannot survive without being with, talking to, and learning from other believers.

If all we have is individualism, we end up, well, we end up as idolaters. Ayn Rand wrote this is her book Anthem. “And now I see the face of god, and I raise this god over the earth, this god whom men have sought since men came into being, this god who will grant them joy and peace and pride. This god, this one word: ‘I.’”

In her book, Because He Loves Me, Elyse Fitzpatrick talks about the idolatry of individualism. She writes about our need for community, and specifically our need for people of faith to whom we can confide and expect to be held accountable. People with whom we can talk about our faith and our doubts, and who talk to us about their faith and their doubts. That sort of relationship, she says, flies in the face of our individualistic society. She writes this: “This idolatry of privacy and individualism is one of the greatest detriments … in the church today. God has placed us in a family because we don’t grow very well on our own. It’s still not good to be alone. We need the encouragement, correction, and loving involvement of others who are willing to risk everything for the sake of the beauty of his bride.” His bride, referring to the church, the bride of Christ. In other words, what’s important, what the church should be about, is not “getting my soul right” but the act of being together. Worship together. Learning together. Growing together.

I want to make an important distinction between individualism and individuality. Individuality means that we have our own identity. We are who we are and we remain that way. That is what Paul writes about in our scripture this morning. He says we are all created with certain gifts, and all of those gifts are important to the life of the church. He also says that we are given those gifts with the responsibility of using them to do God’s work and build up the church. Don’t think of building up the church as simply growing in terms of numbers. But growing in faith, helping one another grow more and more like Christ. Our scripture wraps up with a sentence that is one of the most important sentences you’ll hear today. Paul is talking about the body of Christ and the part each of us plays in that body. “As each part does its own special work, it helps the other parts grow, so that the whole body is healthy and growing and full of love.” Our faith depends on community, on being together – worshiping together, learning together. We are created to be in community.

Next week we’re going to talk more about the Body of Christ and what it means to be a part of that body.

This morning we come together to celebrate that community – the community of the Body of Christ.

I don’t know if I’ve mentioned this here or not, but several years ago when we lived in Kentucky, Abby, my youngest, was about 3 years-old. She loved communion. She got so excited on communion Sundays. One Sunday we were driving to church, and it happened to be the first Sunday of the month. From the back seat Abby asks, “Dad, are we having community today?” We laughed because it was cute, then I thought, you know, we are. And I answered, “Yes, Abby. Yes we are.”

Today we are going to have community. Holy Communion is community. It is the gathering of the community of faith around the table of Christ. It is meaningful to us as individuals, but it is much more than a personal event.

That notion of community noticeable in the liturgy used in observing communion. The prayers and readings use plural pronouns. We, us, our. For years when I participated in Communion, I would pray I, me, and my instead. I didn’t realize the communal nature, probably until Abby asked that question almost 10 years ago. We gather as one body. Paul wrote in 1^st Corinthians that “because there is one bread, we who are many are one body, for we all partake of the one bread.” So we gather as one body to share in the grace of God and to celebrate our one faith. 

Tempted: Deliver Us

We’re wrapping up our series on temptation today. Over the last couple of weeks we’ve looked at what scripture teaches us about temptation. The first week, we saw from James chapter 1 that temptation is really a result of our own desires or passions.  James 1:14 says, “Temptation comes from our own desires, which entice us and drag us away.” I shared with you that same verse from The Message, it says that we can only blame “the leering, seducing flare-up of our own lust.”  We talked about the way to control these passions is to make sure that Jesus is Lord of your life. Then our desire is only God’s will.

Last week we looked at the story of Jesus being tempted in the wilderness. I said that the temptation Jesus faced there is the same temptation we face; to put our trust somewhere other than God – to let something else sit on that throne. Temptation is often a matter of trust. I trust in stuff, in money, in what I can see and feel. I trust me. Instead of trusting God’s will, trusting the way of Jesus. So instead of Jesus sitting on the throne of our heart, money is there or people or our stuff or ourselves.

Today, I’ve titled the sermon “Deliver Us”. That title probably sounds familiar to you. It’s from the Lord’s Prayer. When pray that prayer, we pray, “Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil.”

I ran across a video this week that I want to share with you.

I love that. But not just because it’s funny. Look at their slogan,

“Once you shake ‘em you can’t shake ‘em.” Now that says a lot about temptation. Temptation is hard enough to resist, but once you give in it becomes that much harder. I saw an article from a couple of years ago on Psychology Today’s website. In that article, Dr. Rebecca Gladding says that when we give in to temptation we teach our brain that this is an important action and should be repeated, so the brain starts sending cravings. She uses the specific example of chocolate. She wrote, “As time goes on, my brain begins making eating chocolate a priority and I find that I am craving it day and night.” Once you shake it, you just can’t shake it.

We talked before about our desires leading to temptation and temptation leading to sin. Paul liked to talk about being a slave to sin. Dr. Gladding seems to be pointing to just such a thing. We give in to temptation which leads to sin and we start to crave it. We can’t live without it. We become a slave to sin. Once you shake it, you just can’t shake it. Once you start, you just can’t stop. Which brings us back to “deliver us from evil”.

Resisting temptation is not our natural human response. And once we’ve given in, it’s just that much easier to do it again and that much harder to resist. So we pray. As Jesus taught us to pray, “Deliver us.”

In the garden of Gethsemane, just before Jesus was arrested, he told his disciples to “pray so you won’t give in to temptation. The spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak.” As we saw last week, this is something Jesus knew from experience. Jesus also knew that temptation would come.

In a letter to the church at Corinth, Paul told them that temptation is inevitable. He wrote this:  “¹³ The temptations in your life are no different from what others experience. And God is faithful. He will not allow the temptation to be more than you can stand. When you are tempted, he will show you a way out so that you can endure.”

There are a couple of really important things this passage tells us about temptation. 1) We’re going to be tempted. There is not any notion here that we will not be tempted. 2) We can resist temptation! “You will not be tempted more than you can stand.” But we are human, we are flawed. 3) God will deliver us. God will show us a way out.

A couple of weeks ago I introduced the 5Rs of resisting temptation. Adam Hamilton, who is the pastor of Church of the Resurrection (a United Methodist church in KC), came up with these a few years ago. He used them again in a sermon a couple of months ago. I think they offer some wonderful advice for resisting temptation.

I gave you the first one a couple of weeks ago, but I’ll cover it again. These are things to do when you feel tempted.

1)    REMEMBER Who You Are – You are a child of God, a follower of Jesus Christ, a leader in the church, a leader in the community. You may be someone’s husband or wife, someone’s mother or father. Is the thing you are struggling with consistent with who you are?

2)    RECOGNIZE the consequences of your actions. Maybe you could ask yourself: will I feel better or worse after doing this? Will I be proud or ashamed? Will I be more free or will I be enslaved by doing this? Who will be hurt by my actions? If the thing becomes known, what will happen to the people who trusted me? What will they think of me?

3)    REDEDICATE yourself to God. In prayer ask for God’s strength. Maybe a really simple, easy to remember prayer like: “Lead me not into temptation, deliver me from evil!” It’s also a chance to remind yourself who is on the throne of your life.

I shared this tweet with you a couple of weeks ago:  “Temptation is coming today...and every day. The question is whether Christ is on the throne of your heart now? Will He be your Lord today?” Is Jesus on the throne of your heart? Or as I asked it last week: Do you trust in Jesus? 

4)    REVEAL your struggle to a trusted friend. Part of the power of temptation comes from its secretiveness. When you tell the secret to someone holding you accountable, it loses some of its power. This is why James tells us in 5:16, “Confess your sins to one another, and pray for one another, that you might be healed.” Maybe it’s not the healthiest or most effective motivator, but it also adds some guilt to the situation, and guilt is a great deterrent. If eating donuts is a sin…well we’re all in trouble… But just as an example… If eating donuts is a sin I struggle with and I tell Bill, and I know Bill isn’t going to judge me but will help me be accountable – he’s going to ask me if I’ve been eating donuts – those donuts lose a little of their power over me.

5)    REMOVE yourself from the situation. When Jesus speaks about sin in the Sermon on the Mount he tells us that if our eye causes us to sin, we’re to pluck it out, or if our hand causes us to sin, we’re to cut it off. He is using hyperbole but he’s seeking to make this same point—remove yourself from the situation. We saw this in the video of the “Marshmallow Test” two weeks ago. Those 4-5 year-old kids who really did not want to eat the marshmallow would just ignore it. Pretend it’s not there. Pretending won’t always help, but leaving a situation will. Keeping yourself out of tempting situations will. Back to our donut example, I should never go near the donut table. If I walk in and see donuts I should probably leave.

So those are the 5 Rs of resisting temptation, but what if we don’t resist? Because, let’s face it, we’re not always going to resist. I don’t mean that to be taken as a defeatist attitude. It’s just the truth. Sometimes we will try to resist and fail, sometimes we just fail. Luckily it’s not the end of the road.

There’s another part of the Lord’s Prayer I want to remind you of: “Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us.” Forgive our missteps, our stumbles, our failings, our sins. We are reminded of this throughout the New Testament. 1 John 1:9 tells us if we confess our sins, God will forgive us and cleanse our wickedness. Colossians 1:13-14 says this  “For he has rescued us from the kingdom of darkness and transferred us into the Kingdom of his dear Son, who purchased our freedom and forgave our sins.”

Now, that’s not a “get out of jail free” card. It doesn’t mean I can walk in and say to myself, “I can eat all of the donuts I want now, because I can just ask God to forgive me!” That attitude embraces sin. There’s no repentance there, confessing our sins means we repent. To repent means to turn the other way. I read Colossians 1:13-14, but look what leads up to that scripture about forgiveness: 

¹⁰ Then the way you live will always honor and please the Lord, and your lives will produce every kind of good fruit. All the while, you will grow as you learn to know God better and better.

¹¹ We also pray that you will be strengthened with all his glorious power so you will have all the endurance and patience you need. May you be filled with joy, ¹² always thanking the Father. He has enabled you to share in the inheritance that belongs to his people, who live in the light.

We are called to live in the light, to live in a way that honors God – that pleases God. That doesn’t mean we won’t mess it up. It means we’ve got to try. It means we’ve got to do everything we can to resist temptation. Thank God, we have a savior who delivers us from temptation!

There are three things I want to stress as we talk about being “delivered from evil”.

Two of them come from the passage in Galatians that was read earlier. First, it says we should nail our desires and passions to the cross. In other words, we are to die to our old sinful self. Paul says we should live by the Spirit. As we live by the Spirit, we are renewed. We are changed into a new creation. As we trust and follow Jesus, through prayer, reading scripture, growing closer to God, the Holy Spirit works to change us. Sin loses its grip. Our desires and passions lessen, and God’s will becomes our desire.

Paul gives us another tip for how we are delivered from temptation. In verse 2 of chapter 6, Paul says we should share each other’s burdens. I love verse 3. “If you think you are too important to help someone, you are only fooling yourself. You are not that important.” Help one another! This goes back to our 4^th R – reveal your struggle. Be ready to help others and don’t be afraid to ask for help.

The third thing to remember about being delivered is that through the life, death, and resurrection we are delivered. We are delivered not just from temptation, but from the penalty of sin. Because of Jesus sin no longer binds those who believe, who call on him as their savior.

We are delivered in those 3 ways. Jesus delivers us from the penalty of sin. The Holy Spirit working in us delivers us from the power of sin so that it no longer holds us captive. And lastly, God works through each one of us to help one another, to love one another, to share our burdens.