Today’s Verse

And I was with you in weakness, and in fear, and in much trembling.

I Corinthians 2:3

Sunday, June 12

There is a danger that in our desire to reach great crowds and influence lives that we may forget that the genuine conversion in the lives of men and women takes place by the power of the cross. This is why the cross must truly be the centerpiece of our church.

What then are we to do? We are to differentiate between the methods and the message, between the form and the formula. We must know what is essential and what is not.

The message of the cross must always be the centerpiece. The message must always stay the same. We must handle it “in fear and in much trembling.”

However, the methods, the forms must always stay fluid. We must not be locked down to doing things a certain way just because churches have done them this way for a long time.

The last words of a dying church are, “No, we’ve never done it that way before.”

Our challenge is to elevate the cross, not traditions. Church family, refresh your view of the challenge to the cross.

Weekly Memory Verse

Go ye therefore, and teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost:

Matthew 28:19

"The Christian community is a community of the cross, for it has been brought into being by the cross, and the focus of its worship is the Lamb once slain, now glorified. So the community of the cross is a community of celebration, a eucharistic community, ceaselessly offering to God through Christ the sacrifice of our praise and thanksgiving. The Christian life is an unending festival. And the festival we keep, now that our Passover Lamb has been sacrificed for us, is a joyful celebration of his sacrifice, together with a spiritual feasting upon it."
- John Stott

Pastor Armstrong

Devotional Author

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