It is a Saturday afternoon as I am writing this – perhaps it is your first weekend here in the Leiden area. Or at the least, one of your first Saturdays here. If so, welcome to you!
Over the coming weeks, in our church gatherings we are going to be reflecting on our ‘Foundations’ as a community. We will be using the church mission statement to help us with this –
“ICL seeks to be a Christ-centred international community planted to worship, grow and serve in the Leiden area and beyond”
There is too much to pick out from this statement in one blog. So I have just highlighted two words: Christ-centred.
“Who do you say that I am?” – words of Jesus Christ to his first disciples (you can read the context in Matthew 16:13-18). He asked this to them outside a town area where there were shrines to all kinds of different ‘gods’ and belief ideas.
The answer to that question is just as vital today in a world of many different and often conflicting views. A world where some say let’s be done with religious beliefs since these only bring trouble!
- Who is Jesus Christ?
- Who do we say that He is?
- What do you think it means to be Christ centred?
In Hebrews 3:1, we are challenged to “fix your thoughts on Jesus”:
- How does this connect with our daily lives – work, study, family, our neighbourhoods?
- How does focus on Christ relate to things we see in the news such as natural disasters or terror attacks?
Big questions I know. But if faith in Jesus Christ is real and relevant to life in 2017, then it is not about some kind of mystical escapism from the world around us or the challenges in our own personal lives. Rather following Him is central to all aspects of living.
In the Matthew 16 passage, it is recorded that Peter as one of Jesus’s disciples replied, ” You are the Christ, the Son of the living God”.
Jesus was then, He still is!
Andy