We are excited to begin a five-week series on Relationships at Glasgow Church! Tomorrow morning we will only do an introduction of the series. I think this series on relationships, and specifically tomorrow's introduction, will relate well to those without a church...so invite friends now! It is not too late...in fact last minute invites are sometimes very effective. Send an email, send a text, invite friends on Social Media, or do the old fashioned thing and pick up the phone and call and invite a friend. I am sure you would agree that we want our church to be a place filled with friendly and loving people who are passionate about reaching the lost and those without a church family. Sunday mornings should be a safe place to invite friends.
Next Sunday (July 19), we will launch "S4" (Super Summer Sunday School). We will have a VBS Camp Theme for the children (the kids should use the flyers to invite friends!) and we will have a full breakfast, with a devotional, in the Family Life Center for the adults...all starting at 9:00. Since we are focussing on Relationships in this series, and since there are so many new people at the church, we thought it would be good to have breakfast together in a low-key environment and get to know one another.
We have named the series, "Being a Perfect Friend." I wonder what comes to mind when you read that title. In this series we will explore what the Scriptures teach us about friendship. The Law of God (The Law is anytime in Scriptures that we are told to "do" something) calls us to perfection. We see that perfection spelled out in the famous Love Chapter found in I Corinthians 13. In the letter to the Corinthians, Paul addresses one sin after another that had taken root in the Corinthian Church. By the time we get to I Corinthians 13, we are tempted to find the Love Chapter to be a reprieve...a breath of fresh air...a romantic and uplifting chapter that is read at weddings. But the reality is that up to this point, Paul had been addressing specific sins, at times, of specific members of the Corinthian Church...and certainly there were some who thought they were "off the hook." But in I Corinthians 13, Paul leaves no one standing because the requirement, the Law, he details, regarding friendships and love, is perfection...or "being a perfect friend". Who can measure up? Take a look...
13 If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. 2 And if I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. 3 If I give away all I have, and if I deliver up my body to be burned, but have not love, I gain nothing. 4 Love is patient and kind; love does not envy or boast; it is not arrogant 5 or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; 6 it does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth. 7 Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. 8 Love never ends. As for prophecies, they will pass away; as for tongues, they will cease; as for knowledge, it will pass away. 9 For we know in part and we prophesy in part, 10 but when the perfect comes, the partial will pass away. 11 When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I gave up childish ways. 12 For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I have been fully known. 13 So now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; but the greatest of these is love.
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