Our Mission & Our Freedom

The mission of Anthem Church is to fill Angier and the world with love-filled, faith-filled, hope-filled followers of Jesus. In other words, our desire is for people to daily display love of God, faith in Jesus, and hope of the gospel.

That is what spiritual freedom looks like. Freedom in Christ is a life of love, faith, and hope.  It is a life characterized by LOVE - gratitude to God and generosity toward others. It is a life characterized by FAITH - integrity and wisdom in our daily decisions. And it is a life characterized by hope - joy in the gospel and boldness for the gospel. That's freedom!

But we live in a world that is anti-freedom. Our world is chaos. It's a mad scramble for power and identity. It's a frantic pursuit for security, luxury, and comfort. It's a rat-race. The degree of busyness this world demands is dizzying. This world isn't happy unless we're living like chickens with our heads cut off. 

So many times over the past several weeks I have found myself thinking: "This is too hard. Life is too hard. Nothing is easy." That's the kind of world that we live in. Life is unrelenting. If it's not one thing it's another. Take the typical chaos that is normal of each day, and then add to it a child getting sick, an unexpected bill, the car transmission falling out. Then add to that some big stuff: mom gets cancer, we lose our job, marital problems. Then add to that our own personal struggles with anger, fear, anxiety, stress, worry, and depression. Then add to that a few bad decisions. And what do we have? We have January. Put all that together and we have typical, normal life in a world that is set up to keep us from enjoying freedom in Christ.

Fortunately, we don't have to settle for that kind of life. We can enjoy freedom. In John 10:9-10 Jesus said, "I am the door; if anyone enters through Me, he will be saved, and will go in and out and find pasture. The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy; I came that they may have life, and have it abundantly." 

In those two verses Jesus describes freedom as two things: 1) abundant life, and 2) a pasture. It's the second one I want to give attention to. 

Psalm 23:1-2 says, "The LORD is my shepherd, I shall not want. He makes me lie down in green pastures." So here's our choice: we can either get stampeded by the herd that is this world or we can lie down in God's green pastures. We don't have to settle for restless life but we can enjoy rest in the freedom that Christ has secured. We don't have to settle. We can enjoy abundant life.

How? It begins with succumbing to the truth of who Jesus Christ is and what He has done for you. We enter God's green pastures by embracing Jesus as Lord. That's step one.

Step two: We must employ the spiritual disciplines. Jesus secured our freedom; the spiritual disciplines are how we enjoy our freedom. The spiritual disciplines include: worship, prayer, stewardship, service, Bible reading, Christian community, etc. They are tools given to us by God to help us to fight off this anti-freedom world. The disciplines are commands given to us by God to apply in our lives to help us to guard the freedom that Jesus won for us.

More specifically, the spiritual disciplines are how we develop lives of love, faith, and hope. These three embody what it means to be a follower of Jesus. It's as we grow in love, faith, and hope that we grow in our capacity to rise up above the chaos of the world around us. Love, faith, and hope are what it means to lie down in God's green pastures. 

Life is hard. I'm right there with you. Fortunately, we don't have to settle for that kind of life. We don't have to settle for survival mode. We can enjoy abundant life. It's just going to take some discipline on our part. It's going to take the discipline of embracing the spiritual disciplines.

We're in the middle of a sermon series on the spiritual disciplines in order to help us all learn how to enjoy our freedom in Christ. But that's not the end goal! We want people to enjoy their freedom in Christ so that they may help other enjoy freedom in Christ. In other words, we want people to be free and help fill Angier and the world with love-filled, faith-filled, hope-filled followers of Jesus.

Listen to sermons online: Anthem Church

In awe of Jesus,
Pastor Rick