What do you want for dinner?

​Hey Friends…

 
My wife always has one answer to this question: “I don’t care,” or “it doesn’t matter,” or “whatever you want.” We’re thinking one of these phrases would be a great name for a new restaurant. It would certainly solve the important question of where to eat. But how about spiritually? What do you want to eat in your spiritual life? God provides an important menu choice in the Book of Romans that would be well worth considering… but lookout! It might surprise you. I’ll tell you more in Deeper Thoughts below…
 
But first…exciting stuff is happening at Mt. Hope!!
 
·      NEXT Sunday—March 24—is going to be the biggest “don’t miss this in-person” Sunday of the year…Palm Sunday worship, life-changing testimony, baptism, and seriously yummy food. In addition to a super-celebratory service, we’ll hang around afterwards for a delicious fellowship luncheon. Chris Nicholson’s world-famous honey glazed ham and your potluck sides will fill our bellies with sheer delight. Click here to let us know what you can bring!
 
·      Also NEXT Sunday: a NEW middle school program every Sunday morning starts March 24. The middle-schoolers will go out after worship to their own dedicated teaching, fellowship, and games with Chris Bowen, Jess Sauder, Kelley Adrain, and others!
 
·      Ladies: The day before our great Palm Sunday extravaganza, get your bowling shoes out and join us on Saturday, March 23, from 11:00 a.m. to 1:00 p.m. for fun, fellowship, and bowling. Click here for more info and to RSVP!
 
·      Wanna help us spring clean and spruce up? Mark your calendars for a great time of fellowship while sprucing up the church--Saturday, April 13. More details to come!!
 
·      Wanna do some veggie growing and gardening? A new “Seed Sowers” team is forming to get this year’s church garden underway. Click here to jump in!
 
·      And even more important: Wanna help us lead kids and teens to their fullness in Christ? We have volunteer opportunities both large and small; with the students or quietly behind the scenes; frequent and infrequent. Join us after church on Sunday, April 14, for a no-commitment information and vision-casting meeting. Lunch included!! Details and RSVP to come!
 
·      Mark your calendars for Saturday, April 27 for an all-church “Freedom in Christ” teaching and healing event led by Chris Campbell. Not only will we tighten down our understanding of identity and freedom in Jesus that we’ve been learning from Romans, but we will also step across lines of faith into practical, actualized healing. More info to come!!
 
OK…that’s it today for you email skimmers and those who don’t care what God is serving. BUT…
 
 
Some Deeper Thoughts…
 
I’m sure you’ve picked up by now that I think our beloved Chris Nicholson makes really good food. (You coming to try it out on March 24? Honey glazed ham… Yum!!)
 
As much as I am enamored by Chris’ culinary skills, I would propose to you that God Almighty is an even better chef. The question is what is He making for dinner? Unfortunately, His is one of those really specialized restaurants. We have just two choices on the menu.
 
You might have heard that Romans 6:23 says the “wages of sin is death…” The Greek word for “wages” is a word that literally means “meat that is purchased to eat.” Spiritual death is what's for dinner when we live in alignment to sin.
 
That does not sound nearly so yummy as a Nicholson ham.
 
We have been learning from Romans in recent weeks that sin emerges by living in alignment with our flesh—our core human nature with all its natural impulses and instincts. It is slavery to a way of life that is so far below what God has for us. (If you have missed our recent teachings, last Sunday might be the most valuable for you to pick up on YouTube… click here!)
 
But there’s one more choice on the menu. And it’s a super-yummy one that eclipses anything Chris Nicholson has ever served us. By a wide margin. Romans 6:23 continues: “…but the gift of God is eternal [everlasting] life.”
 
With our identity grounded in Jesus, with our faith fully rooted in His power, and living by His Holy Spirit (see Romans 8:9-14 and Galatians 5:24-25), we can become bonded to righteousness more than we were ever bound up in sin beforehand. In doing so, we select a different “meal” from the menu--an entirely different set of results (“wages”) that we receive straight from the great Master Chef's kitchen.
 
This Sunday, as we continue our 20-week study of the Book of Romans called “Uncharted Territory: Taking Life Where You’ve Never Been,” we will look carefully at how the unwelcomed menu option of spiritual death unexpectedly landed on our plate.
 
We will poke around Romans 5:20, where we discover that God’s Law slipped in almost unnoticed for what it does within us--food it unexpectedly served up like a spoiled filet mignon that accidentally made it out of the kitchen. When first received by the people of Israel, the Law was welcomed as solid guidance. They joyfully received it and committed themselves to it. But within weeks, their incapability to keep the Law became clearly evident. Their flesh was simply too infected and diseased for God’s Law to be useful (see Romans 8:3). They ordered God’s best from the menu. But they got something entirely different from the kitchen. Their spiritual dinner was rotten.
 
But good news! We will also discover that “where sin increased, grace increased all the more, so that, just as sin reigned in death (i.e. served us up a spoiled dinner), so also grace might reign through righteousness….” (Romans 5:20-21).
 
What’s more, grace produces not only forgiveness for our sins, but an entirely new way of life—in actually, in practicality, in specific outcomes, we do not have to live bound up in sin any longer. Wow!
 
This is the core message of every Sunday in our Romans study. This week, we will cycle yet again through another fresh layer of understanding this truth. We will look at what we need to both believe and to put into action as a result. Before you come on Sunday, see if you can dig out anything in advance from Romans 5:17-6:14.
 
This is going to be good...precisely because God is a super-excellent chef. He wants to serve up the best filet mignon of spiritual vitality you’ve ever tasted. And to that, we can all say a resounding “Yum!!”
 
You in? Sunday morning… 10:00 a.m. in-person (always the most powerful) or online livestream. Can’t wait to see you all!!
 
Much authentic love from me and Sherri…
 
Chris Eads
Mt. Hope Pastor
Friend