​We shared our last Faith Foundation this Wednesday and had some good discussion about Eternal Life with God. If you remember our 7 Faith Foundations: Jesus is Lord, God is 3 in one, Jesus died and rose again, He saved us from our sin, The Holy Spirit is in us, We are the body of Christ, and We have eternal life with God. Throughout this series we’ve explored some incredible truths about who God is, who we are, and how we interact with God. Throughout we shared how important it is to share our faith with others. We developed confidence in our faith which gives us peace. And we discovered how our faith affects everything in our life. We explored Romans 8:17-25 as it described our hope for eternal life and how we wait for it. There is A LOT to be excited about! We’ll be given everything God promised, we’ll share in His glory, there will be an end to suffering, and in fact all of creation will be set free from decay! But our conversation didn’t just focus on what we are hoping for. Instead most of what we talked about revolved around how this affects today. How are our lives different today because of the promise of eternal life God has given those who believe? How do we treat people differently in light of what God has done for us? What do we prioritize on earth knowing how brief our existence is here? How do we honor Jesus now knowing we’ll worship Him for all of eternity? How does hope lead us to sharing our hope with everyone? 

I challenged our teens this last week to choose one of the truths we’ve looked at which they believe is most important for a strong faith foundation: Jesus is Lord, God is 3 in one, Jesus died and rose again, He saved us from our sin, The Holy Spirit is in us, We are the body of Christ, and We have eternal life with God. Our goal wasn’t to decide if one was more important but instead to become more confident in why ALL of them are so important. I would challenge you to do the same with a friend and grow in your confidence to share your faith.  This confidence gives us peace and even helps guide us in the choices and actions we make every day. This week we talked about how we are the body of Christ. We explored this foundation by considering the fact that Jesus says the two greatest commands are to love God and love our neighbor. We got to see that, as 1 Corinthians 12:27 tells us: we are to be the unified body of Christ. When people encounter us they are encountering Christ. How can we share our faith when we’re not united? How can we set the example and lead others to Christ when we’re fighting? And when we unite together we are able to support and stand up for each other which brings peace and joy and encouragement. Finally, love for God and love for our neighbor hold us together and allows us to make incredible impact on the world around us when we change our lives together! See Ephesians 4:1-16 for more.

On Wednesday nights our teens are developing a strong foundation of our faith based on 7 truths: Jesus is Lord, God is 3 in one, Jesus died and rose again, He saved us from our sin, The Holy Spirit is in us, We are the body of Christ, and We have eternal life with God. We’ve discussed the first 4 and had some great conversation. I encourage you to ask one of our teens about it. You can also look at one of the “We Believe” posters. We’ve become more confident in our faith as we’ve explored these foundations and have seen how it leads us to share our faith, give us peace, and help guide us in the choices and actions we make every day. This week we learned about the incredible forgiveness for sins we receive through faith and confession from Jesus’ sacrifice. Our memory verse comes from Ephesians 1:7 where we learn that we have redemption through the blood of Jesus and forgiveness of sins. We discovered that Jesus gave His life willingly and his blood served as the seal on the covenant promise God made with His people to forgive us of our sins (See Matthew 26:28). We also read through Romans 5:1-11 and explored all the incredible benefits we receive when we allow Jesus’ blood to cleanse our sins. Having confidence in these benefits gives us peace and makes it clear we need to share the Gospel with others. We finally looked at 1 John 1:9 and the convicting message that we need to confess our sins to God and be confident that we have received His forgiveness. Read Romans 5:1-11; what benefits are you most thankful for? Who in your life can you confess your sins to?
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