I was really blessed this weekend as Graham preached at Cityview in our series, the grace frontiers. His central theme is found in Romans 15:7–"Accept one another, then, just as Christ accepted you, in order to bring praise to God." I appreciated Graham’s development of the sermon from the text because he forced us to consider "who" are the truly strong in faith and grace that Paul speaks of at the beginning of the chapter. "The strong are those who have a posture of incredible humilty before the Father." That humility is derived from a keen awareness of their need for grace and their abandonment to whatever the Father will give them. Graham reminded us of the prodigal from Luke 15 and presented the image painted by Rembrandt of the Prodigal Son as an illustration of that posture. People who can offer the acceptance of Christ to others are those who have experienced and continue to experience the accpetance of the Father through His Son Jesus.
I am astonished again at the patience of God towards me. His grace moves me. I had never read Romans 15 from The Message, which Graham used in the message. Eugene Petersen has captured the movement inherient in the text:
Romans 15:1-13, from The Message(1-2) Those of us who are strong and able in the faith need to step in and lend a hand to those who falter, and not just do what is most convenient for us. Strength is for service, not status. Each one of us needs to look after the good of the people around us asking ourselves, “How can I help?”
(3-6) That’s exactly what Jesus did. He didn’t make it easy for himself by avoiding people’s troubles, but waded right in and helped out. “I took on the troubles of the troubled,” is the way the Scripture puts it. Even if it was written in Scripture long ago, you can be sure it’s written for us. God wants the combination of his steady, constant calling and warm, personal counsel in Scripture to come to characterize us, keeping us alert for whatever he will do next. May our dependably steady and warmly personal God develop maturity in you so that you get along with each other as well as Jesus gets along with us all. Then we’ll be a choir—not our voices only, but our very lives singing in harmony in a stunning anthem to the God and Father of our Master Jesus.
Whooooooooooo! That’s awesome!
