Hopefully, all of you are aware of our mission statement here at Cedar Grove:
Cedar Grove Community Church exists to reach people for Jesus, teach people to be like Jesus, and release people to serve Jesus.
This statement summarizes our core: we are a church that orients everything we do around following Jesus.
During the last six weeks of our series The Church in Action, we have examined what following Jesus means. I began the series by encouraging us to recognize and respond to how the depth of Jesus’ love for the church as well as what Jesus actually did for the church as described in Ephesians 5. We then discussed how the pillars of prayer, Scripture, ordinances, fellowship, and music each play a unique and very practical role in our development as a church who follows Jesus.
Now, as we conclude the series this Sunday, I invite you to consider just how far we can and should go to make our mission a reality. Even as we follow Jesus by putting the pillars into practice each week inside these walls, how do we follow Jesus outside these walls? In our text from the Gospel of Mark, Jesus offers some very difficult ideas about what our life in the world should look like. His words provide us with the answers we are looking for, but not necessarily the answers we want to hear.
Palm Sunday marks the arrival of Jesus into Jerusalem to begin what would be the last week of His life on earth. This will be a week filled with confusion, pain, loss, betrayal, and ultimately, death. Despite all of this (or more accurately, because of all this), Jesus’ command for us is the same as it was for the disciples: Follow Me. Let’s discover what following Jesus looks like together.
Posted under Sunday
Submitted by Pastor Tom, 4:16 pm
