Happy Independence Day weekend, church family! The fourth of July weekend is all about celebrating freedom. As citizens, we celebrate our freedom from tyranny and oppression. One of the most famous lines that I am sure many of you know is this one: “The price of freedom is eternal vigilance.” This has been attributed to Thomas Jefferson, but it was originally stated by John Philpott Curran in 1790.

Think about that: The price of freedom is eternal vigilance. As Christians, we have been granted incredible freedom in Christ. We have been granted freedom from guilt and from condemnation. We have been delivered from the power of sin, Satan, and death. Yet, here is the reminder that we all need. Freedom requires vigilance. The apostle Paul gives this exhortation in Galatians 5:13, “For you were called to freedom, brothers. Only do not use your freedom as an opportunity for the flesh, but through love serve one another.” The way that we fight for the enjoyment of the freedom that we have receive in Christ is by dedicating ourselves to serve one another in love.

So, our message this Sunday was taken from Romans 13:8-13. It is called “Owe Nothing But to Love.” Looking forward to worshiping with you and celebrating together the deep freedom of the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ. Enjoy Jesus deeply, family. Slow down and savor His grace.

Come Sunday, invite a friend. God is so good!

Over the past several weeks, we have been studying the Biblical teaching on love in our summer series entitled “Summer of Love.” What our hope in doing this series has been is to reorient our hearts and our minds around a truly biblical view of love that without a doubt is in direct contradiction to the messages about love that we see in the world around us. This Sunday, our sermon is called Let Your Love Be Genuine. It is taken from Romans 12:9-13.

A friend of mine was giving a lecture this week at a church in Southern California and he quoted from a Wiccan (witchcraft) saying. The saying is this: “ ‘An ye harm none, do what ye will’ (or, ‘If you do no harm, do as you please’).” That sounds like love. Love is essentially doing no harm. Otherwise, its open season on whatever you want to do. That definitely is not the love of Christ for His people and it cannot be how we as Christians understand true and genuine love. Yet many Christians embrace essentially that view of love. Romans 12 begins with the exhortation “Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your minds…” Let’s gather this Sunday and ask for the Lord to give us a biblical view of what genuine love looks like. Let’s pray that we would live out before the world a very different and glorious kind of love. Looking forward to worshipping with you!

While I was away this week speaking at a men’s event up in Canada, I got the news of the horrible shooting of two politicians and their spouses here in the Twin Cities. I looked up the news and a couple of things immediately struck me. First, before I had read anything, I thought to myself: ‘I’ve met that guy.” I don’t know when or where or if I really did but that was my first reaction. Then when I read the article, I read the awful wicked reality that this man professed to be an evangelical Christian, had pastored, and had been on missions. It sickened my stomach. I have since heard of people who know his family. Pray for them and pray for the families brutalized by his violence.

Well, it just happens to be, in God’s good providence, that my message which was planned over a month ago for this Sunday is from Matthew 5:43-48. My sermon title is called “Love Like Your Father.” Friends, we need to be reminded regularly that when we think we can play God with our lives or other people’s lives, we are least likely to actually be like God. Jesus says, “Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, so that you may be sons of your Father who is in heaven.” Thank God that we have a Father who has not treated us according to our sins and failings! Don’t you agree?

Looking forward to studying this crucial passage of Scripture together and rejoicing with you in the good and gracious ways of our heavenly Father.

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This Sunday, we are going to continue our series called Summer of Love. One of the great encouragements in the call to love one another as God has loved us is that the source of our love is the eternal and immutable Triune God. Agape love is extremely challenging. Loving others as Christ has loved us is not something that we can merely “will” into existence. Loving those who have wronged us or neglected us can seem impossible. It is impossible if it’s left to us.

Here’s the good news: Agape love is actually the overflow of our relationship to God. It is Christ in us who loves through us. The impulse in our hearts to love one another is something that flows out of an eternal impulse with God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit. The early church father, Augustine famously said these words: “Wherever there is Love, there is a Trinity.

A Lover (God the Father), a Beloved (God the Son) and a Fountain of Love (the Holy Spirit).” We are going to dive into the depths of Triune love this Sunday and discover how and why God’s love compels us to love others just as He loved us! Our message is called How The Trinity Fuels Our Love.

Our Scripture will be John 17:20-26. Looking forward to worshipping with you.

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The second message in our series, Summer of Love is based on the Scripture passage 1 Peter 1:22-25 and it is called “Love is Heart Work”. So often, we are reactionary rather than proactive in our most important relationships. We ponder in our minds how we can continue to love people that we find hard to love or how we should respond in the multiplicity of perplexing relational scenarios we find ourselves. We regularly think “What should we do?” instead of “What should we be?” It is interesting that the Scriptures do not give us a great deal of specific “how-to’s” in learning to love or to forgive, to build or to restore relationships. Proverbs 4:23 reads, “Keep your heart with all vigilance, for from it flow the springs of life.” This week, we will see in our study of God’s Word is that the key to learning to love in a godly, Christ-exalting way is to seek God’s work on the inner self rather than the behavioral self. The hard work is the heart-work and that’s where God loves to go to work by His grace. Let’s prepare to enter this summer by inviting God to do whatever in us is necessary that we might love others the way that Christ first loved us. We need to learn to live from the inside out. Looking forward to worshipping with you.

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This summer, we will begin our summer sermon series called “Summer of Love: How God’s Love Compels Us to Love Others.” Waterbrooke’s mission statement reads:

“Waterbrooke seeks to be a gospel-centered, multi-ethnic community that is captivated by Christ, compelled to love others, and called to make disciples to the glory of God.”

How do we as Waterbrooke Church grow in God’s love and grace such that it is our Holy Spirit-given impulse to reach out to love others not because of anything in them, but because of Christ in us? Jesus clearly said in John 13:34-35 that the driving force of love in the lives of Christians should be the mark that clearly distinguishes us from the world around us.

He declared, “A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another: just as I have loved you, you also are to love one another. By this will all people know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.”

Join us in praying that the Spirit of God would grow us in our knowledge of Jesus’ love for us so that we might be genuinely compelled to love others and so glorify our good and gracious King!

Looking forward to growing together with you this summer!

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This week, we'll begin a four-part journey through the Old Testament book of Jonah. I know you may be thinking, "what can we possibly learn about this book that we haven't already learned from VeggieTales" but, believe me, the depths of God's grace are deeper than the waters from which Jonah cried out to God for mercy; and this, as we'll see this Sunday, is a message that the world desperately needs to hear...it's a message that Jonah needed to hear...it's a message that we need to hear.