Stars for Christ

Hey there!

Yeah, yeah, I know, I've been gone way to long, BUT I am back, so yay!

So as of late, here's what's happened:

• I told a few of the members of my church about my project and may soon start apprenticing with them. Hopefully I will learn a few more things that will make this project more successful.
• My church has been doing a series called "Radical" about Paul's letters to Gallatia. Here's what I've learned:

We are all hypocrites. And you know what? It's okay! Obviously we shouldn't run around saying that our sins are good, but we tend to take things too far; we reflect on our evil deeds and think that God won't accept us as much as He would if we were more perfect. We don't need to, He already loves us, so we don't need to beat ourselves up so much.

When we believe that we need to work to gain God's aproval, we basically tell ourselves in a non-verbal way that our Savior is still dead. If He died a martyr and never rose again, we have to work to be able to spend eternity with God. But if He, indeed, did rise again for us, He paid our debt and gave us freedom to live without the need to prove anything; we can stand before Him shameless and fearless and know that He truely, madly, deeply loves us.

So why do we still have to do good things? Because it is what God tells us: Don't murder, don't lie, treat those around you with kindness and care, etc. but it's not because he wants to ruin our good time (becuase... apparently as I'm saying, it's fun to just willy-nilly murder people. ), but because everyone around you is your brother/sister. They are exactly like you despite your differences; we're all humans, we all sin and feel pain, and we all are looking for someone or something to live for. If you follow the Ten Commandments, it makes it much easier to love people to christ.

Hopefully this has inspired you to move forward in God's work throug us.

~Jessica Repp