Relentless

These two weeks, we had the privilege of hearing Praveen and Preethi give their sermons. The overall theme of both messages was to be relentless after God. Praveen compared the Christian life to running and training for a race. He defined what a relentless life looks like. It's a hard life. It's a life full of struggles, sacrifices, but it's also a life filled with incomprehensible peace through it all. To be relentless, we must throw off everything that hinders us (Hebrews 12:1) -- the good and the bad. This requires us to set our priorities straight and make the effort to run after God with everything we have. Let's be relentless after God!

Today, Preethi focused on being relentless after the responsibilities God has given us -- to go make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit (Matthew 28:19). She began her sermon with an anecdote about a suicidal man. There was a suicidal man about to jump off a bridge off of I-95, but then a stranger came up to him and asked him why he was about to take his life. The stranger listened to the suicidal man's stories and in the end, the stranger, not the suicidal man ended up jumping off the bridge. What does this have to do with anything? Preethi compared this to what Jesus did for us. Jesus was the stranger. He took all our sins and problems away by dying for us on the cross. Therefore, now we have the responsibility to go and share the gospel. Even though it's hard, let's overcome the difficulties and be relentless in sharing the gospel with everyone. Though we may be timid, the Holy Spirit will give us words to speak when we open our mouths.

So we want you guys to be relentless. Let's try to encourage each other through everything. (:

Oh, and if you were there three weeks ago when Danny's dad came to speak to us about Lent, let's keep praying for the people we wrote down on our index card!