Clemmons First Baptist Helping People to Trust and Follow Jesus Christ
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Weekly Schedule
Sundays: 9:15am Sunday School 10:30am Celebration Worship Wednesdays: 6:00pm Kids/Preschool Choirs 6:15pm Youth Bible Study 6:30pm Prayer Service 6:30pm Community Café 6:45pm RAs, GAs, Mission Friends 7:15pm Sanctuary Choir Rehearsal |
WORSHIP THIS WEEK:
"Enough"
Ever wondered if you are enough? Do you ever feel like you are not enough? When is enough enough? Richard Rohr in Richard Rohr’s Daily Meditations for June 15, 2016, reflected on how God gets us to a point where we are ready to let Him be enough for all our failures, weaknesses, and inadequacies.
“One of the only ways God can get us to let go of our private salvation project is through some kind of suffering. This is why we Christians hang the cross at the center of our churches. ... Yet for all this ritualization, it seems we don’t really believe what the cross teaches us — that the pattern of death and resurrection is true for us too, that we must die in a foundational way or any talk of “rebirth” makes no sense. I don’t know anything else that’s strong enough to force you and me to let go of our ego. Somehow our game has to fall apart. However we’ve defined ourselves as successful, moral, better than, right, good, on top of it, number one...something has to fail. It just has to.
This is the point when you don’t feel holy; you feel like a failure. You don’t feel worthy; you feel very unworthy because usually you’ve sinned. ...
Yet that is the only path toward your larger and true self, when you don’t need to prove yourself to God anymore; when you know, as Thomas Merton put it, it’s all “mercy within mercy within mercy.” It’s not what you do for God; it’s what God has done for you. You switch from trying to love God to just letting God love you. And it’s at that point you fall in love with God.”
Being overwhelmed by the love of God produces a response of gratitude and worship. In our inadequacy, we admit that we are “poor in spirit” and that makes us enough because God’s enough-ness fills up all our lack of being enough.
"Enough"
Ever wondered if you are enough? Do you ever feel like you are not enough? When is enough enough? Richard Rohr in Richard Rohr’s Daily Meditations for June 15, 2016, reflected on how God gets us to a point where we are ready to let Him be enough for all our failures, weaknesses, and inadequacies.
“One of the only ways God can get us to let go of our private salvation project is through some kind of suffering. This is why we Christians hang the cross at the center of our churches. ... Yet for all this ritualization, it seems we don’t really believe what the cross teaches us — that the pattern of death and resurrection is true for us too, that we must die in a foundational way or any talk of “rebirth” makes no sense. I don’t know anything else that’s strong enough to force you and me to let go of our ego. Somehow our game has to fall apart. However we’ve defined ourselves as successful, moral, better than, right, good, on top of it, number one...something has to fail. It just has to.
This is the point when you don’t feel holy; you feel like a failure. You don’t feel worthy; you feel very unworthy because usually you’ve sinned. ...
Yet that is the only path toward your larger and true self, when you don’t need to prove yourself to God anymore; when you know, as Thomas Merton put it, it’s all “mercy within mercy within mercy.” It’s not what you do for God; it’s what God has done for you. You switch from trying to love God to just letting God love you. And it’s at that point you fall in love with God.”
Being overwhelmed by the love of God produces a response of gratitude and worship. In our inadequacy, we admit that we are “poor in spirit” and that makes us enough because God’s enough-ness fills up all our lack of being enough.
Suggested Reading for the week of November 4:
Ruth 1:1-18 Deuteronomy 6:1-9 Hebrews 9:11-14 Mark 12:28-34
Psalm 146 Psalm 119:1-8
Psalm 146 Psalm 119:1-8