Beat Up!

Just like NU today…

A few weeks back a SSB faithful attendee told me that he loved attending church (worship) at SSB.  I thanked him and asked him why?  He said because “I get beat up!”  “I come here to get beat up and walk out feeling good about it!”  He talked about how through the week he drifts into wrong language, thinking and actions.  He realizes that church causes him to think afresh about a holy God and hear from that God that language, thinking and actions matter and God both rewards and punishes those things.  The SSB service teaches life God’s way and such beats up on life the world’s way.  Good!

Not that we preach hard on separation and judgments but we do preach hard about holiness and God’s presence.  Furthermore, we read and talk the Bible which presses followers to put off and put on – flee the world and be like Jesus!

And what does it mean to be Jesus like?

Colossians 3:12-17,…put on tender mercies, kindness, humility, meekness, longsuffering; bearing with one another, and forgiving one another, if anyone has a complaint against another; even as Christ forgave you, so you also must do. But above all these things put on love, which is the bond of perfection. And let the peace of God rule in your hearts, to which also you were called in one body; and be thankful. 

Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly in all wisdom, teaching and admonishing one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing with grace in your hearts to the Lord. 

And whatever you do in word or deed, do all in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through Him.

Included here are a whole host of challenges: a host of things that are not normal or natural to human nature.  These verses present a number of things that call the Jesus follower to adopt over the world’s ways.

Thus, not by intent or pre-thought, but the SSB church service “beats people up!”

So be it!

May God be glorified!