Church Of The Lost Sheep

“Here’s what I want you to do: Find a quiet, secluded place so you won’t be tempted to role-play before God. Just be there as simply and honestly as you can manage. The focus will shift from you to God, and you will begin to sense his grace." -Jesus of Nazareth, 1st Century Matthew 6:6 The Message Paraphrase [ 13th  message of the Why I Don't Believe Series] The messages in this series discuss how some people who reject Christianity do so because they either cannot accept an inconvenient biblical teaching, or they have an irreconcilable stance against the teachings of Jesus the Christ, or they have found something they think is wrong with Christianity. Religion Many people are so over God mainly because of the things they have experienced with religion. Most of these stem from the fact that we forget that the people who make up the church are all flawed, like everyone else. We touched on this in the previous message of this series. Many of the issues we have against re

  Lost Sheep 'We’re all like sheep who’ve wandered off and gotten lost.     We’ve all done our own thing, gone our own way. And God has piled all our sins, everything we’ve done wrong,     on him, on him.' Isaiah 53:6 Jesus didn't come to start a religion. Christianity, the one which Christ started, was not set up as an organized religion.  People who keep on saying they dislike organized religion must be told that Jesus Christ had a specific purpose (and not to start a new religion).  Lamb of God He came to do these: to live as one of us, live a sinless life to be the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world and to teach His disciples all about these for three years.  He lived a sinless life, He taught, travelled, ate and spent day and night with His disciples for that short a time and He went to the cross to finish His mission.  When His earthly ministry was done, He left His disciples with the Holy Spirit who like Him was their constant companion, helper, t

New Life "It wasn’t so long ago that we ourselves were stupid and stubborn, dupes of sin, ordered every which way by our glands, going around with a chip on our shoulder, hated and hating back. But when God, our kind and loving Savior God, stepped in, he saved us from all that. It was all his doing; we had nothing to do with it. He gave us a good bath, and we came out of it new people, washed inside and out by the Holy Spirit. Our Savior Jesus poured out new life so generously. God’s gift has restored our relationship with him and given us back our lives. And there’s more life to come—an eternity of life! You can count on this." Titus 3:3-7 MSG The Apostle Paul during his missionary journeys, moved from city to city personally teaching the gospel of Christ. During his trips, when Paul and his missions group moved on to the next city, he left followers in charge to lead, and to oversee the churches they have started. So even then, there was already some sort of order

'The Lord says, “These people worship me with their mouths and honor me with their lips. But their hearts are far from me, and their worship of me is based on rules made by humans.' Isaiah 23:13 GW A very common reason given by people who are hesitant or skeptical about believing or even surrendering their life to God is that they hate organized religion. It is a good reason, but nonethe less an excuse. Because the determined will find a reason to do something, while the undecided will find excuses why not to. But do not get me wrong, in many cases this is a valid excuse. Jesus did not really start a religion. And He did not create organized religion. But He did leave behind an organization (a group of people) and a helper and counselor -- the Holy Spirit. He taught that group of people what to do. He also instructed them that when He leaves, the Holy Spirit will come and He will teach them from where He left off, and they did obey as best they can, almost all to