Faithbase

Okay, by now, if you've watched the last two videos, you might be thinking, Kevin, look, how do I try hard to follow God and allow the Spirit to lead me, but not do it in my own effort? Well, I have some good news, bad news in this situation. Here's the bad news. The bad news is there is no formula for life. The other side of this bad news is more bad news, and that's that there's no hard and fast answer to this. There is some good news, though. The good news is we walk in wisdom. We walk in the wisdom of what we see in Scripture. We walk in the wisdom of our faith community, and we talk to the people in our faith community. This is why I encourage you guys to go to church so often. The good news is that we walk in the Spirit of grace and mercy. The only reason that we have a life in Christ at all is because He has done the work for us on our behalf, and the gospel is nothing without the grace and mercy that we receive from Christ's death on the cross and His resurrection. He's the one who's done all the work, and so we participate in one of the greatest mysteries of the Christian faith. How do we grow? How do we move toward God? How do we keep in step with the Spirit? It's one step at a time, one day at a time. We submit ourselves to the Lord, and we offer ourselves to Him. Friends, we are often looking for the way to make sure that we are doing the right thing. Many of you might be, but there is no formula to life. As a really good Westerner, many of us want that. We would like step A and step B equals C. Well, there's a lot of things that can point us towards C, but it's not a formula. We walk in faith and trust, and we ask the Holy Spirit to guide us, and then we move some more, and then we, in faith, continue to move forward. Friends, embrace the mystery. Embrace the journey. This is not cut and dry. I wish that I could maybe give you a little bit more assurance, but I know that the Spirit is with you, and if you open yourself to Him, that He will listen, that you will listen, and that He will speak. We pray these things in His heavenly name.