Add'l thoughts from Sunday Morning's Message (January 21)

I really appreciated the opportunity to speak on Sunday. I just wanted to reassure our church family that I think our pastor has sufficiently recovered from his daughter's wedding! He is back in the office today, and will be back in the pulpit on Sunday. By the way, the wedding was awesome, and if you missed it, you missed something special.

I shared some thoughts from a book that I would like to point you to. It is The Cross Centered Life by C.J. Mahaney. Another book (that covers a lot of the same things) by Mahaney is Living the Cross Centered Life. Both are awesome and clarify what I shared about being under no condemnation from Romans 8. I hope the fact that God does not "mark our iniquities" (Ps. 130) has encouraged you and challenged you to live free this week.

If I had more time, I wanted to share one more thing with BBC. I want us to realize that God uses our guilt to point us to Jesus Christ. So, in some ways, I think we can almost be grateful for the guilt we feel. But, that guilt should push us to recognize what Jesus has done. If we let our guilt linger, that's when we pile up the baggage. But if we let our guilt point us to Jesus, it can actually become a good thing.

By the way, Canaan picked up his Elmo suitcase from my office today. It is now safe at home where he thinks it should belong!

--Curtis