Atlanta Westside Presbyterian Church
From Fear to Faith
The Conscience of Class
Every Life in His Hands
Surrender of the Sexes
Generous Exclusivity
The Politics of Prayer
Some Good News
Wait For the Lord
Heaven Helps Us
by Walter Henegar
Elder Byron Johnson preached the sermon on Psalm 46:1-3.
One of the most significant and yet least-talked-about factors in every other controversial national issue right now is class. Whether James is addressing nonbelievers or believers, none of us is immune from the temptations to hoard, exploit, live self-indulgently, and participate in injustice. More important, Jesus frees us from the reasons we tend to seek wealth, which all inevitably backfire. His Gospel gives us an expansive family to belong to, an eternal security that no amount of money can provide, and a righteousness that cannot be measured in dollars and cents.
Few issues stir more passionate and politically charged debate than abortion. Job reminds us that suffering lies behind it, pushing Christians to respond in ways that demonstrate both grace and truth. The way of Jesus, we find, is characterized by handmade compassion, handmade redemption and handmade engagement in the political sphere. Ultimately, Christians must demonstrate our confidence in God as creator by actively loving, in both word and deed, every person made in his image, both born and unborn.
Men and women have more in common than we have different, starting with the Gospel that saves us all by grace through faith. We also have differences created by God. How we exercise our differences in the church calls for much wisdom and discernment, deconstructing false interpretations as much as reconstructing faithful ones. Ultimately, every aspect of our unique identities are tools for loving God by serving one another.
The Christian faith makes exclusive truth claims, and so does every other view of the world. This fact raises several challenging problems, yet we find that the Bible's claims are both necessary and glorious, enabling Christians to relate to the world in a humble, generous, teachable way.
The Gospel of Jesus compels Christians to engage in politics. At minimum, we must pray for all people, especially our political leaders. This affects the peace of society, and the way Christians live together in it. Both of these realities play an important role in how God saves and sanctifies people. And while first-century Christians had no influence over who their political leaders were, twenty-first century American Christians do. Therefore we must not only pray for our existing leaders but also seek God’s wisdom in which ones we vote for. Beyond that, we have freedom to serve according to our gifts, resources and opportunities. And regardless of which leaders are currently in office, we must seek God’s help to conduct ourselves in society in every way that is godly and dignified.
God wants you to know that you are okay, you can change, and you will be everything you were made to be, all because of Jesus.
Misdirected desires can cause anxiety, but gazing at Jesus can change us. We can have confidence in God’s plan, even when we suffer. This confidence comes when our greatest desire is intimate relationship with God. God invites us to seek him and wrestle with Him. When we wait for the Lord and believe God’s promises, we will have real hope and strength.
Christians’ ultimate hope is not going to heaven, but heaven coming to us. Peter explains why this “new heavens and new earth in which righteousness dwells” (v. 13) has not arrived yet, why the world must be refined by fire, and how we are to live while we wait. Other parts of scripture reassure us that those who have died in faith are present with Jesus now in the “intermediate state,” but even they still wait eagerly for the fullness of the resurrection.
Former Westside attender Michael Gregory, now planting a church in Los Angeles, shared this message from Psalm 17.