The Sign of Jonah calls all of us to acknowledge God's great power, our own sin, and the incredible gift of mercy and redemption offered to us through Jesus Christ.

In the most dramatic fashion, Jesus completed the work of redemption by rising from the grave, pursuing his disciples and demonstrating that he is the Messiah who always keeps his promises.

Jesus the innocent, intentional sacrifice and Jesus the excellent, gracious King who laid his life down out of love for us.

Though Jesus did not find it good to defend himself, he did find it worthy to gout of his way to  make it abundantly clear by a 5 way statement that He indeed was the divine messiah.  You cant have Jesus without embracing this claim of his.

The Spirit and the apostles want us to know how humanity utterly failed Jesus after everything, either in wicked hatred or wicked failure and how excellently and beautifully Jesus handled Himself as he willingly chose to be put to death despite being blameless.

In watching Christ in his great hour of need we learn that much of our preconceived notions of prayer are fictional and often foolishly religious.  As we watch Him here, he is leaving us an example of what perfection in prayer really looks like. It is earnest, communal, non boxed or formulaic but resting on the foundation of covenanted love with his… and now our…Father, who is all powerful, all wise and all loving towards us.

Jesus cherished the delivery and celebration of his New Covenant to us wherein we could finally fellowship deeply with Him through the indwelling Spirit and gave us Communion to remember this and how it took the willing death of Jesus to accomplish it. Let us Cherish our Savior and His amazing covenant!

Anyone and any church that is centered on the Gospel of Christ then receives Christ’s commission to extend that gospel to the time and location He has placed them. He has extended it as a joy and honor for us… done from the foundation of relationship with him, embraced and done together, and done with the people of our lives and those He will lead us to by His Spirit… our mission garden and mission farm.

As we continue in our vision series, we look at how God calls us his children, and adopts us into his family. Not metaphorically “like” his family, but actually brought in. Through the work of Christ we are adopted in. And because of this, we are called to live in light of this reality, in purpose, proximity, and with permission.