Compassion is Our Heart

These past couple weeks, we’ve been focusing on values and it has been such an eye opener! Our values matter. They tell the story of what is of most importance in our discipleship journey. So far, we’ve focused on key values we have at UPC such as Compassion & Audacity.

We simply operate in Compassion because to Love God is to love people. Love is nothing unless compassion drives us to be involved in the human experience of life.

We live in a Social Media driven society that puts our compassion or lack of it on display for the world.

SM has many positives and can be used as a platform to encourage, share and reach others for Jesus. However, in light of all that can be good, there’s also a downside…

The downside of it is the deterioration of values, empathy and compassion. It can cause people to focus on self, the overwhelming exposure to suffering can desensitize us to peoples hurt and the lack of interaction can cause us to care less about people.

Jesus’ compassion towards us was life saving. He was moved to the point he went to the cross. Compassion is love in action… To say you love, but not act on it is to not love at all.

We need to let our lives be interrupted and react with God’s love and compassion and most importantly...ACT! When you are moved by compassion, you see the power of God more than you see the need.

Though the word hope is in the definition of faith, sitting around hoping for God to do something is not what God is calling us to do. This is why Audacity is another value of ours. Audacity is our spirit, and this audacity helps us view faith with a drive that places action before the blessing that we trust God for. And we see the result through the expectation that God is going to honor the work that was put into it. That means taking risks at times.

The reason why we must have audacity as our spirit is because there an ambivalence to faith. It’s not clearly defined.

There are very little times in the Bible that a big risk wasn’t met with a big miracle. God did something big and bold for His people. God loves an audacious spirit, because without faith, the Bible says, it is impossible to please God. This is the reason why we want to keep focusing, as a church, to take bold risks. That audacity becomes our spirit... Why? Because people of faith aren’t supposed to play it safe.

Where there are miracles, there is a process. Where there is no risk, there is no reward.

We have to ask ourselves, what kind of risk are we willing to take for Christ?

God will always ask us to give him what we have, in order for him to give us what we need.

He cannot deposit in our life that which we aren’t willing to work (or dig) for.
You want to find God? Dig deeper.

We can’t just come to church. We need to come to church expecting to have an encounter with God.

Spend the week digging ditches. Dig ditches of Fellowship, Worship, prayer, and Word. Come to church with your hands dirty and with a shovel, ready to go deeper.

We look forward to going deeper with you this Sunday so grab your shovel and join us at 10:15 am as we get into the next value. See you soon!