06 Oct What Can We Find in the Picture

Hi everyone! If you’re wondering where quite a few of our staff are this week, we are in Cape Town, South Africa, with 5000 of our closest friends from around the globe for the 2023 Every Nation World Conference, including quite a few from Mosaic Church. Can’t wait to tell you about it next week when we’re back!

But this weekend, we get to start something brand new:

If the first smartphone existed in the first century…

and that first smartphone was discovered…

and on that first smartphone in the first century…

the first snapshot of the very first group of Christians was found…

what would that first snapshot tell us about the Christian faith?

What picture would we be shown about what the first Christians believed, and how they behaved, and about the faith that was turning a civilization upside down?

I think it might show us a lot, and that’s what the book, the letter of 1 Thessalonians is all about.

Written to a city not too different from Austin–large, but not the largest in the Empire, with a large highway running through it, prosperous and landlocked–Thessalonica was a place of enormous impact for the Apostle Paul.

In this letter, likely the earliest New Testament document we have, written around 15 years after the Resurrection of Jesus, we find Paul writing a letter to answer the question:

What does it mean that a man whom the Roman Empire killed has been raised from the dead?

What does the Resurrection of Jesus mean for our everyday lives?

The answer: It means we live out of a living hope.

It means we can live out of a living hope, with our ups and our downs, with our bodies and our time, with our joys and our sorrows. The Resurrection means for us today–like it meant for them then–that we can always be Living Out of a Living Hope–and that’s the name of our new series.

I’m not sure if I’ve ever heard a series of messages preached on this powerful epistle (we’ll actually dip our toe over into 2 Thessalonians as well), and I know I’ve never taught through it before, so I’m looking forward to learning and applying this “new frontier” along with you.

Blessings,

Morgan