Newsletters - Community Protestant Church

September 6 – Service with communion

-----Bible study 9:00 & 11:15 every Sunday

September 13 – Service

September 15 - Session meeting 6 pm

September 20 - Service with communion

September 27 - Service

And we all, with unveiled face, beholding the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another. For this comes from the Lord who is the Spirit.

2 Corinthians 3:18

And he gave the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the shepherds and teachers, to equip the saints for the work of ministry, for building up the body of Christ, until we all attain to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to mature manhood, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ,

Eph 4:11-13

For those whom he foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son, in order that he might be the firstborn among many brothers. And those whom he predestined he also called, and those whom he called he also justified, and those whom he justified he also glorified.

Romans 8:29-30

my little children, for whom I am again in the anguish of childbirth until Christ is formed in you!

Galatians 4:19

To them God chose to make known how great among the Gentiles are the riches of the glory of this mystery, which is Christ in you, the hope of glory.

Colossians 1:20

The Christian life, following Jesus, is supposed to be about transformation from the inside out. I believe the following quote from Invitation to a Journey, by Robert Mulholland, Jr. paints a compelling picture of this transformation,

“It is only in Christ that we find our individuality. We become compassionate persons in an infinite variety of models. We love and serve like Jesus in unique ways…

Often people have the idea that the image of Christ is something alien to human beings, something strange that God wants to add on to our life, something imposed from outside that doesn’t really fit us. In reality, however the image of Christ is the fulfillment of the deepest hungers of the human heart for wholeness. The greatest thirst of our being is for fulfillment in Christ’s image. The most profound yearning of the human spirit, which we try to fill with all sorts of inadequate substitutes, is the yearning for our completeness in the image of Christ.

The image of Christ brings cleansing, healing, restoration, renewal, transformation, and wholeness into the unclean, diseased, broken, imprisoned, dead incompleteness of our lives. It brings compassion in place of indifference, forgiveness in place of resentment, kindness in place of coldness, openness in place of protective defensiveness or manipulation, a life lived for God and not for self. Again and again the New Testament emphasizes that this is the the work God is seeking to do in us—to grow us up into Christ-likeness…”

If you have heard me preach or teach you have heard me bring up this theme of transformation into Christ-likeness, over and over. If our lives aren’t being transformed, if we can’t see growth in Christ-likeness, all our church attendance, Bible study and Christian activity is meaningless. To paraphrase James. Faith without lives that look like Jesus is dead. Fortunately, out of the depths of his love for us God likes to raise the dead.