I remember the first time I stepped off a diving board into the deep end of the pool. As a little kid, that pool looked so deep and the board felt so high in the air. Leaning forward and letting my full weight fall from its tip meant being fully committed, “all in,” with no turning back. If you’ve been a part of Grace Hills for a while, we want to challenge you this coming weekend to fully commit and to go “all in.” There are three specific invitations we want to extend to everybody who comes…
1. Commit fully to Christ. You may be at a place where you’re investigating the claims of the Bible. If so, we respect that and are happy to answer your questions as best we can. But if you’re convinced Jesus died and rose again for you and you have yet to fully commit your life to Him, now is the time, and we want to support you in that decision.
2. Follow Jesus in baptism. Baptism is an odd thing in the world we live in. You don’t get baptized into a school or a new job. It’s a “Jesus thing” and rightfully so, for Jesus Himself was baptized and commanded all believers who would ever follow Him to be baptized as well. If you’ve never been baptized by immersion as a believer, you can do so this Sunday! And again, it’s a decision we will support you through.
3. Become a member of Grace Hills. Church membership isn’t really about rights. It’s about responsibility. It’s a formal way of promising to do life with fellow believers, to serve, to give, to share, to hurt, to laugh, and to pray with one another. This coming Sunday, we will present Membership Matters as our morning message, which teaches about God’s purposes for our lives, the vision and values we hold dear as a church, and what membership means. Then we’ll ask attenders to pray about signing our membership covenant and officially becoming part of this local body of believers.
This is a big Sunday for us. It’s been about ten months in the making and we’re expecting God to be at work in the lives of those who attend. I want to speak to today’s Grace Hills Church in similar terms to the way I spoke to the thirty who came to our very first information meeting last July – as a team of people who have a heart for Jesus and for the broken of northwest Arkansas and the world beyond.
As always, I can’t wait to see you Sunday at 10:00 at Rogers Malco Town Cinema! Spread the word!
Also, check out the page about our upcoming message series: Me and My Perfect REAL Family!