Welcome to our 2nd installment of looking back and looking forward. Yesterday, God used Joe D declare to us that we as His followers at times think that we are pretty good. We think that our feet don't stink if you will. ! John 1:8 &10 tell us that if we think this way as our habit of mind, that we are liars and Jesus is not apart of us, meaning we don't have a relationship with Him.

We then looked at the truth that for the follower of Jesus, one of the greatest things about Jesus is that if we come to him confessing our sins that He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins. That means that God will daily cleanse us from our sin and continue to make us more like his Son.

We also learned the amazingness of what Jesus did on our behalf. Because we do sin and have dishonored God, we are deserving of judgment, but God in his grace sent Jesus to act on our behalf i.e. our Advocate and He (Jesus) became our satisfaction and payment for sin i.e. propitiation. That means that the only way to be freed from our guilt and shame is to trust in the life, death & resurrection of the one who took the judgement for our sin upon himself. Our response in all this should be praise to God, confession to Him and having our passion buckets be full of Jesus at all times.

The amazing thing is that it is about to get better. Next week we will be studying 1 John 2:3-11 where God gives us some ways or proofs that we are His followers. Make sure you read verses 3-11 of 1 John 2 and ask God to open up your heart and mind to understand his Word so we can be made more like him.

Have a good week my friends. Remember to sign up for the upcoming events and continue to check the website for more bounciness!!