Celebrating Our Spiritual Family
By God’s grace we have all been gifted with a mother. We thank God for mothers here this morning. We pray alongside those who desire to be mothers. We mourn with mothers who have lost children. We desire to walk alongside and pray for mothers of children with special needs and mothers of kids from hard places. We also ask God to comfort those here this morning who have lost their mothers or have a difficult relationship with their mother. It is good and right for us to praise and give thanks to God for the gift of mothers. Thank you God for the gift of mothers.
No matter the different experiences we approach a holiday like this with, we all come with one thing in common that has been gifted to us in and through Christ…a spiritual family that we should celebrate. Brothers and sisters you have been saved by the grace of God into the family of God. We are no longer strangers and aliens, but we are fellow citizens with the saints and members of the household of God! And as members of the household of God we are called to live life together as a spiritual family. Emmaus church, we are a family! As members of God’s family we are called to love, encourage, forgive and serve one another. We are all called to help one another pursue spiritual maturity & grow in our desire to be spiritual mothers & fathers. As a family we are called to live our life together; to share one another's burdens and sorrows. Brothers & sister I exhort you this morning to celebrate God’s good gift of the spiritual family he has given us here at Emmaus. And I encourage you to continue pouring into one another’s lives, to spur one another along to love and good deeds, & to do one another spiritual good. As a sinner saved by the grace of God, you have been given many good gifts. Praise God for the gift of our spiritual family! Praise God for the gift of Emmaus!
By God’s grace, we have been a loving and faithful church family in many ways. But we also know that we have fallen short in loving our spiritually family well.
So I would like us to confess to God the ways we have neglected our spiritual family. Let’s pray