The Life We Want
Week 1
Dean Pollard
January 1, 2023

This series is not a prosperity gospel series, not health and wealth theology wrapped in Christianity. It’s discovering the life God has for us, which turns out is the life we want.

“I have been all things unholy. If God can work through me, He can work through anyone.” —St. Francis of Assisi

How do people change like this?

“To follow the teaching of our Lord Jesus Christ and to walk in his footsteps.” —St. Francis of Assisi

The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy. I came that they may have life and have it abundantly. —John 10:10 (ESV)

Do you feel like your life is full? Some people do; most people don’t.

Full means “to be complete, whole, without need.” It also means extraordinary.

Disciple: One who is learning and living the way of Jesus, daily being formed into Christlikeness in all of life.

Being like Christ expresses itself in love in three directions:

LOVE GOD

Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength. —Mark 12:30 (NIV)

LOVE YOUR NEIGHBOR

…Love your neighbor as yourself. —Matthew 22:39b (NIV)

LOVE ONE ANOTHER

…Love one another, As I have loved you, so you must love one another. —John 13:34b (NIV)

What God is offering us is not just change, but transformation.

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… —2 Corinthians 3:18 (ESV)

The way of Jesus teaches us the opposite of the values of our day.

RECEIVE & GIVE

19 We love because he first loved us. 20 If anyone says, “I love God,” and hates his brother, he is a liar; for he who does not love his brother whom he has seen cannot love God whom he has not seen. 21 And this commandment we have from him: whoever loves God must also love his brother. —1 John 4:19-21 (ESV)

INTENTIONAL PRACTICE

What you have learned and received and heard and seen in me—practice these things… —Philippians 4:9a (ESV)

Do not merely listen to the word, and so deceive yourselves. Do what it says. —James 1:22 (NIV)

COMMITTED COMMUNITY

34 A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another: just as I have loved you, you also are to love one another. 35 By this all people will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.” —John 13:34-35 (ESV)

BIBLICAL TEACHING

14 so that we may no longer be children, tossed to and fro by the waves and carried about by every wind of doctrine, by human cunning, by craftiness in deceitful schemes. 15 Rather, speaking the truth in love, we are to grow up in every way into him who is the head, into Christ. —Ephesians 4:14-15 (ESV)

14 I have given them your word, and the world has hated them because they are not of the world, just as I am not of the world. 15 I do not ask that you take them out of the world, but that you keep them from the evil one. 16 They are not of the world, just as I am not of the world. —John 17:14-16 (ESV)

And he said to all, “If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me.” —Luke 9:23 (ESV)

“Start by doing what is necessary, then what is possible, and suddenly you are doing the impossible.” —St. Francis of Assisi

Receiving and Giving
Intentional Practices
Committed to Community
Biblical Teaching