Message
Telling A Better Story

Guest Speaker Don Orange

Acts 17:16-34

Service on Sundays will be held Indoors until further notice

Crestview family,

This Sunday, a good friend of mine, Pastor Don Orange will be here to bring the message for July 4th.  Don and I have known one another for 18 years, shared many retreats, meals, conversations and prayers.  So glad that Don will be here.    

This July 4th is a great time for love and liberty.  I am unable to separate the two: to love is to be free and to be free is to love.  It is also difficult for me to separate the best of covenantal and constitutional ways of living.  I like how Os Guinness speaks about freedom.  Freedom is a gift and an inheritance, but it is also an art that requires practice, discipline, and perseverance.  Both require a long obedience in the same direction and require keeping promises and respecting your neighbor.  The right for one is a right for another and a responsibility for both.  We share freedom – it’s communal.  Each person’s freedom is free only to the extent that each one respects the equal freedom of all others.  This is what God’s command to love your neighbor is all about.       

In Jesus Christ, we share the freedom from the penalty of sin and now, have the freedom to do the good of love.  We share the freedom not to do what we want but the power to do what we ought.  And over time, the freedom to  love becomes more and more what we want.  Just as in a country defined by freedoms, communal freedom means freedom for each person and freedom for all in the service of the good of all. And for followers of Jesus, it’s all about exercising freedom in the ways of love for the Glory of God. 

God bless you, your family and neighbors, and God bless our country,
        Pastor Mark