From Our Family Pastor, Dennis Johns:

Aren’t you grateful for new beginnings! I know that I
am so thankful to have the opportunity to worship in a new
sanctuary and participate in programming in a new facility. In
student ministry we call our meeting space the Upper Room
and it is an awesome space. We have begun a new format for
Wednesday nights to include a meal and a time of praise and
worship to make for an awesome weeknight experience for
students. We have new volunteers that are making time to be
present and serve students in a new way. (You see how I keep
using “new” there huh?)
What is awesome about our new space is that it is
actually repurposed or transformed into something new. It
reminds me of Romans 12:1-2 MSG 1-2 So here’s what I want
you to do, God helping you: Take your everyday, ordinary life—your sleeping, eating, going-to-work, and walking-around life—and place it before God as an offering. Embracing what God does for you is the best thing you can do for him. Don’t become so well-adjusted to your culture that you fit into it without even thinking. Instead, fix your attention on God. You’ll be changed from the inside out. Readily recognize what he wants from you, and quickly respond to it. Unlike the culture around you, always dragging you down to its level of immaturity, God brings the best out of you, develops well-formed maturity in you.
When we fix our attention on God, we will be “changed from the inside out.” God will do the transforming, but we must be willing to offer our “everyday lives, our sleeping, eating, going-to-work, and walking around life” to Him for that to happen. We must be willing to create the space, allow Him to renovate our rooms, let go of the things that might keep us in the past. May God continue His renovation of our hearts and lives, and may we celebrate that process with each other as we serve, love, and share together.

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