Join us this month as we explore the five essential Christian practices and see how they move us onward in our transformation.

However tarnished we may be, God never gives up on us. Paul writes in Ephesians 4:22-24, “You were taught to put away your former way of life, your old self, corrupt and deluded by its lusts, and to be renewed in the spirit of your minds, and to clothe yourselves with the new self, created according to the likeness of God in true righteousness and holiness.”

As you go through your week at home or work or church, talking or texting or calling one another, baking, painting, sewing, overseeing others in your job, or being a parent, remember you do these things because you’re created in the image of God. These activities we so easily take for granted are ways God has stamped his image on us. When we think of life this way, it deepens our understanding of what it means to “give to God what belongs to God.” It is to recognize that our whole lives–every bit of them–belong to God.

Jesus proclaims that God’s kingdom is breaking into this world and transforming it, and that transformation entails turning this upside down world rightside up. The inbreaking kingdom casts the Light of God into every corner of our lives, causing us to reassess and reevaluate everything we thought we knew. Everything has changed because in Jesus, God has torn open the heavens and come down.

Loving God . . . loving others. It’s really quite revolutionary when you think about it.