April 25th, 2025
ACTIONS VS. INTENTIONS
Stafford Greer, Bearspaw Lead Site Pastor
This past week, I have been sitting in a seminary class on the Sermon on the Mount; one of my favourite sections of Scripture that encapsulates what it means to follow after Jesus in the most practical ways. As I sit through class and study these 3 chapters, I am struck by the emphasis that Jesus places on obedience and action. Go through Matthew 5-7 yourself and underline all the lines where Jesus expects actions and you might be surprised. In fact, if you read carefully, you'll see that Jesus continually condemns people who are quick to talk, but fail to put that talk into action.
The importance of doing coupled with believing is scattered all through the Scriptures. Perhaps your mind might go to James 1:22-25 as a clear example:
"Do not merely listen to the word, and so deceive yourselves. Do what it says. Anyone who listens to the word but does not do what it says is like someone who looks at his face in a mirror and, after looking at himself, goes away and immediately forgets what he looks like. But whoever looks intently into the perfect law that gives freedom, and continues in it—not forgetting what they have heard, but doing it—they will be blessed in what they do."
Or perhaps your mind might go to the colloquial expression, "talk is cheap" when thinking about the topic. What you might not be aware of is that that expression is also found in Scripture. The writer of Ecclesiastes 5:7 says exactly that: "Talk is cheap, like daydreams and other useless activities" (NLT).
In my experience, lack of action does not always come from a nefarious heart; we aren't rebelling against action while professing a belief in something. I find that we often do believe and profess a truth, but at times we lack the structure, or a trellis, that helps us begin to put our desires into action.
Another way to put it is the tyranny of the urgent crowds out the important elements of our life and unless we structure our lives differently, we'll be slaves to doing what we've always done.
This happens in all areas of our life:
We intend to go to the gym in the mornings, but mornings are hectic, and we're up too late and want that extra sleep.
We intend to read that book, but our habits have us watching TV all night instead.
We intend to spend dedicated time in prayer, but everything else crowds out our time.
We intend to eat healthy, but keep buying all same processed food.
We intend to save money, but never build a budget.
What results from all of this is a series of good intentions - often very noble, godly, true, and good - that never get any traction in our lives.
If you remember back to January and February of this year, we began to walk through a vision series where we unpacked what we believe God is calling RockPointe Church to in this next ministry season.
We talked about our purpose: "We follow and teach the way of Jesus so that people near and far would encounter and be transformed by him."
We talked about our strategy to live this out: we GATHER regularly, we GROW spiritually, we GIVE generously, and we GO intentionally.
There is a very real danger that we could have put in all the work into crafting these statements and then never put any of it into practice. As a leadership team, we have been talking about how we can begin to embody these rhythms into our lives as a congregation. When we examined our regular worship service, we realized that we already have elements of each of the 4Gs happening each week.
GATHER: We gather in a public way for worship, fellowship, teaching, and service.
GROW: We grow spiritually through worship in prayer, song, and the teaching and reading of Scripture.
GIVE: We give of our time, talents, and treasures through serving in various roles and ministries, as well as giving of our treasures through tithes and offerings.
GO: When the service is over, we go back out into the mission field of our communities.
What if we were to structure our time together in ways that help support these efforts?
Beginning this Sunday, we are going to be implementing some elements into our services that we believe will help remind us of and help us live out our Purpose and the 4Gs. Don't worry, we're not drastically changing anything, rather we will be using prayers and liturgies (a word that literally means, "the work of the people") to mark and shape our time together.
For instance, our service hosts will read a call to worship using a Psalm that marks our time of GATHERING at the beginning of each service.
Before Scripture is read (which is already part of our RPC liturgy, even if we don't call it that), the Scripture Reader will lead us in a prayer that will prepare our hearts to hear from the Word so that we can GROW spiritually together (and the congregation will respond with, "Lord, hear our prayer").
When we receive our offering, the Service Host will pray a simple giving liturgy prayer (something that our Westhills congregation has already been practicing this year) to prepare us to GIVE generously.
And when our service is over, we will together recite our Alliance Vision Prayer as we GO to make disciples in the places we live, learn, work, and play.
I know that changing how we do things can be challenging and that at first any changes can sometimes feel 'clunky' or ill-fitting. This is no different than changing a morning ritual, establishing a budget, or changing an eating habit. However, after only a few times of implementation, we can begin to find that these change begin to shape and mold us to help support the kind of people that we believe God is calling us to be.
I am excited about how we can lean in together into what God is calling us to and allow him to shape us into Christlikeness as we follow him together!
Press on!
Stafford
P.S. This Sunday will also be important to our church - I am so excited to be sharing with you our vision for this next ministry season! See you there!
