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Love

Teaching Text: ‭‭Genesis 3: 8-9

Then the man and his wife heard the sound of the Lord God as he was walkingin the garden in the cool of the day, and they hid from the Lord God among the trees of the garden. But the Lord God called to the man, “Where are you?”

Revelation 21: 2-3

I saw the Holy City, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God,prepared as a bride beautifully dressed for her husband. And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, “Look! God’s dwelling place is now among the people, and he will dwell with them. They will be his people, and God himself will be with them and be their God.

Themes

Consider these themes and ask your group what else they see in the passage:

Vision Sundays | Pressnce | Altars

Formation

Thoughts and notes you can use for discussion:

What aspects or traditions do you like most about the fall?
What are you personally excited about this Fall?
The world we live in keeps us perpetually in An Imminent Frame
- What urgent language in our world can you recall?
The thing we lose is TRANSCENDENCE
What matter most?
So many opinions about what matters most.
And we wanted to take these few weeks at the beginning of the fall as to celebrate 15 years and move into all that God has next for us to center in on what is most important for Trinity Grace.
At our 10 year anniversary as a church GOD spoke some words to us. Simplified the expression of our vision. It wasn’t utterly new, but it was a sharpening of what we had been living.
- PRESENCE. FORMATION. LOVE
- Be with God. Become like Jesus. Live by the Spirit
MAKE ALTARS - places of God’s revealed presence
SET TABLES - places of friendship, hospitality and love
TEND GARDENS - places where the things of the Kingdom grow.
ALTARS + TABLES + GARDENS
- These are places of a presence, formation, and love. They are spaces we build and set apart, we set up and host, we sow seeds and join in cultivation.
- Places to consecrate and seek God's face. (prayer events becoming a prayer culture)
- Places to gather and be formed in hospitality and love. (discipleship in groups and specific equipping, growth in hospitality)
- Places where good things grow, things of the Kingdom, seeds becoming fruit. (seeds of service, love, partnership, growing and harvesting for others)
This begins with God’s Presence
- Then Moses said to him, “If your Presence does not go with us, do not send us up from here. How will anyone know that you are pleased with me and with your people unless you go with us? What else will distinguish me and your people from all the other people on the face of the earth?”
  And the Lord said to Moses, “I will do the very thing you have asked, because I am pleased with you and I know you by name.”
  – Exodus 33
This is our prayer - God your presence is what matters most and if we have come to place where that isn’t the case will you renew our hearts and minds.
- The Presence and the manifestation of the Presence are not the same. There can be the one without the other. God is here when we are wholly unaware of it. He is manifest only when and as we are aware of His Presence. On our part there must be surrender to the Spirit of God, for His work it is to show us the Father and the Son. If we co-operate with Him in loving obedience God will manifest Himself to us, and that manifestation will be the difference between a nominal Christian life and a life radiant with the light of His face.
  – A.W. Tozer
- Importance of presence throughout scripture…
  - In Eden, it is the loss of a sense of God’s presence that we look on at in sadness as Adam and Eve hide in fear from the God they walked with the cool of the evening.
    - And the restoration of our union with God in that way weaves through the whole story
  - Jacob wrestling with God at Bethel and making an Altar to mark where he had met and wrestled with God
  - Moses in his tent of meeting, as a precursor to the tabenacle - a place to speak and be spoken to by God as a friend
  - David - longing to make a place - a house for God - and you can take a deep dive studying David’s tabernacle as a place where he sang and worshipped and ached and celebrated in prayer, writing Psalms, marked by and making God’s presence
  - Jesus - could have prayed anywhere - but he had a custom of drawing away, early in the morning, late the evening, drawing away to be with the Father - he had places, gardens, groves of trees where he went AS HIS CUSTOM WAS - he also also gathered to worship with his neighbors - making altars and sanctuaries in time and place.
  - and the final picture we are given in Revelation is a PRESENCE picture, a marker of where God is with his people, an altar in the text…
    - I saw the Holy City, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride beautifully dressed for her husband. And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, “Look! God’s dwelling place is now among the people, and he will dwell with them. They will be his people, and God himself will be with them and be their God.
      – Revelation 21:2-3
What is MOST important to you this Fall? What Matters MOST?
Where do you 3want God to meet with you?
What parts of your life do you want to consecrate to Jesus?
How can you make time to be with Jesus?