In our lives, we have a tendency to feel like we have to choose. Well, in some cases that’s very true. I mean some things in life require a choice, but not everything! Over the next 6 weeks, we’re going to journey through something called the Red Letter Challenge at Living Word Galena. This challenge is all about finding the words of Jesus and seeing where they lead us. So for the next 40 days or so we’re going to do a daily reading together, join small groups and these Sunday messages will chart the course for the week ahead.

This week we focused on the word AND. It’s a seemingly silly word to look at but if you really think about it, it’s important! We spent time in Matthew’s Gospel. Here Jesus preaches what’s called the Sermon on the Mount. And as He wraps up the sermon He lays down this expectation.

Therefore everyone who hears these words of mine AND
puts them into practiceis like a wise man who built his house on the rock.

Now in the text of the Bible the word AND isn’t capitalized or anything like that, but for our purposes we need to see how powerful this word truly is. The word AND is the difference between simply hearing AND letting our hearing lead us to doing! The word AND reminds us that we can have law AND gospel in a bible verse. We are sinner AND saint. God is both just AND the justifier.

The word AND can be so easily overlooked but in this world we’re called not to just blend in or let things slide by us. We aren’t just to hear the word but we’re so supposed to also let this word we hear move us to live differently! Check out this week’s message on being an AND kind of people.