Echo.Church
ImPOSSIBLE SURRENDER | MOONSHOT (Pt. 3) | David Bennett
📺 LIVE ONLINE SERVICES each Sunday at 8:30am | 10:00am | 11:30am PT ◾️ Our post-secular society has tried to find a love that does not require suffering or surrender. But with experience, we know love is not possible without sacrifice. Whether a parent and child, a faithful friend, or a loving spouse, whatever relationship, you know that to have a truly satisfying intimacy, requires sacrifice. ◾️ God's message of sacrifice has often been deeply misinterpreted and distorted. God sacrificed and looked down so we could grow in love together. And as God's children, we tend to follow this example. But have you ever wondered what it truly means to love sacrificially? ◾️ And how might this path of humility and surrender lead to a fuller, more meaningful life for you? How can this sacrificial love lead to true flourishing? How can we allow our identities to reflect the grace and joy in our everyday interactions to be blessed and be a blessing to our loved ones? ◾️ Join us as we continue our transformative series, Moonshot. Together, let's explore how the way up is truly down. Let us together understand the practical ways of giving and in turn receiving love and the joy of radical sacrifices. ✅ Check-in to let us support you in your journey. If you’re new here, you’ll also receive a free digital gift card! https://echo.church/checkin → ✋ Decided to follow Jesus? We’d love to guide you in the next steps in your faith journey! https://echo.church/yes → 💌 If this message encourages you, SHARE IT with a friend! LIKE & subscribe so you don’t miss our latest videos. → 🙏🏽Need Prayer? TEXT our Prayer Line: (408) 716-1675 Thanks for joining us! ====================
Locations & Times
Echo.Church | North San Jose Campus
1180 Murphy Ave, San Jose, CA 95131, USA
Sunday 8:30 AM
Sunday 10:00 AM
Sunday 11:30 AM
Sunday 4:00 PM
Sunday 5:30 PM
💫 WE PREACH Nothing But CHRIST And HIM CRUCIFIED 💫
|| "“The Christian faith from the beginning, is sacrifice the sacrifice of all freedom, all pride, all self-confidence of spirit, it is at the same time subjection, self-derision, and self-mutilation.”
~Friedrich Nietzsche
~Friedrich Nietzsche
|| "“Burning Man is slouching toward Coachella, Richard Dawkins is a farce, and an uneasy realization is dawning that, while we all thought we were locked arm in arm in humanity’s cheerful march toward progress, we were only wandering into swift-approaching regression. Even hard-nosed progressives had begun to sense that something rotten was simmering in the tepid cultural waters. Could it be that what society needed was a return to an ethical framework that had survived throughout millennia?”
~Zoe Bernard; Christianity Was Borderline Illegal In Silicon Valley. Now It's The New Religion, Vanity Fair
~Zoe Bernard; Christianity Was Borderline Illegal In Silicon Valley. Now It's The New Religion, Vanity Fair
|| “Maybe you know this person, or maybe you are this person, because it’s a personality that, while largely original to the Bay Area, has saturated mainstream consciousness so thoroughly as to become stripped of all its original subversion. Go to most any party of millennials in Los Angeles or New York and you’ll find the same iridescent-sheathed package of psilocybin-studded chocolate being passed around. What was once radical is now mundane.”
~Zoe Bernard; Christianity Was Borderline Illegal In Silicon Valley. Now It's The New Religion, Vanity Fair
~Zoe Bernard; Christianity Was Borderline Illegal In Silicon Valley. Now It's The New Religion, Vanity Fair
|| “‘People are so ready to make AGI their god,’” one Christian tech entrepreneur stated. “‘What we’re trying to do … is give them an alternative.’”
~Zoe Bernard; Christianity Was Borderline Illegal In Silicon Valley. Now It's The New Religion, Vanity Fair
~Zoe Bernard; Christianity Was Borderline Illegal In Silicon Valley. Now It's The New Religion, Vanity Fair
💡 The Way Up Is Down First.
🔸 IDENTITY (dfn): “The quality or condition of being the same in substance, composition, nature, properties, or in particular qualities under consideration. Absolute or essential sameness, oneness.”
~Oxford English Dictionary
~Oxford English Dictionary
🔸 IDENTITY (dfn): "The sameness of a person or thing at all times or in all circumstances. The condition or fact that a person or thing is itself and not something else; individuality; personality.”
~Oxford English Dictionary
~Oxford English Dictionary
|| "The more you try to erase me, the more I appear. The more you try to erase me, there is nothing: only I remain."
~Michel Foucault
~Michel Foucault
💡 We reduce each other to some small aspect of our humanity, but God knows how to free us to be all He created us to be in Jesus Christ – to become a new creation human being, not in spite of our weaknesses or differences, but through them as sites of witness. The way to this broader humanity which does not erase ourselves, but dies to the old self and lives into the new creation, is the sacrificial love of the cross.
|| "Self-worship: “…What the heart loves, the will chooses, and the mind justifies.”
~Ashley Null; describing reformer and martyr Thomas Cranmer
~Ashley Null; describing reformer and martyr Thomas Cranmer
|| “The mind doesn’t direct the will. The mind is actually captive to what the will wants, and the will itself, in turn, is captive to what the heart wants.”
~Ashley Null
~Ashley Null
|| "The fallen order [of the world] displays something of the grandeur and beauty of its created nature, however, the point is simply that striking bargains with the world is not [to imitate Christ]. Christ’s followers are called to bear their cross, to ‘mortify’ those aspects of their own nature which are inclined to compromise ‘upon the earth’... they are called to accept exclusion from the created good as the necessary price of a true and unqualified witness to it…"
~Oliver O’Donovan, Resurrection and Moral Order
~Oliver O’Donovan, Resurrection and Moral Order
|| "Discipleship, then, involves us in the suffering of exclusion from various forms of created good which are our right and privilege as Adam’s restored children. This exclusion may be at the hands of others, who do not wish us to participate in those forms of life except on their own terms; or it may be that our own fallen humanity does not equip us as it should to participate in these goods without compromise… That moment of self-denial, when we prefer to forgo the created good which is our right rather than enjoy it in terms of compromise, is also a moment of knowledge at which the good becomes clear and conspicuous to us as rarely ever besides."
~Oliver O’Donovan, Resurrection and Moral Order
~Oliver O’Donovan, Resurrection and Moral Order
|| "Marriage, I argued, was intended in God’s plan to be “male and female”—Jesus says as much when he reaffirms the teaching of the book of Genesis—and any sexual intimacy outside of that marital bond missed the mark of God’s design for human flourishing… [I do not] harbour that theological belief because I had experienced any diminishment of my longings for same-sex love... That seemed to be the clear teaching of Scripture, and I wanted to be faithful to it. But God, I believed with equal conviction, was not—could not possibly be—asking me to live without love."
~Wesley Hill, ‘Love Again’, Comment Magazine, 2018, accessed July 2022
~Wesley Hill, ‘Love Again’, Comment Magazine, 2018, accessed July 2022
💡 We are only excluded from some of the goods of the created order through the cross to be more radically included in their eventual transformation.
💡 SUFFERING LOVE TYPES:
🔸 INJUSTICE <> At The Hands Of Others
🔸 MYSTERY OF THE FALL <> Non-Chosen
🔸 OUR FALLEN HUMANITY DOES NOT EQUIP US <> Our Finitude And Sinfulness
🔸 CHOSEN <> Giving Up One's Life For One's Friends
🔸 Christians often say that our secondary identities are not one’s identity, but being in Christ is.
|| "Descend that you may ascend, and ascend to God. For you have fallen by ascending against Him. Tell them this, that they may weep in the valley of tears, and so draw them with you to God, because it is by His Spirit that you speak thus unto them, if you speak burning with the fire of love.”
~Saint Augustine, Confessions, Book IV, Chapter 12
~Saint Augustine, Confessions, Book IV, Chapter 12
The Flowering Tree Roger Wagner, St Mary’s Iffley, Oxford
🌳 The Flowering Tree by Roger Wagner 🌳
A man, a river, and a tree
Enameled with the flowers of May.
Good Friday sky as blue as sea
A hill as green as Easter day.
A tree, a river, and a man
Who hangs from branches thick with flowers.
A love which flowed since time began
Is measured here in three long hours.
A man, a tree, a river flows
Down to the font and origin
Where man, tree, river all disclose
The Easter where our lives begin.
A man, a river, and a tree
Enameled with the flowers of May.
Good Friday sky as blue as sea
A hill as green as Easter day.
A tree, a river, and a man
Who hangs from branches thick with flowers.
A love which flowed since time began
Is measured here in three long hours.
A man, a tree, a river flows
Down to the font and origin
Where man, tree, river all disclose
The Easter where our lives begin.
🔸 A WITNESS: an Ed (Hebrew) or Martus (Greek)
❔ What do you sense God asking you to do with today's message?
🎶 Worship Songs 🎶
Move Of God 🎵 - by SEU Worship
Holy Forever 🎵 - by Chris Tomlin
Gratitude 🎵 - by Brandon Lake
📜 WORSHIP SCRIPTURE 📜
Philippians 2:6-11
Move Of God 🎵 - by SEU Worship
Holy Forever 🎵 - by Chris Tomlin
Gratitude 🎵 - by Brandon Lake
📜 WORSHIP SCRIPTURE 📜
Philippians 2:6-11
📚 Moonshot Series Resources 📚
Learn how to overcome fears and insecurities and step into a life of bold dreams and faith. Click on the link below to view more resources for our Moonshot Series.
https://www.echo.church/moonshot/#resources🚀 MOONSHOT (Pt. 3): ImPOSSIBLE SURRENDER 🚀
Watch the video message on-demand on YouTube.
https://youtube.com/live/bOZEhocyy-g?feature=share✝️ 21 Days of Prayer and Fasting
Join us for an intentional time to pray and fast. As we fast together, let’s anticipate how God will increase our faith and begin making the impossible possible.
https://www.echo.church/21-days-prayer🍷🥖 COMMUNION at HOME 🥖🍷
Want to participate in Communion from home? Learn the meaning behind communion, as well as how to take communion right from home.
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We are a Christian church who desires to be a community defined by our love for God and for people. Whether you are curious about God, exploring Christianity, or wanting to mature in your existing relationship with God, we invite you to attend one of our practical teaching series on the weekend. Feel free to bring your friends with you!
If you would like to find out more about Echo.Church and our story, please check us out at: http://www.echo.church
If you would like to find out more about Echo.Church and our story, please check us out at: http://www.echo.church