This weekend marks Amberlea Church’s 40th Anniversary Kick off. It will be a year of celebrating this amazing God-filled; God-led church in the Amberlea community.

As the 40th anniversary Committee meet over the past serval we wanted to ground the celebrations in Scripture. Colossians 2:7 became that verse:

Being rooted and built up in him, strengthened in the faith as you were taught, and overflowing with thankfulness.

This verse describes who we are and who we want to be as a church. Rooted, built up, strengthened and thankful! But this is only part of the verse.

So then, just as you received Christ Jesus as Lord, continue to live your lives in him, 7 rooted and built up in him, strengthened in the faith as you were taught, and overflowing with thankfulness. Colossians 2: 6-7

Paul is encouraging us to not just begin our walk with Christ but continue to grow in Him. And that is what we aim to do at Amberlea.

Brian and I have been married for 37 years in December and I still remember the day that Brian proposed to me. I I get this picture when I read these verses of what if it would have looked like he got down on one knee and he said, “Mona will you marry me?” I say, “yes” and there's this excitement, we hug, it's beautiful and then I walk away because that was the moment and that's it.

The truth is that sometimes what happens to us as Christians we start our relationship with God by accepting God and saying God I surrender to you, I believe in what Jesus did for me but it's almost like we stop there.

Accepting Jesus into our lives is opening a door to the rest of our relationship with Jesus and so the same is true here in verse 6.

It says we accept but we must continue to follow Him. So the question is how do we follow Him?

Paul is very clear in this passage that’s what I love about this scripture is it's very clear what we should do.

So I want to give you four things to describe how we need to grow in our relationship with God.

Be firmly rooted. We should be firmly rooted. We have a huge maple tree in our backyard… and because of that I find little maple trees trying to take root all throughout the garden, and lawn. If I get them early enough they are easy to pull out but if I don’t catch them early and those roots get a chance to grow and spread out it’s hard to pull them out.

As Christians we need to have the attitude that we will not be moved no matter what the world is saying around us.

We will not be moved. We will be fully rooted in the Word of God, so when the storms come those roots anchor us and keep us

We need to have our lives built up on Him. Jesus is the foundation. The foundation is the most critical part of the building. A building can only go as high as the foundation can support and so building on our life on Christ will ensure that he will support the rest of our life our marriage our friendships our careers all those things are based on what we put our foundation on and hopefully it's Jesus Christ.

Third,

Be strengthened in the faith you were taught. Look at the second half of verse seven, it says then your faith will grow strong in the truth you were taught. I did not grow up in a Christian home, but as a child in public school we would recite the Lord’s Prayer. Everyday… and before long the words I said by route were engrained so that when I was in the middle of a difficult time in life — that prayer, God’s Word would just come out making my faith stronger.
Be thankful. Overflowing in thankfulness. I love this one. If I want to see if I'm growing as a believer I want to see one of the tests that I can say is how grateful am I am i noticing the things that God is doing because if I’m spending time in God’s Word and I’m spending time with God, then I start to see all the things God is doing and I will have an attitude of gratefulness.

We have much to be grateful at Amberlea. I pray you will join us this Sunday as we begin the celebrations! We celebrate years of faithfulness and service in this community, but more importantly we celebrate that we are rooted in God, built up by God, strengthened through God and thankful to God!