Welcome to:
Fresh Start with God
You are beginning life’s most satisfying adventure – your walk with God! As you start this adventure, here’s what God says to you:
Count yourself lucky, how happy you must be —
you get a fresh start, your slate’s wiped clean.
Psalm 32:11 (MSG)
When you make a commitment of your life to Jesus, not only is your “slate wiped clean”, you also get a “fresh start” – a new lease on life. This class is designed to help you have a good start to your fresh start. During these weeks together you’ll discover and begin to unwrap ten gifts that God gives you:
Forgiveness – Accepting God’s Grace
Relationship – Worshipping
Encouragement – Handling Failure
Scripture – Understanding God’s Word
Help – Following God’s Guidance
Shape – Being You
Togetherness – Living in Community
Authority – Serving Others
Recognition – Being Baptized
Testimony – Telling Your Story
This class will provide you with the basics to begin walking with God. It is the primer for future study. With the completion of this course you will be prepared to take classes that will lead you deeper in your Christian life. Those are classes 101-401 which are offered in our C.L.A.S.S. Institute. You’ll have increased confidence and understanding at your next level of study. It is our deep desire that these weeks will enable you to:
Grow in grace and understanding of our Master and Savior, Jesus Christ.
2 Peter 3:18 (MSG)
Welcome & Introductions. Note: Teacher, introduce yourself and then have participants introduce themselves to the class or to someone sitting near them.
There are lots of ways to tackle various issues or responsibilities that come along in life.
During Desert Storm a soldier received one of those war-time “Dear John” letters. His fiancé informed him that she had found someone else. The young man was crushed. When he left things were wonderful, they were always together, never a fight, common interests, and looking forward to seeing her kept him going.
She said not only had she found someone else but was now engaged to him and the wedding date was set. And, as if he wasn’t already hurt enough she added insult to injury when she wrote that the picture she wanted to use for her new engagement announcement was the one he had, and she would appreciate him returning it to her. That just about destroyed him, he cried for days.
The soldier’s buddies decided to help out. They gathered up all of the pictures of every girlfriend of every soldier in the camp…they had a shoe box full of girls’ pictures. They wrapped it up, and sent it to her with a note that read, “Please find your picture and return the rest to me. For the life of me I can’t remember which one you are.”
Communication can be clear or sometimes not so clear, like these communications gaffes that have been made publicly:
In the 1994 Miss America contest, the former Miss Alabama was asked, “If you could live forever, would you and why?” She answered: “I would not live forever, because we should not live forever, because if we were supposed to live forever, then we would live forever, but we cannot live forever, which is why I would not live forever.”
Former Mayor Marion Barry of Washington, DC said, “Outside of killings, Washington has one of the lowest crime rates in the country.”
When Jason Kidd was drafted to the Dallas Mavericks, he said, “We are going to turn this team around 360 degrees.”
Former vice-president Dan Quayle said, “It’s great to be in the great state of Chicago.”
Okay, in case this is a partisan crowd, here’s one for the Democrats. When Hilary Clinton commented on the release of subpoenaed documents, she said, “I’m not going to have some reporters pawing through our papers. We are the president.”
One more, Brooke Shields said, “Smoking kills. If you’re killed, you’ve lost a very important part of your life!”
Tonight and for the next three weeks, I’m going to try to be more clear than that about communicating with you about this fresh start, this new life you have in Jesus.