![[Dandelion]](images/dandelions.gif)
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Strange as it may seem, the Dandelions didn't move to House Church because they felt it was a better form of church association. We actually sit easily with all our local churches, from Charismatic to Catholic. We believe that no form or structure has precedence over another. Initially there was a dispute in our local Anglican church which prompted the move, but the conflict has long since healed and all the combatants are friends again. The local Anglican minister is actually held in high regard. The groups "bag" is not house-church as such, rather it is a matter of truth, the truth of God's sovereign grace. As the Bible puts it, "truth sets us free", and "it is for freedom that Christ has set us free." The knowledge of the sovereign grace of God is liberating knowledge, and it is this knowledge that enables the group to freely associate together as a House Church. The founding pastor of the group, Roger Warner, was a reformed minister who had served in independent churches in Queensland. Roger was someone who understood the freedom that is ours in Christ and he grounded the group in that truth. So our House Church relies on a simple, but amazing truth - faith in Christ sets us free. God's gracious kindness in Christ liberates us from guilt, self and fear: i] Freedom from guilt. We are all corrupt, in fact I often say that the only commandment I haven't literally broken is murder, and I have certainly broken that in spirit. In Christ the unworthy person we are is no longer seen by God. We stand before him as white as snow. Not that we are white as snow, but certainly in his sight we are, and that's as good as being white as snow. The amazing truth is that Jesus didn't just wipe away our past guilt, but both present and future as well. When we put our trust in Jesus we are free from the consequences of our sin. It's just as if we never sinned. Amazing grace! ii] Freedom from self. In the Christian walk it is very easy to move our focus from relying/trusting to doing. Relying on self, on our own effort, we strive to be like Christ, keep falling short, end up burying our guilt and dissipating the buried guilt onto everybody else. We can so easily end up like Pharisees. Yet the grace of God sets us free from the shrivelled self. Of course we all want to be like Christ, but focusing on our frail efforts to obey God's law is not the way to become Christ-like. We become like Christ when we trust him to renew us, to remake us in his image. When we put our trust in Jesus we are freed from the constrictions of self. Renewal progresses in our lives by the indwelling compelling love of Jesus. Amazing grace! iii] Freedom from fear. Like any Christian group we sometimes fear our survival as our numbers drop to literally two or three. We often sense Satan's control of this age and are filled with fear. Yet our gracious God is a sovereign God and he will do all that he has promised. All we need to do is rely on his kindness. We don't need to rely on the marketing and management techniques of this age to build the Kingdom of God, the Lord will do that. When we put our trust in Jesus we are freed from fear. His Kingdom will come. Amazing grace! So this then is the abiding truth which fires our Christian fellowship - set free by the eternal kindness of God through faith in Christ Jesus.
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