Lexington Church of Christ

OUR BELIEFS

God, the Father

Look around you, the complexity, the variety, the beauty and grander of the universe. Things like this don’t just appear or happen over time, they are thought up, made, created. Look at your heart, inside is desire, ability to appreciate, cognitive thought, love, all the things that make us “human.” Things like that don’t come from learned instinctual survival, they come from someone. He is not a force, not a distant abstract set of physics, not an amalgamation of spirits, He has a name, He has feelings, and He loves you. You know He loves you because you exist. He created you, made you in His Image, and while He reveals Himself to us and while every good thing about us is given to us by Him and a refection of Him, He is still all powerful, all wise, all present and all above us. He is always predictable in His nature and always surprising in His ways. This incredible God wants us to know Him personally, wants us to call Him Father, to know how much He loves you!

(Matthew 28:19; John 1:1,14; John 14:26; 1 Peter 1:2)

Jesus Christ, the Son of God

While The Lord our God is one God, He has revealed that who He is is so much greater than human understanding, He can be one God and at the same time all the fullness of His Godhood is in the person known as Jesus. Jesus is God, like the Father, uncreated, powerful, all wise, all present and all above us. God sent Jesus to the world calling Jesus His “Son” to emphasis the love and relationship between them. Jesus willingly gave up His rights to the divine nature and abilities to become just like us. This was all part of a plan to use the willingness of Jesus to save the world. We, under the verdict of death, would be destroyed by death. Jesus took this death and because of His sinless life and willing heart, death was conquered. Jesus rose from death and brings new life to all who are wiling to accept it. He left to be with the Father to intercede for us and someday soon will come back to re-create the old into the new.

(John 1:1-18; Acts 2:22-41; Philippians 2:1-11)

Holy Spirit, the Spirit of God

The Holy Spirit is a person, He is not some force at our disposal, or an internal sin meter that just reminds us of what is right and wrong, He is a person. He has His own agenda (God’s agenda), and He is joyful, kind and gentle, but can be quenched, frustrated and to our hurt, ignored. Holy Spirit’s main goal is to spread the great news of God’s love through Jesus. He does this primarily through the church, so He equips the people of the church with abilities, temperaments, resources and proclivities to build up the church and tell the whole world about Jesus. How He moves, How He chooses to work is very much a mystery, but what we can know for sure about Him is that when we allow Jesus to be Lord and Savior, the Holy Spirit comes into our hearts and remains with us, like God’s seal of approval, and this approval is constantly working in our lives to bring us and all around us closer to Jesus. His presence brings who He is into our lives, He is love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, gentleness, faithfulness and self-control. We know His presence when we see His personality changing us and shinning on those around us.

(Luke 11:13; John 16:13; Acts 1:8; Romans 8:11)

Bible/Scriptures

We believe that the 66 books of the Holy Bible are revealed from God for our instruction and the final authority for Christian doctrine. It offers insight into the satisfaction, purpose, fulfillment and relationships of our lives. It is accurate and reliable and to be followed and obeyed by all who follow Jesus.

(2 Timothy 3:16; 2 Peter 1:19-21)

Man/Sin/Death

Mankind, having both flesh and spirit, was created by God in His perfect image. As humans, we defied God by both going our own independent way and also our selfish sins which separated us from Him since the beginning of history. God's righteous judgment requires physical death for the body; however, our eternal spirit can worship with God if we accept Jesus Christ as our personal Lord and Savior.

(Gen. 1:26-27; Romans 3:20 & 6:23; Heb 9:27-28)

Salvation/Grace

One of the great problems with sin is our lack to do anything about it. We believe that salvation is not something we can do ourselves, it had to be be done for us, all humanity is equal in this impotence. Wonderfully it HAS been done in Jesus! We can not effect our salvation, but we can receive it as the free gift of God. Grace is not only forgiveness for sins, a reprieve of our deserved punishment, but an abundance of God’s favor on top of that! It is His love, His specific attentions, His gift of Himself in the Holy Spirit, His unrelenting growing us into His likeness, in a simple form grace is; God’s - Riches - At - Christ’s - Expense. Grace is so big it cannot be contained in one statement, it must be shared between us and Jesus, and even shared with each other, we invite you to approach any of our leaders and talk about God's great grace...

(John 3:16; Acts 2:38; Romans 3:23, 10:9; 1 John 1:9)

We believe that a human being’s central purpose for existence is to have a close and personal relationship with God. We are created for that purpose. We all can be forgiven by God and have a close, personal relationship with Him by believing that Jesus is God’s son, repenting of our sin, confessing our faith in Jesus’ power to save us, and being immersed in water as an outward sign of our inner faith.

Heaven, Hell and Satan

Our hearts know we are made for eternity because God made us to be eternal with Him. Jesus took our sins, so we can be with Him forever. This position of being with Him is called heaven, and Jesus built it for us! God’s love for us is so great He has done everything to make this happen…everything except force Himself on us. Coerced love is perverse love and that is NOT The Lord. That is something else. There is an enemy, one who chose pride and selfish hatred for everything that is not him, he goes by many names but one of the most used is satan, the accuser and he is the prince of perverted love. We know he is real, and he is waring against The Lord and His love. He is so vile and evil that a place was made for him to destroy his evil forever, this place is called Hell. Hell is real, Hell is eternal, and Hell was not made for us. It is a place of separation, isolation, despair, hopelessness, madness and weakness. It is the refuse of the universe, and Jesus DOES NOT want anyone there.

(2 Peter 3:9; Rev 12:10; 1 Peter 5:8; Mark 9:48; John 14:1-3; Revelation 21:1-5)

Church, Fellowship

God wants all to be healed with the grace of Jesus, filled with the Holy Spirit and grow in His strength and righteousness, this is the mission of all those who are sons and daughters of God. God is still at work today. Though things may seem out of control, He is here. His sons and daughters are working to not only tell everyone they can about the wonderful life in Jesus, but also working to make the world a place filled with God’s grace. The Holy Spirit brings the daughters and sons together for encouragement and help and we call this the church. The church is supposed to be a safe place for the hurting, a challenging place for strengthening, and a place where all we are comes before all that God is.

Tithes, Offerings, Volunteering

The church is called the body of Jesus. We are to be a physical representation of our Lord. We go to the hurting, we help the needy, we speak truth and love to the community. People ask where is God when bad things happen? He is working everywhere, but especially in and through His church! To help us bring Jesus in every way to others, we pool our resources. This not only helps the work of Jesus on earth, but it helps strengthen our faith by reminding us that we don’t need treasures on earth. But this goes over and above monies given to the tribe. Jesus asks us to give everything to Him, and like the woman at the well, Jesus asked her for a glass of water and then offered her the Living Water! You can’t out give God! To give, to serve is in every way a blessing for us, so we try and help find opportunities and ways for people to serve each other in the tribe. We could not do what we do without the wonderful volunteers of our Church! We are the Body of Christ!

Faith & Prayer

“The fundamental fact of existence is that this trust in God, this faith, is the firm foundation under everything that makes life worth living. It's our handle on what we can't see. The act of faith is what distinguished our ancestors, set them above the crowd.” This paraphrase of Hebrews 11:1-2 is a great starting place for faith. Faith is trust in The Lord for everything...physical, emotional, relational, and Spiritual. It is NOT blind, irrational, belief. God has given us countless evidences for our trust in Him; and what He is doing. Being part of that takes communication, which is prayer. As the daughters and sons of God we can go to Him, we must go to Him, with everything, our greatest times, our hardest times, and everything in-between. Prayer is the lifeblood of our relationship with Jesus.

Hebrews 11:1-2
Matthew 6:9-13
1 Thessalonians 5:16-18
Hebrews 4:14-16

If you would like to know more about what we believe, our ministers would love to talk to you.