The Bible has so much to say about our relationships as the people of God. Hebrews 10 starts with God, not us. It starts with the good news of Jesus Christ and that seems a fitting conclusion to the series. Our lives are lived in response to that which God has first done for us through Christ. We gather to encourage one another, to remind one another about the full story of the gospel we have been invited into and as a consequence to equip one another for our everyday lives. We need each other! Our times together as church help us to hold onto hope, spur one another on and to encourage us to keep meeting together.

Peter, the one who denied Jesus, who was reinstated and who is the rock on which the church is built, writes this letter to remind us of who we are in Christ. Whoever we are – however insignificant we feel – we make all the difference in the world because we are on our frontlines, first as a son or daughter of the King; a child of God. Our value, our worth, our significance, and our life on the frontline flows from this identity. Chosen priests, holy, God’s special possession, declaring the praises of God. The people of God. We minister on our frontlines out of a sense of confidence of who we are in Christ.

Paul’s letter to the Colossians describes the kind of community God was calling them to be. But he makes clear that this was not inward-focused. Their daily lives were to be marked by love, kindness, and compassion in their places of work or activity, and in their relationships. The social conditions assumed in the passage aren’t the same social conditions that most of us face today. However, the principles that flow from it are as applicable now as much as then. Commitment to Jesus as Lord is to be worked out in daily life, in relationship with others, and bound up in our service of Jesus himself.

God can turn up anywhere! Encounters with God are transformative, and they happen in the course of life with all its ups and downs. They happen in the places we find ourselves in regularly. They happen, too, in the places that we find ourselves unexpectedly. This particular encounter with God happens when Jacob is in serious conflict with his brother. Esau wants to kill him (Genesis 27:41). Jacob, his grasping younger-by-minutes twin brother, has tricked him out of his birthright. He has taken Esau’s future security from him and left him with nothing (Genesis 27:39–40). As Jacob runs away, he meets God in the last place he expected.

Having offered an invite to “come to” Jesus, he now sends his followers out saying “go” and make disciples. Most importantly this command is given in the middle of two statements of reassurance – firstly in verse 18, we are reminded that all authority in heaven and on earth have been given to us. Secondly in verse 20 we are reassured of the presence of Jesus with us, to the very end of the age. As we consider our ‘frontlines’ of mission during the week (school, community, clubs, work etc) we are sent out with authority and with the presence of Jesus.