Welcome to Sunset Church!

Located in San Francisco, we are a church that seeks to live out the teaching of Jesus. Our goal is to be a vehicle of blessing to the community around us. Our prayer is that your life will be enriched by experiencing the authentic Christ. It is our hope that we can be a spiritual blessing to you. 

Come and join us this Sunday!

English Worship Services:
8:30am - Worship Center - 3638 Lawton St.
11:30am - Worship Center - 3638 Lawton St.

Cantonese Worship Services:
10am -Worship Center - 3638 Lawton St.
11:30am - CE Auditorium - 3635 Lawton St.

 
 

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CECIL'S CORNER

Cecil Wong is the Christian Education Director at Sunset Church. Check out some of his thoughts about learning and life, especially with regards to real application of God's Word and the Gospel at home. Send your comments or questions to cecil@sunsetchurchsf.org.

Attaining Intimacy
April 10, 2012

It's been nine months since I've logged into this corner. Guess I might’ve been lazy but I haven't really felt the need to write stuff, especially since I didn't think I had anything that seemed important. Well, I don't know if what I'm entering is earth shattering, but I am sharing something that the Lord has been teaching me to apply both to my personal life and ministry at Sunset Church.

It is intimacy. 

There are numerous explicit references in Scripture to this most significant spiritual core of God. We first see it in Genesis 2 where the man and woman became one flesh, were naked and knew no shame. The first marriage was a place where two people joined bodies and souls to discover and reveal the beauty and power of God.

This is the blueprint for image bearers of God to have godly dominion over the earth. This would be the key to faithful reflection of the Creator that would enable humans to righteously subdue all creation. You see, when a family’s culture consists of values, attitudes, and behaviors that create real connections, where transparency is the norm and individuals are not shamed, healthy hearts, minds, and bodies result.

Most importantly, children can grow up as God intended, in an environment of real life, love, and family. However, when this design breaks down, nothing goes right. Of course, this is exactly what happened when sin entered through Adam and Eve's failure in the temptation with the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Recall their firstborn became a murderer.

Another reference to consider is Deuteronomy 6:4-9, where we find the greatest commandment. God's people are commanded to love Him with their whole heart, soul, and strength. The passage begins with the declaration that the Lord Himself is one. There's some ambiguity in that statement but I don't think it is a far stretch to understand it with implications for intimacy and oneness. It makes sense when we look at the intensity of the commandment. Why would He require such love unless it first exists in Him? Verses 6 to 9 instruct parents to make this love the pervading culture of their home. This love would teach children about the Lord who is one and how His love was relevant to daily life and functions.

We find many times in Scripture where God declares the purpose of His activities is for His people to know Him, and this "knowledge" is not merely cognitive but rather, experiential. Deep in God’s soul is the passion and desire for profound connection. Not just positive ones either. Remember the Gospel? Half involves unbelievable pain and agony. Through Jesus, we share in this eternal life of the divine Spirit. (John 17:3)

And what about the incarnation? God the Son became a man to know (experience deeply) us and through that knowledge (oneness), redeem us from the fatal captivity of corruption and mortality. The blueprint of intimacy from the very foundations of creation became the means through which God would reconcile the world unto Himself. What is it about oneness that is able to powerfully redeem even the very worst of mankind? Is this the solution to our overwhelming challenges today?

Again, in John 17 where we see Jesus’ high priestly prayer, what does He pray for? Yep, oneness. Three times Jesus asked the Father to make His disciples one as They are one. In verse 22, Jesus said He had given His disciples the same glory that the Father had given Him! Can you believe that Jesus has attributed to His followers / brothers the same significance that the Father ascribes to Him? It’s the same intensity (and more) that two lovers feel for each other, or parents and their children! This was the very core of Jesus as He was preparing for the cross, perhaps only 12 hours away.

Real oneness is obviously motivated by the strongest desire to be connected to and belong to another. It is love that is stronger than death. It is passion that cannot be assuaged with anything less than equal desire and commitment.

But to obtain this goal, God has shown us the cost – everything! Mere sacrifice of resources would be contemptible (Song of Songs 8:7b). Everything means laying down what makes us secure, significant, and strong – yes, our very lives. To lay bare our souls, i.e. to be naked, and yet not ashamed, this is what Christ did for us. He did this in our place on the cross. He took our sin and shame upon Himself and laid Himself on the altar of the cross, faithfully suffering God’s rejection of our sin. For an entire Hebrew work day (6 hours), our Lord Jesus served us by trusting in God while being one with us by experiencing heart breaking shame, loneliness and rejection. And He did this without ever doubting the goodness of God!! The level of divine vulnerability based trust demonstrated by the Perfect Human Representative satisfied God’s holy passion for oneness and by this great work, we have freedom, healing, and forgiveness forever.

This oneness will fill our homes with Christ. This oneness will connect us with God’s Word way beyond reading, studying, and meditation (as good as those activities are). Let us pursue godly intimacy, discover it in our homes, lead our kids in it and truly experience real life, love, and family.

 

Alignment: Key to God's Greatest Blessings
posted July 19, 2011 at 11:09AM

Alignment is necessary for just about anything to work properly, in the way it was designed. Gears, cars, systems, vision, even aesthetics all require alignment so that they can function and fulfill their purpose. This most definitely holds true for things that we can't see, like our spirituality. For us to experience blessing and fulfillment of God's design for our lives, we need to be aligned with Him. The World English Dictionary defines alignment in this way: identification with or matching of the behavior,thoughts, etc of another person. Our world began to experience negative and harmful things when the first people fell away from God's alignment. They lost their place in paradise, they lost trust in each other, they lost their relationship with their Creator. They lost their very lives, which is exactly what God said would happen if they disobeyed, ie. fell out of alignment.

When it comes to the Bible, the principle of alignment is crucial to interpreting and applying its truth to our lives. The entire Book, with 66 sub-books, must be interpreted through Jesus Christ, who is the central subject of all divine revelation. Luke records Jesus teaching His disciples about the law, prophets, and psalms all talking about Him, how they aligned with Him. John records Jesus claiming to be the way, truth, and life on top of being the logos become flesh. Logos was a Greek term for the universal principle of the cosmos. John presents Jesus as this universal principle who became a man which would become the sole determiner of how things should be aligned.

Zechariah 4 identifies this alignment as the Spirit that would build and complete the real temple of God and establish real worship. This temple would have a cornerstone and when it was presented, there would be shouts of "God bless it! God bless it!" This passage is fulfilled in Jesus Christ, the One we need to be aligned with in order to be divinely blessed.

Where do we want God's greatest blessing? I'm pretty sure we'd all say, our homes; not our hobbies, our work, our business, our pastimes. We all love our families deeply and want the very best for them. This is instinctual because it comes from God who has the same desires multiplied exponentially in His own heart and soul for us. He has given us commandments and promises to live by which flow from His passion to bless us abundantly and eternally. The greatest commandment that also holds the very greatest blessing for us is found in Deuteronomy 6:4-9. Within this passage, He closely associates home discipleship with the greatest commandment to love Him with all our heart, soul, and strength. Loving Him in this way shows up when this love is manifest in our homes. It begins with God's commands first impressed on our own hearts followed by us impressing them on our kids' hearts. It isn't done in any kind of formal setting but rather it is a natural part of being together in the common rhythms of everyday life. Spiritual teaching mustn't be separate AT ALL from real living. Loving God with our whole being is about prioritizing the love of God above everything else and learning to love the way that God does becomes the all pervasive goal every moment of everyday. Sacrifices in other areas are made so that His love is the clear reality, everyday. When God's love is the highest priority, our marriages become healthier, our life style gets less crazy, and our kids find real security and blessing for their spiritual development.
Connection between God's ways and our everyday thoughts must be done intentionally. Much of this alignment happens when we react to our family members and situations according to God's Spirit rather than our sinful natures. But we don't want to leave it up to our kids to connect the dots. We must instruct and explain how faith in God's grace leads us to respond in wisdom and love because God's ways are not naturally understood. They are slowly formed when the Spirit's leading is consistently followed (not perfectly), prayed for, and talked about, just like the description in Deuteronomy 6:7-9,
"Talk about them when you sit at home and when you walk along the road, when you lie down and when you get up. 8Tie them as symbols on your hands and bind them on your foreheads. 9 Write them on the doorframes of your houses and on your gates."
Where does the Gospel come in and how is it central in aligning us to God's greatest blessings? As we take God's Word seriously and seek to receive it in the deepest places, we will find that we fall desperately short of His glory, His excellence and purity. God's righteousness is revealed in the lives of those who desire to obey Him above everything else. When we see that we are to love as He loves, understanding His great love through a growing knowledge of Him through His Word, we cannot help but cry out for mercy and transformation of our own hearts. This must drive us to His Gospel of grace found only in His Son, Jesus Christ. Dependence on this grace is very foreign to us, especially the any culture of performance. But this dependence on His grace to obey His commands to love deeply will transform our homes, our church, and our culture. God's grace is His power to change the lives of people, beginning with our own and those that live with us. Depending on His Gospel and grace should become like breathing, moment to moment. The Lord's prayer (Matt.6:9-13) tells us that it is our daily bread - to forgive and be forgiven. This daily bread sustains us from the cravings of our sinful nature so that we are not led into temptation but delivered from the evil that can happen when we don't get our daily spiritual nourishment of forgiveness. This deliverance enables us to give glory to God and His Gospel, "for Thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory forever, amen!"
 
Real spiritual living is the key to alignment. Alignment is the key to greatest blessing and this blessing is the source of real discipleship. Only when spirituality is impressed on our hearts, can we impress it on our kids' hearts and create a genuine faith culture in our homes. Alignment is the key. Our hearts aligned with Jesus so that we can help our homes be in alignment for God's greatest blessing - real spirituality.