A Gospel Reflection from The Gathering in Colorado Springs

If you are looking for a church in Colorado Springs, one of the things we care deeply about at The Gathering is learning how to see Jesus clearly in every part of life—not only in moments of blessing, but also in seasons of weakness, uncertainty, and hiddenness.

This past Sunday, we reflected on a powerful theme: Jesus is both the Lion and the Lamb. He is not divided within Himself. His mercy and His strength, His kindness and His severity, are not in conflict. They come together perfectly in Christ.

That matters for us, because many of us have been taught to recognize God only in breakthrough, only in provision, only in obvious victory. But the gospel teaches us something deeper:
God is with us in it all.

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Watch the Message

If you want to listen to the full teaching, you can watch it here:

Watch the message:
https://www.youtube.com/live/Q8kzz40JfiQ?si=g4p0rcfKu_jPToRL

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Jesus Is the Source We Tune To

A beautiful picture emerged in Sunday’s message through the image of a symphony tuning before a performance. Every instrument may sound different, but each one must tune to a single source.

That is what life in Christ is like.

We do not tune ourselves to the loudest voice in culture.
We do not tune ourselves to pressure, fear, comparison, or even other people’s expectations.
We tune ourselves to Jesus.

In Ephesians 2:14–16, Paul says that Christ Himself is our peace. He has broken down the dividing wall of hostility and made one new humanity in Himself. The peace of God is not found by forcing uniformity. It is found as each life comes into alignment with Christ.

This is true for the church, for community, and for our own hearts.

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God Is Not Absent in Hard Seasons

One of the strongest themes from Sunday was this:
hard seasons are not disqualifiers.

Many believers have quietly carried shame because their lives did not look like constant increase, constant clarity, or constant success. But that is not the testimony of Scripture.

Paul’s life was marked by hardship, suffering, hiddenness, pressure, persecution, and weakness. Yet in the middle of all of it, he learned the secret of contentment in Christ.

As Paul writes:

Philippians 4:12–13
“I know how to be brought low, and I know how to abound. In any and every circumstance, I have learned the secret of facing plenty and hunger, abundance and need. I can do all things through him who strengthens me.”

The secret was not self-sufficiency.
The secret was not a better strategy.
The secret was Christ.

And here is something important we often miss:

Most of us, if we were evaluating Paul’s life through our own lens, might assume that his severe experiences meant he was in unbelief, or somehow outside of God’s favor. But Scripture never points to that.

Instead, it reveals something entirely different.

Paul was not cut off from the hard things—he was rooted in the love of God within them.

This is what changed everything.

Because he was anchored in the love of God, the severe circumstances did not define his relationship with God—they deepened it. What might have been interpreted as loss or failure became, through the lens of Christ, a place of connection, revelation, and intimacy.

Everything became a kindness.
Everything became beautiful.
Everything became an unveiling of the depth of God’s mercy and love.

We cannot keep wavering between the lens of the law and the lens of grace.

We are deeply loved children of God, and no circumstance—no matter how difficult—has the power to remove us from His hand.

Our lens is Christ.
Christ crucified.

Our life is His.

This is the gospel.

And there is nothing more for us to do but receive it and live in the freedom and peace that Jesus has already accomplished and provided.

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The Kindness and Severity of God

Romans speaks of the kindness and severity of God, and this language can feel uncomfortable if we have only known one side of Him. But Sunday’s teaching invited us to see that God’s nature is not fragmented.

Jesus is the Lamb—gentle, merciful, near.
Jesus is the Lion—strong, holy, unwavering.

He is not one or the other depending on His mood. He is fully Himself at all times.

And His dealings with us are never cruel. Even in the difficult places, He is not abandoning us. He is revealing Himself to us.

The invitation is not to fear Him as though He is unstable.
The invitation is to trust Him more deeply, even when life is not easy to interpret.

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We Don’t Get to Choose Every Season—But We Do Get to Choose What We Behold

There are many things we do not choose:
loss, disappointment, lack, misunderstanding, waiting, hiddenness, or upheaval.

But we do get to choose what we behold in the middle of those things.

We can behold our lack.
We can behold our fear.
We can behold the loudest voice in the room.

Or we can behold Christ.

That was one of the clearest invitations from Sunday’s message: not to deny pain, but to find Jesus in the middle of it. Not to pretend the hard things are easy, but to refuse to call them evidence of God’s absence.

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The Gospel Is Not Performance but Relationship

One of the most moving lines from the message was this:
God is not asking us to perform for Him. He has already finished the work in Christ. What He wants is relationship.

He does not say, “Try harder.”
He says, “I miss you.”

That is the language of covenant love.

At The Gathering, we believe the finished work of Jesus has opened the way for real communion with God. We are not trying to earn His nearness. We are waking up to the nearness that is already ours in Christ.

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Visit The Gathering in Colorado Springs

If you are searching for a church in Colorado Springs, we would love to welcome you to The Gathering.

We are a community learning to live from union with Christ—rooted in the gospel, gathered in prayer, and growing in the Word.

Join us on Sundays at 10:00 a.m.
Learn more at https://the-gathering.us

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