Who Are We?

Sabbath Grace Fellowship was created in the summer of 2004 by a passionate group of people who after much prayer and spiritual reflection were convicted that God wanted us to create a safe place to grow, especially for folks in the Orlando area who had been wounded by previous religious experiences.

We're a nondenominational Christian community that really values your spiritual journey. We're here not to judge but to encourage and support. Like heaven, we're a delightful mix of ethnic and religious backgrounds. We don't pretend we're perfect but find strength in embracing and learning from our brokenness. We have no agenda except to expereience the life, love and grace of Jesus while being immersed in a loving, safe community.

When a person chooses to journey with Christ, he becomes part of a large body of travelers. Each one has come from a different place, and is on a slightly different journey. But all are walking together in the same light toward the same place, learning to know, love and trust the same Savior and are reflecting His light to those who do not yet know Him.

It's About Culture

At Sabbath Grace Fellowship we are attempting to create a CULTURE based upon the “theology” of Jesus’ prayer of  John 17:17-23:

• Step #1: Vs. 17- “Sanctify them by the truth; your word is truth.” This is the work of God’s Spirit on our individual heart to transform our mind and attitudes, resulting in the growth of the Fruit of the Spirit as defined in Galatians 5:22 “love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control.”
• Step #2: Vs. 20-21- “My prayer is not for them alone. I pray also for those who will believe in me through their message, that all of them may be one.” Jesus prays that the community of faith will be in loving, graceful, nonjudgmental “oneness.” We realize that the Fruit of the Spirit are primarily relational qualities. These are expressed and grow best when we are in relationship in the faith community. These people should be “one” in the sense that Jesus and the Father are one, i.e. not forced, not a pretense, not controlling but the result of the common growing reality of the Fruit of the Spirit. The importance of this oneness is stressed by Jesus mentioning it four times in His prayer.
• Step #3: Vs. 21- “May they also be [one] in us so that the world may believe that you have sent me.” The world will believe our message about Jesus when they see the loving people and loving community this message has created. Jesus prays four times that the faith community become “one” and then twice gives the reason, i.e. SO THAT the world may know that He came. Thus, the credibility of the church’s message will be determined by how successfully our beliefs have created a community of love, support and nonjudgmental fellowship.

Why Do You Worship on Saturday?

We also seek to understand and enjoy the refreshing soul restoration God intended in the Sabbath. In our Statement of Faith our first line about the Sabbath reads: “The Sabbath is God’s scenic overlook in our love journey with Him.” Have you ever been on a long trip into the mountains and seen the sign, “Scenic Overlook Ahead?”  If you did stop, what happened next? You stepped out of the car, stretched your cramped limbs, took a deep breath of fresh mountain air AND you drank in the beautiful scenery. The refreshment of those few moments told you that this was worth the trip. You also stepped back into the car with a better attitude about the remaining miles.

The Bible says that after God ended his creative works that He rested on the Sabbath. Was He tired and cranky? No. The word for “rest” means to be “breathed upon” much like an artist upon viewing or hearing her finished masterpiece is “breathed upon” or refreshed by his creation. And God said of her finished masterpiece, “It is very good!” But the Sabbath rest was primarily created for humans. Jesus said in Mark 2:27-28: “The Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath.” God evidently knew that His new race of created beings would function best if they had a weekly Sabbath rest as part of their routine. And this was before the craziness of our contemporary mad world with all of its stress, time pressures and demands. If perfect humans in the Garden of Eden needed the refreshments of a Sabbath rest, how much more do we need it today!

We desperately need Sabbath! Our busy life murders our hearts, steals our joy and wears out our spirit. William Muller in his book, Sabbath: Restoring the Sacred Rhythm of Rest, writes: “Sabbath is a time to stop, to refrain from being seduced by our [greedy] desires. To stop working, stop making money, stop spending money.  See what you have.  Look around. Listen to your life.  Do you really need more than this?  Spend a day with your family.  Instead of buying the new coffee maker, make coffee in the old one and sit with your spouse on the couch, hang out like they do in the [magazine] picture advertisements.  Just stop.  That is, after all, what they are selling in the picture: people who have stopped.  You cannot buy stopped.  You simply have to stop.”

That's the kind of buried treasure we are seeking to find in Sabbath.  We don't see it as a duty or something legalistic.  That approach doesn't make Sabbath a blessing. We don't see it as a day defined by "this you cannot do."  Rather, we see it as a day that "we get to do" soul restoring things that our otherwise stressful, busy life hinders.
 
Would you like to know more about why the Sabbath is a blessing both from biblical and cultural considerations?  Please click on these documents:

Part I:     What Happens When Everything Stops?
Part II:    Does God Get Tired?
Part III:   Sabbath: A Legacy of Creation and Liberation
Part IV:   Legalism: The Thief of the Soul’s Rest
Part V:    Where and When did the Church Start Calling Sunday Sabbath?
Part VI:  Ever Thought of Sabbath as Play?

Are you a Seventh-day Adventist Church?

No, Sabbath Grace Fellowship is a nondenominational Christian Community, not part of the Seventh-day Adventist organization.  We have a delightful mix of worshipers from numerous backgrounds including: Baptist, Church of God, Pentecostal, Seventh-day Adventist and others.

If you have a Seventh-day Adventist background, then you may find these document links of interest. Please click on the title:

1.  Is Sabbath Grace Fellowship a Seventh-day Adventist church?

2.  Primacy of the Local Church and Tithe Distribution.

3.  How Tithe Was Used in the Old Testament.

4. Reflections of a Fourth Generation Seventh-day Adventist on the Problem of Judgmentalism.

To study documents covering other biblical topics, please go the Sermon Menu.