The sermon podcast for January 30, 2011 is up on Asbury Church’s website. It is entitled “Risk Taking Mission and Service” and it’s the fourth in our series “The Five Practices of Fruitful Congregations. The text is Luke 10: 1-18. You can listen to it by clicking here, or you can listen to it here on this blog by clicking below. And, as always, you can subscribe to my sermon podcasts through iTunes.
One of the things we see Jesus tell His disciples is this – they are called to be different.
They (we) must be different from the world they (we) live in. There must be something about us that is different from the world. While we live in the world and want to show the love of Christ to the world, we must be, well, different.
In today’s passage in Matthew 20, John and James’ mother comes to Jesus and asks Him to let one brother be on His right hand and the other on His left.
Jesus says that’s not for Him to give, only the Father. But then, He says this:
But among you it will be different. Whoever wants to be a leader among you must be your servant, and whoever wants to be first among you must become your slave. For even the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve others and to give his life as a ransom for many.
Jesus tells us, yes in the world, there is a certain way leaders behave. There is a certain way to gain power.
There is a certain way to be important or to have a status.
Not so among you. That’s not how we operate. That’s not what the Body of Christ is about.
Yes, in the world, fame and money and power and status, these things reflect on who is important.
Not so among you.
You want to be great for God? Serve. Love. Care. Forgive.
Jesus said even He came not to be served, but to serve.
If we want to be “somebody” you want to know how?
Serve.
Serve as God served. Today, help someone.
Give a smile. A help. A hug. A world. A piece of yourself.
If we want to be someone for God, today we can do it. Today, we can be different. Today, we can make an impact.
How?
Serve. Show the love of God. Love as God loves you. You are vital to Him.
So is everyone we meet.
Today, may we love each other. As God loves us.
Saul was a bad dude. Really, he was a bad dude.
He persecuted the church. He was present at the stoning of Stephen, the first Christian martyr. He was out to do as much as he could do to destroy the church and destroy the movement of God.
Listen to what is said of Saul in Acts 9:
Meanwhile, Saul was uttering threats with every breath and was eager to kill the Lord’s followers.
Paul was determined to stop this new movement of Christianity.
So, Acts 9 tells us how he sets out to go to Damascus to destroy what was happening. It tells how he was going to drag the Christians back to Jerusalem and see them persecuted. He is out to stop this. And he will not be stopped in his mission of destruction.
Except for what happens later in chapter 9
As he was approaching Damascus on this mission, a light from heaven suddenly shone down around him. He fell to the ground and heard a voice saying to him, “Saul! Saul! Why are you persecuting me?” “Who are you, lord?” Saul asked. And the voice replied, “I am Jesus, the one you are persecuting! Now get up and go into the city, and you will be told what you must do.”
He has his plan. But the Lord has a different plan. Not only is His plan to stop Saul from doing what he was going to do. His plan was to change Saul.
He was going to change Saul the persecutor into Paul the Apostle. He was going to take the one that was trying to kill the church and change him into the one who was going to spread the good news of Jesus Christ across the world.
He was going to change Saul and use Saul for His glory.
He will do the same for you. A change is coming. You don’t have to be like you’ve always been. A change is coming.
God has a plan for you. God has a vision for you. God wants to use you.
If He can use Saul for amazing things, He can use you for amazing things.
A change is coming. Believe it. Live it. Cling to it. God is at work. He will change you.
Today, may we let Him do His work in our lives.
A change is coming. May we know the power of the change of God.
Trust is the kind of thing that is hard to earn, and very, very easy to lose. It takes a lot for us to trust people sometimes. Some of us are just more naturally trusting that others.
But, when someone has broken that trust, no matter how trusting or not we may be, it’s hard to trust them again. It’s hard, once we’ve been burned to not look at the situation the same.
But, trust is a powerful thing. When we trust someone, we can let go. We don’t have to worry. We just “know” it will be there. We just “know” it will be done. We just trust.
And that is a great feeling.
Many of us do not trust easily. I understand. But, all us, whether we do, or not, listen to the words written in Hebrews 13 this morning:
God has said,
“I will never fail you.
I will never abandon you.”
So we can say with confidence,
“The Lord is my helper,
so I will have no fear.
What can mere people do to me?”
People have failed us. It happens to all of us.
Even family and friends have failed us. That is part of the human experience. We have all felt let down by those that we love, and trust, the most.
Even the church, even preachers, many of us have been let down by them. One of the things that makes me the happiest in ministry is when I hear someone talk about how the are enjoying going to church again for the first time in a long time.
We have been let down by a lot of people.
But, not by God. Today He says – I will not fail you. I will not abandon you.
You can trust. You can trust God. He will not forget or forsake His children. He will not fail us. He is with us.
We can trust in Him to be who He says He will be. His word is true. He will not let us down.
Today, no matter what you are going through, trust. He will not fail you. But your faith in Him. He will not fail. You can rest easy in Him. Trust today.
You will not be disappointed.
When I played football a million years ago, I was prone to let my mind wander.
I would be thinking lots of things, other than what I was supposed to be thinking about. And, it would usually end with my coaching yelling at me!
In our lives, our minds can wander. We can have our minds thinking about so many other things. So much distracts us. So much calls to our attention. So much tries to steal our thoughts and our minds.
And this is dangerous. For where our minds are determines our actions a lot.
When my mind was not in the right place, I wasn’t able to be the football player that I needed to be. I wasn’t able to play the way I needed to play
When our minds are not on the things of God, we will not be able to serve Him as we ought.
Listen to Paul today:
And now, dear brothers and sisters, one final thing. Fix your thoughts on what is true, and honorable, and right, and pure, and lovely, and admirable. Think about things that are excellent and worthy of praise.
Paul says to focus on what is good and true. And that will help us to live as God wants us to live.
That will help us to have the perspective. That will help us to be as God wants us to be. That will help us to focus, love, and live what God wants.
So, today, where is your mind? What are you thinking about you? What are you focusing on?
Is your mind on God? Or other things?
Will you think on what is good, noble, and pure? Or what is wrong? negative?
Will you look for the best in others? Or the worst?
Will you see the positive? Or the negative?
Today, where is your mind?
Hey, y’all, remember me?
Sorry I didn’t post any last week. Somehow I did something to my wrist and it made it hard for me to type. I tried to type a little last Monday and it just hurt too bad. So, I took a week off from typing (nearly killed me!) and now I’m all better!
So, it’s all back to normal now!
One of the passages I was reading this morning was Isaiah 48. In this passage, God talking about the sufferings the people had face, based off their sin.
He had told them before, if they break the covenant, if they wander from Him, trials and troubles would come. If they did the things He had warned them not to do, they would be punished.
And, as He knew they would, they did. The people worshiped idols, they wandered far away from God. They were now seeing everything they loved destroyed. They were losing it all.
In our lives, there are times when our lives seem to be falling apart. There are times when it seems like nothing is going right.
When everything we hold dear seems to be taken from us.
There are trails, there are troubles, there is hurt.
Life can be very, very, hard.
Listen to what God says in Isaiah 48 this morning:
10 I have refined you, but not as silver is refined.
Rather, I have refined you in the furnace of suffering.
These trials are like a fire. They will, if we allow, purify us.
They will, if we allow, draw us closer to God.
They will, if we allow, turn our lives in to something beautiful.
The process of refining God is not easy, and it puts the gold through the fire. But, it comes pure and beautiful.
So will you. Through your trials and troubles, if, in the midst of them, you allow God to work, you will too.
He will turn this into something beautiful. If we will let Him.
Today, may we let God do His work in our lives!
The sermon podcast for January 23, 2011 is up on Asbury Church’s website. It is entitled “Intentional Faith Development” and it’s the third in our series “The Five Practices of Fruitful Congregations. The text is Ecclesiastes 4: 9-12. You can listen to it by clicking here, or you can listen to it here on this blog by clicking below. And, as always, you can subscribe to my sermon podcasts through iTunes.
The sermon podcast for January 16, 2011 is up on Asbury Church’s website. It is entitled “Passionate Worship” and it’s the second in our series “The Five Practices of Fruitful Congregations. The text is Psalm 84:10. You can listen to it by clicking here, or you can listen to it here on this blog by clicking below. And, as always, you can subscribe to my sermon podcasts through iTunes.
One of the passages that I read this morning was one of those verses that I remember being shown years ago and saying – Wow. It’s one of the verses I try to think about each day and try to let really convict me and draw me close to God.
Listen to what Paul writes in 2 Corinthians Chapter 11
14 But I am not surprised! Even Satan disguises himself as an angel of light.
An angel of light. Doesn’t that sound really beautiful? Doesn’t that sound like something awesome? Something we should all want? Something we should all desire?
Something, fun. Pretty. Clean. Safe.
Paul says that is how Satan will disguises himself. As an angel of light.
That is how temptation will come in our lives. As an angel of light.
It will look so good. . . . temptation always does.
Temptation always looks like it will be a great thing for us. Something will make our lives, or make that moment even better!
Temptation promise everything good and offers nothing bad, right?
But, that’s not the case. That is never the case with temptation. That is never the case with this disguised angel of light.
Bishop Ward, Bishop of the Mississippi Annual Conference was said in a sermon “Temptation promises life and leads to death. Disciples promise short-term pain, and leads to life.”
Temptation never bears the fruit it promises. It’s never as much fun. It never makes things easier. It never makes things more simple. It always brings hurt and destruction.
Always.
Always.
It is an angel of light. Temptation will promise you something awesome. And disappointed you every time.
But God. He promises abundant life. And delivers every time. He doesn’t promise easy life. Or smooth life. Or even always happy life. He promises abundant life. And peace. and joy.
Today, temptation will come to you as angel of light. Don’t believe the lies. See it for what it is.
And trust in God. He will give you the strength to resist. And will give you the hope of abundant life.
As I was reading through part of John this morning, I read over Jesus’ calling of Peter. It is found in Chapter 1:
42 Then Andrew brought Simon to meet Jesus. Looking intently at Simon, Jesus said, “Your name is Simon, son of John—but you will be called Cephas” (which means “Peter”).
One of the things we see in Scripture is that when some people come to God, their name is changes – Abram to Abraham, Jacob to Israel, Simon to Peter, Saul to Paul.
Why? What does God change someone’s name?
In the days of the Bible, your name was more than just what people called you . . . . it was who you were. It represented something deeper about you.
So, when God changed your name, He wasn’t just changing what people called you, He changed who you were.
A change is coming.
We want that in our lives, don’t we. We want to be different. We want to change old habits, we want to start new ones. We want to be different. We want to change for the better.
But, it’s hard. Things come slowly. We fall back into old habits and old ways.
We want change on a dime. We want things happen quickly, we want to be a different person at this exact moment.
It doesn’t always happen that way. Change in our lives doesn’t always come quickly. Sometime it slowly.
So, what do we? We be faithful. Each second, each moment, each hour, each day.
We are faithful. We do what we should do. We pray. We read. We fellowship. We worship. We do our part.
And, slowly, you know what happens? We change. We are different. We are transformed.
Sometimes, we change very quickly. Most times, it’s a process.
God wants to change you today. He wants you to have new life today. He wants you to know what’s most important today.
So be faithful. Today, and each day. And we will find that we have grown more than we would ever realize. Be faithful. And know God will do His part.
RevAndy.org 