Sunday, July 13, 2008

 

Welcome - Mike Dames
The teens are on a beach trip, the campus is meeting separately
Joke:  Noah in Charlotte 2008
Hebrews 12:2   fix your eyes on Jesus
We will be at Halton Theatre for all of the Sunday services in July & August
Special Missions Contribution is Sunday, Sept 18  Goal $120,000   be in prayer for East Africa

 

Communion -- Todd McLaughlin
perspective (he's not going to break into "I've Been Everywhere" by Johnny  Cash)
the last two weeks he spent in a RV, he was in NC, TN, AR and TX.   They were going to Greenville, Texas, where Tif's grandmother lives, to spend the 4th of July there
2 Cor 5:13-17
Todd had a worldly perspective of Christ, he left that behind when he went to college, his faith was not deep, his convictions were shallow
He met someone of faith, he perceived he was out of his mind.   In the medical world, he's a healer.  Todd does it through Christ, the people he works with perceive they do it through their own abilities.   He was a cancer victim, he was cured.   He was a single, he dated purely.   It works.   He was considered out of his mind.   He lived a life of brotherhood.   Purity issues - he never kissed before his wedding (except through the screen door).  
He is a father, with a son and two daughters, and hopefully will be a grandfather.   He's definitely a teacher, a mentor, a student.   Christ -- from a worldly point of view, he missed out with this death.   But we are out of our minds - we follow our God and not the world.   To have such joy and understanding in Jesus' death.
Todd hopes to hear Mt 25:21  "Well done, good and faithful servant . . . come and share in your master's happiness. "

 

Mark Perez    "Romancing The Stone"
Ezekiel 36:25-27  pretty incredible promise to his people
Old Covenant - certain standards and traditions that guided the dynamics between the Almighty God and Israel
1500 years of the old covenant
Jer 29   plans, hopes, 31 describes the new covenant
transplant - not open heart surgery -- a new heart
Prov 4  the wellspring of life
the new heart doesn't come from Fed Ex when you become a new disciple -- it takes time to change our hearts
Zep 3  God is a knight in shining armor
Gen 15   God's a man's man -- God said he would be there
Ps 62
Hos 2  pursue you, allure you, steadfast faithfulness
They found letters that Mark wrote to his wife Sandra when they were courting, found them when they were getting ready to move
They went to a certain point in their relationship and then stopped -- that's not steadfast love
He looks at the TV - he's thinking nothing
IS 54:4-8
God's romantic pursuit of us has nothing to do with our past
John 8:2-11  without sin, throw the first stone
Jesus was pursuing to protect her dignity, then told her to repent
Jesus, the prince of the universe, stuck his finger twice in the ground that had dirty feet and animal dung to draw attention away from the woman
Don't live in the past, live in His love
Jesus has a habit of sticking himself between the accuser and the accused to protect someone's dignity
She was a woman, she was His woman
She was standing, He was kneeling
God's love is based on what we're going to be - not now or before
breaking the trust that someone has in you, confessing sin to someone you love
Mark doesn't get angry or happy, he's absent .   His compass is broken from choices he made in the past.
John 21:15-17   Jesus reinstates Peter.    With all the promises, there was no mention of what Peter had done.   Peter walked with the Lord for 3.5 years, he pledged his love to Jesus, and then he denied knowing Jesus to a child.  Jesus doesn't bring any of that up, he doesn't look at what he's done but what he will be.  
Faith and hope    Hope = hearts changing, people will rise to the occasion
Jesus had faith, hope and utter confidence in Peter, he needed to make Peter believe
Romantic words are only good if you read them
Do you have 5-10 promises of God etched on your heart?
A message in a bottle does no good if it's never read
33,000 verses, love letters, written to me
Some people want a letter personally written to them
This letter is covered with the blood of martyrs, preserved with bloodshed
Centuries ago, William Tyndale (1494 - 1536) was a 16th century Protestant reformer and scholar who translated the Bible into the Early Modern English of his day.    While a number of partial and complete Old English translations had been made from the seventh century onward, and Middle English translations particularly during the 14th century, Tyndale's was the first English translation to draw directly from Hebrew and Greek texts, and the first to take advantage of the new medium of print, which allowed for its wide distribution. In 1535 Tyndale was arrested, jailed in the castle of Vilvoorde outside Brussels for over a year, tried for heresy for wanting to put the Bible in the hands of  Christians instead of just priests, and then strangled and burnt at the stake.   While he was burning, he continued to proclaim that all people should have access to Bibles so they had to strangle him to get him to shut up.  Much of Tyndale's work eventually found its way into the King James Version of the Bible, published in 1611, which, as the work of 54 independent scholars revising the existing English versions, is to a large extent based on Tyndale's translations.   You may see William Tyndale's name printed on the back of your Bible.  
God's hope is that he will win your heart from the inside out with his 33,000 verses of love letters.

 

Nate James    "Father Knows  Best"
He's getting older, saying the things his parents used to say.   He works with the teens.    Some teens left his front door open, he said "close the door, what, am I air conditioning the whole world?"     We get older, we start to learn that we don't know everything.     God is trying to tell us that as a Christian, we need to learn what God is saying to us.  
Jer 29:11-14 
God is all of those things that Mark was talking about.   God loves you so much - he has a plan for our lives, not our day.    God will not fail, he will not back down.   He will not miss a step of his plan and it's a perfect plan.
When we become a Christian, we learn this scripture, it's a great scripture because it gives us hope.   We thought God would save us from every bit of trouble in our lives.    What?
We think this scripture is saying that God is going to make it easy for us
We need to see God's plan for us, not our plan for God's plan for us
Isa 55:8-9  if we live our life based on our plan for God's plan, we are way off
We go back to Jer 29 and we aren't getting the easy road we thought we were going to get, we get mad at God
They moved from Chicago a while back, he has been a Christian for 10 years, the last 4 were hard -- lost dreams, crushed, lost hope, faith
God, this can't be the pl an, this is not what you had in mind
He got so hurt and closed down
He would think back to the days when he was on the mountaintop
When his life got challenging, all those promises God made to him weren't true anymore
He got so discouraged, so lost in it all
He could have fallen away
But a thread remained
He was afraid it would be like that forever.   We start blaming God, forgetting the love letters and promises.   It's hard when you lose those kingdom dreams, God dreams.  
Four months he's been here, and things are changing.    It's amazing to see that new perspective, where God is taking him. 
He wanted to know the plan, he demanded God tell him.   God said "sit down and be quiet".   But now he trusts God to take him somewhere good. 

 

We've all been through challenges, our faith has been challenged to the core.   We need to try to understand God's plan. 
Ps 40;5    we forget there are too many wonderful things to describe
Nate got caught up in the day to day
He had to handle things right now
God is being patient and you're not
God has our day worked out, if we let him.   God has awesome, amazing plans.   He understands that he can't understand God's plans.   There's a comfort in that.   "Why are you trying to figure this out, don't you trust me? "
2 Cor 4:16-18   fix on eyes on what is unseen
we should sit down and come up with a five year, ten year, twenty year plan
God has a day-to-day plan
It can change.   Hezekiah said "I don't want to die"   "ok"   50 more years
God's short term plans are flexible as long as they don't interfere with the long term plan.   God has an eternal plan -- you're going to get to heaven.
Each of us that has been baptized has chosen that plan for our lives.   It might not be a cake walk to get there.
He loves us so much, as a father he is willing to do what He needs to do so we can get to heaven.   For Nate in the moment, his challenges were more challenging to him than anything he had ever faced.   This verse spoke to his heart:    Heb 12:2-11
based on the hardship of four years of his  Christianity, wrung-out, dragged through the mud -- through study and talking to people, that time has become cherished.
vs. 4  he hasn't resisted to the point of shedding blood.
All of those hard times never gave him the right to struggle, to lose faith.
That is so insulting to God.   We are telling God we don't trust him, we don't trust his plan. 
If we struggle at any point, we are sinning.    And we will sin.
God trained him through it all.   Parents don't let children discipline themselves, the children will always choose the easiest way.    God won't let us discipline ourselves.   Do we honestly think we could get ourselves to heaven?
Are we ready to go to heaven right now?   Or does God have more work to do?
To get to the harvest, we have to plow first.   The last four years of his life, he was plowing the field.   He needs to look forward to the harvest.   All that plowing was for a reason and if you get it, you will remember it when tough times happen again. 
Is 25:9   we trusted in him and he saved us.