Ishmael Moment's

Have you ever had an Ishmael moment? You know, like Abraham and Sarah, you grow impatient, or become frightened that the way it seemed as a dream or promise was going to be fulfilled may not happen, so you decide to help God out. For Sarah, it was the suggestion that Abraham have a son by her servant Hagar. (I always find it interesting that Abraham didn't argue about the idea, but was perfectly willing to spend a night with Hagar, but that's another story.) So Ishmael is born.

But this wasn't God's plan. What happened? I think Abraham got so locked in on what he wanted that he wasn't willing to let God do what God wanted to do. In Genesis 15:2, after God tells Abraham about all the ways He is going to bless him, Abraham says: “O Sovereign Lord, what good are all your blessings when I don’t even have a son?” Abraham had such tunnel-vision on what he wanted, he was willing to go outside of God's will to acquire what he wanted...a son.

But Abraham didn't understand that God’s promises aren’t just goods and blessings to make us happy. Though God does want us to be happy and He does give us good gifts, the deeper meaning is what lies behind the promise. Abraham wanted a son and it would have been nothing for God to give him a son quickly. But the bigger picture was how God established His covenant and sealed it with a miraculous promise. The promise wasn’t just Isaac, but the never-ending promise that linked Isaac to the coming redemption of Jesus Christ on the cross. Isaac was only a piece of the bigger plan of God.

But most of us are not too unlike Abraham. We get so focused in on our dream, our desire, or our problem, that we are willing to step outside of God's promise to move us either close to our dream or resolve our problem. And most of us have to admit, that like Abraham, the times we have done that have created tremendous issues for us.

Let me close today by giving you two suggestions when you are tempted with Ishmael moments. Of course, number 1 is, trust God to accomplish what He has promised in His way. His way will always be better. And number 2, if you have had an Ishmael moment and you are struggling with the consequences of your choices, take heart. God is a master and blessing our Ishmael moments. More about that next time!

Waiting

It is a part of life that all of us have to experience, yet few of us enjoy...waiting. Whether it is waiting at the doctor's office, waiting at a red-light, waiting at a restaurant, or waiting for a sermon to get over so we can go wait at a restaurant, waiting is a shared struggle in the human experience.

One of the more difficult things about being a Christian is waiting on God after God has made a promise to us. Abraham and Sarah certainly knew what it was like to wait on the Lord. Twenty-five years passed from the time God promised a son to them until the fulfillment of that promise was realized.

So I think we can call Abraham an expert on waiting. Later this week, we are going to look at two wrong responses we have when we are forced to wait on the Lord, and three right responses that Abraham demonstrates while waiting on the Lord.

But let me leave you today with this wonderful promise to those who find themselves in a position of waiting on the Lord. It is found in Isaiah 40: "But those who wait on the Lord shall renew their strength; They shall mount up with wings like eagles, they shall run and not be weary, they shall walk and not faint."

How We Treat Our Guests Is Important

Why is hospitality so important? We, who tend to come to church every week, kind of take for granted that we will be here again next week, and the next week. But almost every Sunday, there is someone at our church who may never return. Perhaps some are because of sickness; others because of death; but, most will simply choose not to return.

So every time we walk in these doors, there is a good possibility that there is someone here that this will be the only shot we get to fully express the love of God to them. (1 John 4:12).

I love the way Pastor Brad Powell of Northridge Church in Michigan tells the story. If you have about three minutes listen to this story:

So how do we practice hospitality (Romans 12:13)? In Genesis 18:1-8, we are told of a time when Abraham welcomed some guests into his home. There are six things he did, that I think would help us as endeavor to practice hospitality:

1) He made them feel welcome (verse 1-3). This is more than shaking hands and saying "Welcome". It is having a servants attitude towards our guest.
2) He refreshed them (verse 4). People who enter our church need to be refreshed from the struggles of their daily lives.
3) He offered them rest (verse 4). There are all kinds of things that take place in the secular world that we need to ensure don't happen inside our walls: battles, politics, anger, etc.
4) He gave them the best seat (verse 4). Maybe the back rows should be reserved for guests!
5) He energized them for their journey (verse 5). May the people who leave our church on Sunday fell charged for the week ahead!
6) He stood ready and willing to serve (verses 2, 8). For the people who call Hickory Valley their home, church is not a place we come to be served, but a place to serve.

As Brad reminds us, let me re-interate something that we have a tendency to let slip into the background. Every Sunday, we will have someone for whom eternity is on the line. In fact, every day we will meet someone for whom eternity is on the life. Our faithfulness to worship, our attitudes toward servanthood, our acceptance of our guests, may make all the difference for eternity.

Hospitality Is The Heart Of God

The God that we serve is welcoming. He pursues us and loves us. 1 John 4:12 says, “No one has ever seen God. But if we love each other, God lives in us, and his love is brought to full expression through us.” John is basically saying, “No one has ever seen God, but the one and only Son, who is himself God and is in closest relationship with the Father, has made him known.” His logic is: No one has ever seen God, but Jesus came and he made God known.

John also says, “No one has ever seen God; but if we love, we make him known.”

The Greek word for full expression is exēgesatō. It means exegesis or exegete. When you exegete a passage of Scripture, you discover the original meaning or full expression. John says that Jesus exegetes the meaning of God. He removes all of our interpretations, and he shows us God in his full nature.

John also says that we get to exegete God by loving others. The Pharisees thought that God was a nitpicker, a rule keeper. Jesus exegetes God in a whole new way: God full of grace and truth. The story of the Prodigal Son exegetes God as having a heart of radical, costly, extravagant welcome.

Jesus exegetes God and he wants us to do the same. That’s our job. In Western culture, we use hospitality to mean this: Inviting someone we like for a brief visit. This isn’t bad, but that’s not how the Bible defines hospitality. Here’s God’s hospitality: Pursuing us in order to win us at a costly love, willing to die for them in order to adopt them as sons and daughters of heaven, to come live in your house forever. Some theologians say the chief attribute of God is hospitality.

The word hospital captures this sense of divine hospitality. The more busted up you are at the hospital, the more priority you get. That’s getting close to divine hospitality. When we are willing to sacrifice and stretch our own comfort zone to welcome others, That’s how we exegete our God.  We are willing to stretch ourselves to serve those who are busted up.

Practice Hospitality

A mother invited some people to dinner. At the table, she turned to her six-year-old daughter and said, "Would you like to say the blessing?" "I wouldn’t know what to say," the girl replied. "Just say what you hear Mommy say," the mother answered. The little girl bowed her head and with sincerity in her voice said, "Lord, why on earth did I invite all these people to dinner?"

Listen to these words by the apostle Paul concerning hospitality found in Romans 12:13: “Share with God people who are in need. Practice hospitality.” Notice that he doesn’t say, “Show hospitality”. But “Practice hospitality”.

I love this old school video from the Beverly Hillbillies when Granny is missing Southern hospitality after the Clampett clan move to Beverly Hills.

Why do we need to practice hospitality? Why do we need to practice anything? Because the more we practice it, the better we get at it. Now I have a theory. I don’t know if you can prove it, but I believe it is true. And since I said it is a theory, it really doesn’t matter if it is true or not, I can state it whether it is or not (just kidding). I do believe this theory is true. Here it is: Left to ourselves, we tend to drift from relationships rather than toward them. We tend to drift toward isolation rather than community. We tend drift toward separation rather than inclusion. To become good at community, at inclusion, we have to practice hospitality.

That’s my theory. You can decide whether you agree or not. I just know that when guests visit a church, the natural tendency of most people is to stay away from them rather than approach them.

This week we are going to look at how God is hospitable, a Biblical example of hospitality, and why  hospitality is especially important for a church?

Moving With God

Today's guest blog is is from Artie Davis. You can follow Artie at www.artiedavis.com.

… a great multitude of sick people, blind, lame, paralyzed, waiting for the moving of the water. For an angel went down at a certain time into the pool and stirred up the water; then whoever stepped in first, after the stirring of the water, was made well of whatever disease he had. (John 5:3, 4 NKJV)

Be in the Right Place
Our towns are full of those who sick, blind and lost. And I really believe God wants to visit each with the power of the Gospel. But God moves through the obedience of those who  hear His voice and follow. We can be doing all the “right” things with the right people but in the wrong place at the wrong time. Then we become discouraged when we don’t see the moves of God.

Watch for the stirring
God greatly desires to move where we are and draw people to Himself. We have to train our ears and eyes to see when God moves and not shrink back in fear, or disapproval because His movement doesn’t line up with how believe He should move!

Be all in!
We gotta move! If we hesitate, we lose. When God moves, thats’s Him saying, “Get up, move…move now.” And we can’t just put our toe in, we have to jump all in, we make a commitment that now matter what it looks like or how much it may cost, we have to be all in.

No Escape Route

Here's another great thought from Steve May:

The story goes that after Julius Caesar and his Roman legions landed on the shores of Britain, he marched his men to the Cliffs of Dover to look at the shores below. From there they could see their ships engulfed in flames, thus ruling out any possibility of retreat. There was nothing left now for the soldiers to do but advance and conquer. And that is what they did.

The problem with escape routes is that they're too often and too easily taken. Their very existence can lull us into giving less than our all to any endeavor.

I used to work with a pastor who often told me, “If you give yourself a way out, you will end up taking it every time. Create no option but to get the job done.”

He wasn't talking about developing a Plan B for success, just in case Plan A doesn't pan out. He was talking about relying on Plan B for failure, just in case the going gets tough. (Because the going always gets tough.)

Almost every day I find myself repeating the words of Paul..."But one thing I do: forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead, I press on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus." (Philippians 3:13-14)

Can you imagine how a "no retreat" attitude can make a difference in your approach to living holy, to serving God in ministry, to leading your family, to loving others?

It's time to throw a match on any possibility of going back to the way things used to be. God is calling us forward, to a life of victory.  - Steve May, Monday Memo, June 25, 2013

The Second Best Time To Plant Trees

Most of you are aware, I am taking preaching sabbatical this month, so I will not be making the normal posts during July. However, I want to share some of my favorite blogs from other ministers or speakers occasionally during the month. Today's blog comes from Steve May from MondayMemo. Steve writes:


An ancient proverb says, "The best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago. The second best time is today."

Looking back on the past twenty years, it's easy to see all the trees that should have been planted: we should have spent less and invested more, we should have studied more, prayed more, taken the kids to more picnics, appreciated others more, watched TV less, worried less, laughed more, enjoyed life more, and on and on.

It's easy to see today all the trees we failed to plant twenty years ago. And it may be tempting to dwell on those good things left undone. God, however, has forgotten them; those sins of omission have been cast into the same sea of forgetfulness as our other sins.

Instead, we must be about the business of planting trees today.

Paul said, "Indeed, God is ready to help you right now. Today is the day of salvation." (2 Corinthians 6:2)

Yesterday will never be any different than it was, but today's pages is still blank. Today is the day of salvation; today is the day to start planting trees.

The God Of Second Chances

When we left Paul, Barnabas, and John Mark in the previous post, Paul and Barnabas had separated their missionary efforts, Paul going one way with Silas, and Barnabas going another with John Mark. All because Paul had given up on John Mark because John Mark had quit on him on a previous journey.

From a casual glance, we might assume that God doesn't bless quitters. But let's dig into this story a bit deeper. Somehow Paul and John Mark were reconciled. When Paul writes one of his prison epistles, this one to the church at Colossee, he writes in Colossians 4:10: “Aristarchus, who is in prison with me, sends you his greetings, and so does Mark, Barnabas's cousin. And as you were instructed before, make Mark welcome if he comes your way.”

And then there is moving request by Paul in his final letter to his young protege, Timothy, where he says in 2 Timothy 4:11: “Only Luke is with me. Bring Mark with you when you
 come, for he will be helpful to me.”

Again, as Perry Noble writes in Unleash: "Paul, who had once given up on John Mark, wanted him to be with him in his last days. Why? I believe the apostle Paul understood that even though he'd given up
on John Mark, God hadn't."

I think there are two valuable lessons in this amazing story of falling down and getting back up:

1) Be careful who you quit on...you may need them in your life later.
2) God never quits on you..."Mark quit on God, but God never quit on him. He hasn't quit on you, either.
Do you think John Mark ever dreamed he'd be chosen by God to pen one of the accounts of Jesus' life in our Bible today? Do you think Peter ever imagined he'd be allowed to lead the church after adamantly denying Christ three times? Do you think David ever thought he'd be known as a man after God's heart after he committed adultery and murder?
 Of course not! All of them probably thought it was game over, but God didn't.
God will do what He needs to do to correct us and get us back on the right path, but He will never give up on us."

Don't Quit, Just Because You Stumble

John Mark is an interest character in the Bible. We are first introduced to him in Acts 12:12, where we
are told that the Apostle Peter visited his mother's home. He must have been a key player in the early development of the church, because later, he was invited by Paul and his cousin, Barnabas, to travel with them on a journey to the island of Cyprus to share the message of the gospel to the inhabitants.

At first it appeared to be an exciting and victorious trip, but along the way something happened that apparently discouraged John Mark, so much so that he wanted to quit and go home. Perhaps it was their encounter with a Jewish sorcery named Elymas. Perhaps it was the isolation of traveling from city to city and not really having a place to call your own. But for whatever reason, we are told in Acts 13:3: “ Now Paul and those with him left Paphos by ship for Pamphylia, landing at the port town of Perga. There John Mark left them and returned to Jerusalem.”

John Mark quit and went back home. How do we know that? Later Paul and Barnabas were going to go on another missionary trip and we are told in Acts 15:37, 38: "Barnabas wanted to take John, also called Mark, with them, but Paul did not think it wise to take him, because he had deserted them in Pamphylia and had not continued with them in the work."

 A deserter. It just has a dirty feel to it doesn't it. The contention between Barnabas and Paul was so great, they separated and went on different journeys, Barnabas apparently with John Mark, and Paul with Silas. We don't hear much about Barnabas and John Mark's journeys, but the rest of the book of Acts is about Paul and his companions. So it would appear that Paul's efforts were more success, or at least made more headlines, than those of Barnabas and John Mark.

John Mark quit on Paul. Paul then quit on John Mark. But God didn't quit on John Mark. As Paul Harvey used to say, "My friends, is the rest of the story."

God Won't Quit On You

As we conclude our study on the life of David based on the book Unleash by Perry Noble, this week we are focusing on the conclusion of David's life. It is easy to view David as a great hero of the faith when we think about his confrontation with Goliath, his integrity while King Saul was pursuing him to kill him, or the way he lead Israel to become the world power of his generation.

But let's not forget, after all of that, during a very dark season of David's life, he committed adultery and then committed murder to hide his adultery. On top of that, like most of us, he showed no remorse until it appeared he had been caught in his confrontation by the prophet Nathan. He turned his back on the Lord and blatantly chose what he wanted over what God wanted.

However, the demonstration of God's love and grace that follows is nothing short of supernatural. Even though David quit on God during that season of his life, God never quit on David. As Noble writes: "He sent the prophet Nathan to confront him and call him on his sin. As a result, David repented of what he had done and got back on track in his journey with the Lord. That didn't mean there weren't consequences
for his sin; in fact, his sin ended up costing him the life of his own son. But when he showed true repentance. God forgave him completely and restored his relationship with Him."

That is an amazing illustration of grace. David committed adultery and murder, and still God didn't quit on him! 

The Bible is full of people who quit on God but whom God chose to use for His purposes anyway. The remainder of this week we are going to look at one person in particular. His name is John Mark. He is a classic example of someone who quit, but God never quit on him.

By the way, the same is true about you. God will never quit on you. 

Finishing Well

You may have a can of WD-40 around the house. It is a common household item for lubricating items and stopping squeaks. But do you know where the name comes from? The WD stands for Water Displacement. The 40 stands for the number of tries it took them to get an effective and successful formula. They failed 39 times but succeeded on the 40th try.

I have never met a person who has newly started their walk with Christ who intended to quit that walk someday down the road. Most people who begin their spiritual walk are filled with zeal and excitement. Unfortunately, for some, something happens along the way and they just...quit.

They stopped running the race and just gave up. It's not that they're a bad person. But something, somewhere, stole their joy and they just didn't have the strength to take another step. And sadly, many never get back in the race.

Somewhere in the Christian church, we began defining godliness as never falling. But the men and women of the Bible never illustrated it in that way. All the heroes of the faith had their moments of failure. In fact, we don't even need their illustrations to understand this truth. Listen to the words of the wise man in Proverbs 24:16: "The godly may trip seven times, but they will get up again."

Do you see it? It's not that "the godly don't fall"; the godly and the ungodly both fall. The difference is the godly get up again. That verse continues: "But one disaster is enough to overthrow the wicked."

So the next time you are tempted to quit, (on your marriage, on your kids, on your church, on your God) remember WD-40. Success may come with the next attempt!

Life Happens

It seems as though the difficult events of life, more times than not, catch us by surprise! We don't wake up in the morning thinking that we'll have an automobile wreck, or discover we are being caught in our companies down-sizing decisions, or discover our spouse is seeing someone else. Most of us have had days where something tragic hit us out of nowhere.

Whatever the event, the reality is...life happens. And when it does, sometimes it knocks the wind out of our dreams, hopes, and ambitions. Is is possible to keep your dreams alive when life sucker punches you? I believe so. But I believe to do so, you have to be willing to let other people into your life. God never intended for us to do life alone.

David's relationship with his friend Jonathan was a source of encouragement and strength as Jonathan's manic-depressive father, Saul would honor David one day and try to kill him the next. David's "mighty men" enabled David to do amazing things even while on the run from Saul. They (David and his mighty men) all could have achieved a lot on their own, but they achieved far more as a group than they ever could have accomplished on their own. David knew he needed them if he was 
going to accomplish what God had called him to do.


As Perry Noble writes in his book Unleash: "We never become who God wants us to be or accomplish all He wants us to accomplish by ourselves. We all need the support of other believers to help us live out God's unleashing grace.
"

A Little Help From Our Friends

Dorothea Taylor, age 85, was waiting in her truck on her husband George, as he tool their golden retrievers, Fellar and Tut, out for some fresh air. She was in their truck to avoid the Alaskan subzero temperatures watching her husband collected the dogs.

That's when George noticed a massive moose of in the distance. “He was way off. He spotted me, and he started to come right after me. So I was trying to get to the truck. But I didn't make it,” George, a bush pilot from Willow, Alaska, told the Anchorage Daily News.

The moose caught George and began stomping on him in the snow. Fortunately, his 5-foot-tall wife grabbed a shovel from the truck and attacked the moose, taking swing after swing at the animal.

“When it turned and started to go off slowly, I hit it with everything I had,” she said. Finally, the moose retreated, and Tut, one of their dogs, chased it off. Taylor made it out of the fight unscathed, but her husband had seven broken ribs and a 6-inch cut on his forehead. “Well, we've helped each other out of problems before. This just happened to be the latest,” Dorothea said.

Sometimes life happens and situations hit that we're unprepared to face. It's during those times that we desperately need the help and community of other people. 
When the Moose attacked, George didn't need someone to pray for him. He didn't need to read a book titled Ten Ways To Escape A Charging Moose. He didn't need advice or some sort of cute jewelry with a cross on it to remind him that Jesus is always with him.


He needed someone to come alongside him and beat of the Moose! George would have been in serious trouble if Dorothea hadn't been close enough to help him out.


I'm sure George didn’t set out walking his dogs expecting to face death. But life didn't turn out quite like he'd anticipated. Before he knew it, he was in trouble, and quite unable to get himself out of the situation on his own.


There's no way he could have rescued himself. He needed help! And so do we all.

Life Is Tough

It is important to remember that David did not set out to fight a giant on the day he faced Goliath. I mean, he didn't get up one day and say, "I think I'll go pick a fight with a nine-foot tall warrior." He was simply doing what he was asked to do and the giant-sized opportunity presented itself.

Isn't that the way life happens? We are going along and everything is great and then something takes us by surprise. Something that leaves us overwhelmed and feeling like we can't handle it. If we have bought into the error that God will never give you more than you can handle, we will get frustrated and possibly bitter. Or we may assume that we don't have enough faith, or aren't godly enough.

Going along side the error of God won't give you more than you can handle, is the error that if you do everything right, you won't have any problems and nothing bad will never happen to us. Scripture clearly teaches otherwise. Joseph did the "right" thing and ran from temptation and consequently wound up in jail. Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego did the "right" thing and refused to bow before an idol, and as a result they were thrown into the furnace. Job was doing absolutely nothing wrong; in fact, he was called "blameless" and "upright" by God
 Himself. And yet you know what happened. Paul and Silas were told to go to a certain region and preach the gospel, and before the chapter is over, we find them beaten and thrown into prison. Jesus never sinned, yet He was crucified.

Bad things happen to us not because of bad things we've done but because we live in a fallen world. Also, when bad things happen to us we are reminded how utterly dependent we are on and for God.

As one of the members of our congregation often says, "Life is tough, then you die." Begging his apologies, I might change that last phrase in his quip: "Life is touch, but God is greater."

More Than You Can Handle

This week, it is my hope to debunk a Christian fable that is often quoted when we experience difficulties in life. This fable has a lot of different versions, but they all basically boil down to this: "God will never give you more than you can handle.”I suspect we have all been told that at some point in our lives. I suspect most of us have told someone else that when they were going through a difficulty. The truth is, I've probably preached it before.

But it simply is not true. God often allows us to face more than we can handle. But it's not because He's cruel or heartless. It's so we'll stop trying to live life on our own strength and learn to depend on His! The idea that God won't give us more than we can handle might have originated from the words the Apostle Paul wrote in 1 Corinthians 10:13: “No temptation has seized you except what is common to man. And God is faithful; he will not let you be tempted beyond what you can bear. But when you are tempted, he will also provide a way out so that you can stand up under it.”
 Notice this verse doesn't say anything about God never giving us more than we can handle. It fact, it is not about circumstances at all, but temptations.


Read Paul's words in 2 Corinthians 1:8-10, and you will discover that he readily admits that he experienced situations that he couldn't handle: “We do not want you to be uninformed, brothers, about the hardships we suffered in the province of Asia. We were under great pressure, FAR BEYOND OUR ABILITY TO ENDURE (emphasis mine), so that we despaired even of life. Indeed, in our hearts we felt the sentence of death. But this happened that we might not rely on ourselves but on God, who raises the dead. He has delivered us from such a deadly peril, and he will deliver us. On him we have set our hope that he will continue to deliver us,”


You see it, don't you? This week we are going to debunk the myth that "God will never give you more than you can handle" and hopefully replace it with the truth: "God will never give you more than He can handle." The difference is more than schematics. It is an entirely different paradigm of how you face life.

You Are Loved

Unconditional love! It is almost, if not totally, impossible for us to comprehend the terms. As humans, we place so many conditions on love. Are they lovable? Do they treat me with respect? Is my love reciprocated?

That's not so with God's love for us. He loves us passionately and unconditionally. Allow that last word to sink in. Unconditionally. There is nothing we can do to make Him love us more. There is nothing we can do to make Him love us less. Impossible to comprehend? Perhaps. True? Absolutely.

Recall the words of the Apostle Paul in Romans 8:38-39 (NLT): “And I am convinced that nothing can ever separate us from His love. Death can’t, and life can’t. The angels can’t, and the demons can’t. Our fears for today, our worries about tomorrow, and even the powers of hell can’t keep God’s love away. Whether we are high above the sky or in the deepest ocean, nothing in all creation will ever be able to separate us from the love of God that is revealed in Christ Jesus our Lord.”

What can separate His love from us? Death or life can't. Angels or demons can't. Our own fears and worries can't (admit it, every once in a while, don't you fear or worry that He doesn't love you?). Our own emotions can't. Whether we are on highs to the skies or lows to the deepest oceans, He still loves us.

Impossible? Perhaps in our realm. But remember, He is not on our realm. He loves you. As you prepare to unleash the potential of your life, it begins with the realization that success or failure doesn't change God's love for you.

You Are Forgiven

Often, when trying to overcome our past, we have a difficult time believing that we are really forgiven. While we sing songs about it, we talk about it, we even thank God for it, forgiveness is something our heart has a difficult time accepting. Perhaps it is because we have a difficult time forgiving others, and we believe God has the same difficulties we do. Perhaps it is because we believe we don't deserve forgiveness (none of us do). Or perhaps, we are experiencing the results of poor decisions and we figure our difficulties must mean that God hasn't forgiven us.

Whatever the reason, there are a couple of things we need to remember when our hearts won't allow us to "feel" forgiven. First of all, “The human heart is most deceitful and terribly wicked. Who really knows how bad it is?” (Jeremiah 17:9)  Our feelings don't always tell the truth. We should never try to build the foundation of our lives on something as uncontrollable as our emotions. Emotions come and go, shift and fluctuate. But truth is always truth. Forgiveness is not a feeling, it is a reality. Whether we feel forgiven or not, when we have come to Jesus and repented of our past...we are forgiven!

Listen to what John told us in 1 John 3:20: “Even if our hearts condemn us, God is greater than our hearts, and he knows everything.” The Scriptures are clear that our lives are identified not by our failures but rather by the death Christ died on the cross.

Forgiveness is not achieved, it is received. Paul tells us in Ephesians 1:7: “He is so rich in kindness that he purchased our freedom through the blood of his Son, and our sins are forgiven.” Don't miss it. HE purchased OUR freedom, OUR sins are FORGIVEN. There is nothing we can do to achieve this forgiveness, we just receive what He has already purchase. You are forgiven!

Who Are You

One of my all-time favorite movie scenes comes from (and I am not embarrassed to say this) The Lion King. I have watched the movie too many times to count (don't forget I'm a grandparent), and I have scene the Broadway production twice. In this scene the wise sage, Rafiki, confronts young Simba about his carefree living while his kingdom is laid waste by his uncle, Scar. The following dialogue takes place

Simba: I know what I have to do. But going back means I'll have to face my past. I've been running from it for so long.
Rafiki hits Simba on the head with his stick
Simba: Ow! Jeez, what was that for?
Rafiki: It doesn't matter. It's in the past. (and laughs)
Simba: Yeah, but it still hurts.
Rafiki: Oh yes, the past can hurt. But the from way I see it, you can either run from it, or... learn from it.
(Rafiki swings his stick again at Simba, who ducks out of the way]

This week we are looking at the taunting that the people of Israel faced from Goliath as David shows up at the camp. The story is found in 1 Samuel 17. Goliath stands over 9 feet tall. His armor weighs 125 pounds, and the tip of his spear weight 15 pounds. And he taunts the Israelites for 40 days, morning and night.


For many of us, our past mistakes loom as large as Goliath. No matter what we do, no matter how many times we say we're sorry, no matter how many Bible verses we read or how many worship songs we sing, our past always seems to be there, towering over us like a large enemy we just can't figure out how to bring down.

And like the Israeli army, far too many have become so obsessed with Goliath's taunts, that we can no longer hear God's promises. But David shows up, fresh from the pastures. In the pastures, he has been hearing God, not Goliath. And as David hears the taunts of the Goliath, his response is much different from the soldiers who have allowed their lives to become defined by the giant. David stands and says, "Who is this pagan Philistine anyway, that he is allowed to defy the armies of the living God?" (1 Kings 17:26). 

One of the quickest ways to forget what God has promised is to focus on the voice of the enemy. Any number of triggers can bring the giant of our past out to taunt us. But like David, we must be careful to never allow fear or our past to define us. We should never allow what has defeated us in the past to define us. As a follower of Jesus, we should allow God to define our lives.

This week, we are going to focus in on three truths from the Word of God that God uses to define our lives.

At The Dance

When I was in school, our high school would have these socials, where you would go to the gymnasium on a particular night, and you were suppose to dance. You would invite a date and go to the "dance".

Problem was, only about 10% of the crowd actually danced. The rest of us stood around the walls or sat in the bleachers and watched. Imagine going to a dance and not dancing...just watching.

Unfortunately, this is not just a teenage problem. This is a a life problem. God intends for us to enjoy the dance of life; yet far too many of us spend our time, leaning against the wall and watching life. We dream of doing something great or radical. We dream of being more than we are. But we end up just standing against the wall, and as Perry Noble writes in his book Unleash, we "never experience the rhythm of God's grace." We never experience the "immeasurably more than we can ask or thing" (Ephesians 3:20) awesomeness of God.

Yesterday, I introduced our new sermon series based on Noble's book, by challenging us to take part in the dance of God. This week we will explore the encouragement to unleash the abundant life that God has provided for each of us. During the sermon series, we will explore different things than inhibit our dance. God hasn’t called His people to stand along the wall and watch. He wants us to participate in the dance of the extraordinary and amazing.