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Are We Essential?

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Are We Essential?

Yes. Enter me and conceive in me a whole new, true life. Wouldn't that be great to pray that every morning? We do pauses several times a day, oftentimes together. One of the things that I've been more camping on the last number of months is that God and I would become one in the same way that Jesus prayed. He said, "I pray that they will be one with me as I am with you, Father." When I was younger I would just kind of read over that and just kind of dismiss it as an insurmountable mountain that I couldn't climb. Yet when you think of, did Jesus ever have a prayer that was never answered? Did Jesus ever pray a prayer that was amiss or out of the will of God? Not at all. So here is his prayer, I pray that they will one with me as I am with you, Father. The prayer of Jesus is that you and I would be at one with him.

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His Thoughts, His Ways

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His Thoughts, His Ways

Jesus said, his first public thing was repent for the kingdom of heaven is near. What I really want to focus on this morning is that word repent and what that means to us in our lives every day. Lots of times when we think of the word repent what comes to remind is stop doing all the bad things you are doing, or you are going to be in trouble, right? That’s kind of how we look at it. I think it's really important to understand that any of our bad behaviors actually are much deeper than what we see on the outside in terms of behavior. They go deep into our soul, into wounding that we have, and especially into ways that we think. I think it's really a lot better to look at this word repent, and to see what Jesus was saying. When he said the kingdom of heaven was near was not change your behavior, but change the way you think. That makes perfect sense because the ways and the thoughts of God are so much different than our ways and our thoughts in this world.

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First Person Praying

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First Person Praying

If you remember in the first chapter of Romans... Let me just read you, verse 18. It says “The wrath of God is being revealed from heaven against all the godlessness and wickedness of people who suppress the truth by their wickedness.” That's a scathing rebuke to the world. You'll notice that, if you read the rest of chapter one, Paul goes through a whole list of things all the way through like verse 30 or 31, 32, a whole list of things that they, the world are doing wrong; all of the sins, all the ways they have turned from God, all the wrong things that they've embraced, all the wrong behaviors that they have acted out, but all of his discussion in the first chapter of Romans is in third-person. It's all about “they”. It's all about the rest of the world. It's all about the wicked.

And so then we moved from the end of chapter one into the first verse of chapter two, and here is what Paul says then. He says, “You therefore…”, and he is writing to the church in the city of Rome. He is writing to Jewish believers in the city of Rome. He says, “You therefore have no excuse, you who pass judgment on someone else, for at whatever point you judge another, you are condemning yourself because you who pass judgment, do the same things.”

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The Way Out of Darkness

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The Way Out of Darkness

I asked myself this question, why does the cross of Jesus have such an impact on so many people around the world today? Why does it have such an impact? I believe it's because the cross carries a power that goes beyond theory. It carries a power that goes beyond speculation. It carries a power that at times goes beyond our ability to even understand it. It carries a power like that. I remember a few years ago, I was talking to a very elderly gentleman who had really nothing to do with church since the time he was a young boy. He got turned off to church and he didn't have anything to do with church for probably 80 years of his life.

Yet, he went one day to a museum in Paris, and he told me this story. He was looking at a series of paintings that had to do with the crucifixion and the sufferings of Christ, and then a picture of the open sepulcher with Jesus coming out of this tomb. He said to me, "When I looked at those paintings, I said to myself, I could serve a God like that. I could serve a God like that."

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The Beautiful Birthmark

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The Beautiful Birthmark

Sometimes I have a hard time with that. I don't know about you, but there are some things I find much easier to pray for than others. To pray for a political leader who I don't agree with and find myself really in consternation over, that's a sticky wicket for me at times, but the word of God is true, isn't it? It commands all of us to do that. This revolution, the first visible sign of this revolution was the resurrection, and there were going to be more signs to follow as well in this revolution. So the early Christian writers began to incorporate what I call very stunning expressions of that crucifixion. Can you imagine with me for a moment to think of an execution of someone, whether it's by electric chair or hanging, lethal injection. Can you imagine describing that as delightful?

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Song of Songs, Part 4

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Song of Songs, Part 4

So now we've moved from, it's all about me and it's all about me to it's all about me and it's all about him. You see how that works? And then at the end of the song in chapter seven, she says I belong to my beloved and his desire is for me, focus on him, focus on him. This is the migration. This is what happens as we begin to truly understand how much he loves us. It goes from, well, he is taking care of me to I'm serving him to he loves me. This is a wonderful migration to experience in our personal lives. This is… Again, this is not doctrinal. This is real. This is experiential. This is the journey that our Lord wants to take us on; to take us from a place of understanding he is savior to a place where we understand he is Lord to a place where we understand he is our lover.

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Song of Songs, Part 3

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Song of Songs, Part 3

Brian: Arise, come my come my darling, my beautiful one. Come with me. My dove in the clefts of the rock in the hiding places on the mountain side, show me your face. Let me hear your voice for your voice is sweet and your face is lovely.

Jeff: So he is calling the one that he loves to go with him to a hidden place, the cleft of the rock, the secret place. Isn't that where young lovers like to go, someplace where they can be alone? Remember those days?

Brian: Am I supposed to say yes to that?

Jeff: Of course you are, just someplace where...

Brian: Is that when the lights on the porch kept flickering?

Jeff: Yes. That's exactly right. You did that too, huh?

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Song of Songs, Part 2

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Song of Songs, Part 2

Your lips drop sweetness as a honeycomb, my bride. Milk and honey are under your tongue. The fragrance of your garments is like the fragrance of Lebanon. Of course, Lebanon was a huge forest of cedar trees. The fragrance, when you walk through a forest of pines is just kind of overwhelming. What we see here is that we see a lot of the same allegories, but what I think is most important without trying to delve into too much of those is to recognize that the same passionate love and hunger that she expressed for her lover, he expresses for her. The same passionate love and desire that we express for our savior is the love and passion and desire that he expresses for us.

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Song of Songs, Part 1

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Song of Songs, Part 1

This book is really a collection of love poems. It's called the Song of Songs. It's a Hebrew idiom, which is similar to like the Holy of Holies or the King of Kings. It's a Hebrew way of saying it's the greatest song, the greatest of all songs. There are two main characters in this particular story. They are the only ones in the world for each other. That's probably a good way to say it. They are the only ones in the world for each other. They are not married yet, but they are engaged. It's kind of like our relationship with God.

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From the Inside Out, Part 2

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From the Inside Out, Part 2

This man said, “My name is Legion”. There are a lot things that are implied even in that name. That name really means that his life was very splintered. We've even had recent studies in the last, maybe 50, 60, 70 years in the realm of psychology, where the study of like split personalities have been researched. There is a lot of controversy over this, but people who have been dramatically abused early on in their lives at times create safety mechanisms on how to cope with life. They do this of course, because they don't understand the life that Jesus can give us.

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From the Inside Out, Part 1

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From the Inside Out, Part 1

There is no question that God desires transformation, I would say without a doubt that God is not happy with a lot of behavior in the world today, obviously, but when we focus on the behavior, rather than the hearts, then what we begin to do is we have this external coercion that isn't really how God really desires to do things.

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Be Careful Where You Look, Part 2

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Be Careful Where You Look, Part 2

I remember times in my life where I desperately needed mercy and I really wanted it badly. I loved, I craved for it. And then there were times in my life where other people needed me to be merciful to them, and I'll be frankly honest with you, there was a struggle in my heart because I was mad. I was angry. I wanted vengeance. I wanted somehow to be justified, to be shown that I was right. This is a struggle that we all have, but God is asking us today to love mercy, to love mercy.

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Be Careful Where You Look, Part 1

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Be Careful Where You Look, Part 1

But it says here to not only act justly, but we are to what? Love mercy. We are to love mercy. We are to give ourselves to mercy. I find in my experience that it's much easier to give myself to judgment than it is to give myself to mercy. Maybe it's because I love judgment more than I love mercy in my heart. But God is saying, I'm showing you, oh mortal... That's all of mankind, human beings, men and women, boys and girls. I've shown you, oh mortal, what is good. This isn't the first time he talked about it. He said I've shown you what is good and what do I require of you?

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Fusion is a Terrible Thing, Part 3

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Fusion is a Terrible Thing, Part 3

Here is the mindset that we've had in the church that this sin needs to be conquered. We need to come against it. And so we've exerted this power-over approach. We label the behavior with sin with a capital S and if we say it loud enough, or with enough shame or enough leverage, or we hold a big enough sword in a sense over people, well, then that will get the sheep to get in line and start behaving properly. We do it with tithing and we do it with all sorts of things, don't we? But what really happens when this approach is taken

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Fusion is a Terrible Thing, Part 2

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Fusion is a Terrible Thing, Part 2

I'm going to take your knee out. Your mother must be ugly. Look at your mug, all sorts of stuff like that. What good did our prayers do in the locker room? Jim knows what I'm talking about, don't you Jim, right? All I'm saying is this; that kind of Christianity is a veneer Christianity. It's just a veneer. You know what we do? We take a lot of time to Polish up that veneer. If we don't see past the veneer, we will begin to think that the veneer is really the truth that we should be seeking.

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Fusion is a Terrible Thing, Part 1

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Fusion is a Terrible Thing, Part 1

I've noticed some things during this whole COVID issue that we've been dealing with now for a number of months. That is, there is a lot more fallenness in Christians than what we would like to believe. If you don't believe me, just go onto Facebook and see how they talk to each other and so forth, engage with each other. Sometimes I just walk away shaking my head. Yesterday I was really blessed by a prayer that Pastor Jeff prayed, because he was saying in his prayer, “Lord, just mix us all up. Mix us all up.” It was not in a bad sense, but in a good sense. I feel like that's what this message is just going to be a little bit today, is to get you thinking about some things in a different way than maybe you've thought about it in the past.