sermonshorts

I think this is a great example of the difference between seeking God’s kingdom first and living a life of anxiety.

It is very easy to say, “Do not worry” but it is another thing all together not to do it.  The human heart has to ground itself in something and the biggest temptation is to ground it in something other that Jesus, namely our possessions.  In Matthew 6:33 Jesus says to seek the kingdom of God above ALL else and that God will meet our needs.  Jesus commands us to do this because he knows our hearts and that saying “Do not worry” is not enough unless we are seeking something else in order not to worry.  Jesus uses the word anxiety 6 times in this section of Scripture and it culminates in saying seek something else (the kingdom of God) in place of seeking earthly things.  When we do this, that is when our anxiety and stress start to have less of a hold on our life because we begin to focus on someone BIGGER than our situation.

So if your problems are bigger to you right now than God is, then you are seeking after the wrong solutions.  You must change the object of your obsession on to Jesus and trust in Him to take of your needs.  And as we talked about this last weekend at Revolution Church, that only happens as we start to not just “get our way through” but “give our way through.”  God is the ultimate giver and when we follow after His kingdom then we will become givers too in EVERY area of our life and not just finances.  This is why the old saying is true “It is more blessed to give than to receive.”

Here are my sermon notes:

This weekend we started a new series called OBEY as we talked about the 3rd soil in the parable of Luke 8:4-15.  Jesus very clearly laid out that growth is a process and it involves the Gospel being planted in our lives, then growing roots in the church and now growing UP into maturity.  I think the single BIGGEST reason that Christians do not GROW is because they fail to make the connection with their personal obedience.  God clearly laid out in the Bible how we are to live and what we are to do as believers.

However, the ultimate issue is that we think God’s way does not lead to joy so we pursue our own way instead.  This misstep in life really boils down to the fact that we do not understand the nature and character of God.  He is a good God and desires our ULTIMATE JOY which is only found in relationship to His son Jesus and His word the Bible.  We truly need the power of the Holy Spirit to show this to us or we will continue to think that we know better than God.  Because at the end of the day whatever we are the most obsessed with is what we will obey.  So the Holy Spirit must confront our misguided passions and redirect our obsessions to and on Jesus and obedience to His commands will fall into place.

So in what areas are you wrestling with obedience?  When you think of them, dig deeper and think about what misguided truth are you believing that is causing the disobedience.  Then ask God to show you the real truth and give you the power to love Him more and your obedience will follow.  Wherever there are pockets of disobedience in your life there are underlying obsessions that you love more.  Change your obsessions and your obedience changes with them.

Here are my sermon notes:

Today I sat down with Ricky our graphics/media director at Revolution Church and we discussed ALL that God is doing at Revolution. The fun part is that Ricky (who likes to talk a lot) didn’t know that I was walking into his office and since Thad was gone he couldn’t be upset that I interrupted his meeting. (Thad loves meetings). Anyways, God is doing a lot of really cool stuff at our church and we wanted to celebrate with you.

Highlights:

• We looked at Acts 2:37-41 where Peter instructs the people to do 2 things: Repent and be baptized
• We had 17 people repent and trust Jesus as their savior
• And we had 18 people sign up for baptism
• We also talked about how 3,000 were added to their number which represents some assimilation process
• For us at Revolution that process is MEMBERSHIP
• We had almost 200 people sign up for our Vision Nights (for previous partners) and Member Nights (for new members)
• There were a lot of life change stories too of God doing awesome things in our people’s lives

To be honest, with all that Revolution has been through in the last year, God has been EXTREMELY good to us.  I don’t think anyone would have thought we would be this healthy a year later.  If you have not signed up for our Vision Nights or our Member Nights then make sure you do this weekend as we talk about the future of where God is leading us.  This is only the BEGINNING of what God is doing here and we are pumped to share it with you.

Vision Nights: June 9th & 10th @ 6:30 pm

Member Nights: June 16th and July 7th @ 6:30 pm

Here are my sermon notes:

I really thought this was a cool modern day expression of the 10 commandments.

The Ten Commandments – motion (kinetic) typography from Vit Ryznar on Vimeo.