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Don’t Miss The Point of it All

Description
The Bible actually has a very simple story line, doesn’t it?

• God and people
• People mess up
• God works to fix (redeem) messed-up people
• People still mess up
• God sends son, Jesus to complete the fix
• People live through the fixer, Jesus, to go back to – God and people.

The stories that fill out this main story line teach and instruct and inform us of the holy character of God and how humanity is really, really messed up. But that God continues, even in spite of our wretched disobedience, to try and rescue us from ourselves.

Maybe that is the point of it all: We are really messed up and because that is what we really need… salvation from ourselves…

Photo courtesy: Freeimages.com/Hilario Regueiro López

Who’s Your Lord?

Description
My friends and family in Nazareth dismissed me right away because I was one of their own. “No. He couldn’t possibly be the Savior of Israel… the Savior of the world.” They were used to me. Seen me play and work… grow up. They had been around me for a while. I was known to them. Familiar. When you “know” something or someone, you are not afraid of it, you have control over it because it is familiar. Fear, doubt, unbelief, comes from things or people, we don’t “know” … that are not familiar. It seems to me that in 21st century America, I, Jesus, am known. I am familiar. I am dismissed almost immediately by people because they think they “know” me… that I am familiar… Do you really “know” me?

Who is your Lord? Caesar or Jesus?

Who rules your life? Caesar or Jesus?

Who rules your heart? Caesar or Jesus?

Can I Help You With That?

Description
A message about service and self-sacrifice. Will we serve even if we were to get nothing in return?

Photo courtesy of: Freeimages.com/Ross Brown

Seeing What is Not Yet Seen

Description
Psychologists say dreams are critical—metaphors that help us work through realities. But dreams are not real…are they? Of course not… Reality is only known by what you can see, hear, taste, touch, and smell— verifiable and empirical data perceived by your 5 senses. People argued that the only things that are real or true are those that can be verified by the scientific method. That is: only hypothesis that can be tested in a controlled environment in space and time are true.

We may know more facts than anyone in the world… but none of them have any meaning or truth, for meaning and truth themselves can’t be scientifically proven. It can only be revealed.

2 Corinthians 4:18 “So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen. For what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal.”

Have you ever had a dream that you were dreaming, but the dream within your dream was actually a person in the waking world trying to wake you up? What if this entire world is like a dream, and we’re in the process of being awakened? Whenever we are awakened from a dream, the thing that wakes us is a reality that won’t fit in our dream.

To the dreamer in her dream, there is a gradual realization that the whisper in her ear can’t be explained by the dream. But for a while it’s like the whisper is part of the dream—an in-congruent part of the dream. Are there things in your world that are in-congruent? That don’t fit? That can’t be explained by this world? Paradoxes, mysteries, things you can’t comprehend? Maybe they are real, and this entire, empirical world is the dream. Maybe those things are somebody whispering in your ear, “Sweetheart, wake up.”

Credit
Although contextualized and adapted for Hayward Wesleyan Church, much of the concepts come from a sermon by Rev. Peter Hiett called The Kingdom Come. His way of explaining the unseen world of the spiritual realm through the use of “Flatland” was brilliant as well as helpful for folks at HWC.

Stuff: Sacrifice or Sanctify?

Description
We want more, more, more…the whole world. What we have is not enough. As soon as we have something we want more.

But you know what I have found? Perhaps you have as well…things do not satisfy. Getting a new car is great…a wonderful feeling, but after about a month of babying the thing…it becomes just a car. Or the Mac mini computer…I suppose it is great to have one, but it is still just a computer.

You see, things do not satisfy…I want the whole world, at the cost of my soul.

Spirituality is measured by how you live your life, in real actual life. Fruit.

This is a gradual process…half of the battle to rid your life of distractions and clutter is recognizing it. Psychologists speak of naming the issue or distraction, thus eliminating the power-base that issue has over you.

But Jesus calls us to lay it down. Not stuff it in the junk drawer of our lives, our soul, but lay it at the foot of the cross, the real, ultimate, unlimited junk drawer. Sacrifice it. Nail it. Kill it. Put it to rest. Let it go.

“If anyone would come after me, he must deny himself, take up his cross and follow me” (Jesus in Mark 8:34).

Making Room to Dance

Description
It was our wedding day… …and I was so excited! There was something I was really looking forward to on that day… …something that I was never really allowed to do before. The day my soon-to-be-wife and I would enter into a sacred covenant with each other before God and the witnesses present, and I was really looking forward to doing this one thing.

This one thing is very special, extremely intimate, something that was meant to be sacred and holy a righteous communion between lovers. But the world has—twisted it, tainted it, made it an evil… what was originally intended for good disgusting reviling. But it is good!!

IT is = dancing!

• Dancing works great… just you and the lover of your soul that is, until someone, or something, cuts in.
• Dancing works great… just you and the lover of your soul that is until the song changes.

For in the divine dance with Jesus we find harmony because our eyes are fixed on him.

Blessed Are You? The Be-attitudes

Description
The list of “blesseds” is especially unique. They refer to those who are written off by society… lost causes… unworthy. Jesus is driving home a theme:

God’s hand lifting up those cast down and casting down those lifted up in the human scheme.

What are the Be-attitudes about? The Beatitudes are simply about those, who from the human point of view, are regarded as most hopeless, most beyond all possibility of God’s blessing or even interest, and exhibiting them as enjoying God’s touch and abundant provision from the kingdom of heaven.

What is Jesus doing with the Be-attitudes? Jesus is proclaiming blessing to those who are written off, the lost causes, the unworthy. And in Luke, he proclaims woes to those who are regarded as well off.

Jesus is opening the kingdom of God to everyone!

Is It In You?

Description
“Idolatry, whether ancient or modern, is the futile attempt to look to anyone or anything other than the one true Creator and Provider” (Scott Hafemann in 2001).

“Idolatry is worshiping anything that ought to be used, or using anything that is meant to be worshiped” (Augustine).

Paul traveled the Greek world in Acts 17 and he met with people in Thessalonica, Berea, and Athens, and shared the message of Jesus with them along the way.

A Wild Man

Description
John the Baptist was a wild man. The wilderness was his home. Camel’s hair and leather were his clothing. And locust and wild honey was his dinner. He was a wild man. John was a wild man with a wild message and people were drawn to it…

Now some of you may be saying: “I can relate to this wild man thing, but, Jesus?! Wild?! C’mon… no way. I remember him is Sunday school on the flannel graph. He’s meek and mild and BORING! He is in the pictures with the long flowing hair, the lamb and the lion laying next to him, and children dancing around him.”

The Lion of Judah is not a tame lion, but He’s good. The problem is His Bride is not so good, and so He makes her nervous. When she’s afraid, she tries to tame Him, and make Him safe, controlled, and predictable.

Credit
Much of the inspiration for this message came from Rev. Peter Hiett, in a message he preached called The Wild Man. A number of things were contextualized for Hayward, but the core essence of the message came from Rev. Hiett. It’s much like Jamal in Finding Forester when he needed some inspiration, his mentor gave him one of his literary pieces and told him to start from there, and when he found his own words, to go keep going.

This was the first sermon that I preached at Hayward Wesleyan Church. I had no idea what I was doing. Starting with the core concept of Rev. Hiett’s message really helped me gain my preaching legs (so-to-speak). It helped me to find the particular voice that God has used in the years since this first message.