Wow what a day! I am so exhausted but feel like I am walking on air. I have so much I want to say, but I am virtually speechless. What could make me that way? Today we had two people accept Christ as their Lord and Savior!
Welcome Matt and Tatum to the family! God is great and it is amazing to see Him work.
Lord thank you!
Well, today we began our series on the Apostles; I decided to look at them more or less individually rather than as a group. The reasoning behind such an undertaking was really quite simple; I wanted us to learn more abut the men that Jesus chose. In doing so there is much to be gained, first as we know more about these men we can see traits in them that we can identify within ourselves. For example, Andrew was the kind man who wanted and did bring people to Jesus and within the scriptures we can clearly see that from the very beginning to the very end we can see Andrew bringing other to Christ. Another thing we noticed from his life was that he was a man that was very passionate, in the account of Andrew telling his brother about Jesus our English text does not give us the picture that the Greek text does. For example in John 1:41, the English text tells us that Andrew “said” to Simon “we have found” the Messiah, the words in quotation marks are the keys to Andrews demeanor, in English said is a past tense verb no big deal, in the Greek, the word is NOT past tense nor is the single word for “we have found” in the Greek both of these are present tense active verbs which tells us that Andrew did not just simply go to Simon and say we have found the Messiah. No, this clue leads to a clearer picture of an excitable man who was intense in the repetitive telling Simon we found Him, we have found Him, we have found the Messiah We have found the Messiah. So as we learn about these men we will be looking for clues to their character, clues to the attitudes and behaviors, we will be looking and identifying their passion, their fears and failures the strengths and victories and in doing so we will see little glimpses of our own selves in the men that Jesus chose, and in that we will realize that Jesus still seeks men like with their qualities today and on any given Sunday morning churches all around this world are filled with men and women that fit the bill. Are you one of them, I bet you are! However, this question remains are you serving Him like they did, or like you should?
Brothers and sisters this is a very disturbing topic, Biblical Illiteracy is a huge cancer not only in our world, it is also very prevalent in our churches. There are a lot of churches that are dying, homes that are wrecked, lives that are faltering, and the reality is that this very problem “Biblical Illiteracy” is likely the major contributor to the all the rampant immorality in our midst.
Well, I guess I need to ask the question; Are you Biblically Illiterate?
I want to encourage you to take to heart the reality of this message; your eternity will depend on your answers to some very powerful questions that will be asked of you.
The whole of the Bible is the revelation of the story of God’s love for the human race. It is amazing when you study the scriptures and discover that from before the foundation of the world Jesus has been working, either in the creation of all that is, or He has been being revealed in and through various Old Testament figures, such as Job, or Moses. In the New Testament you have men like Simeon who longed for the revelation of Jesus and was promised that he would not see death until as he put it “the Salvation of God is revealed” and it was in Jesus.
Beyond the question of Who Jesus is, lies two more prevalent question that are birthed from knowing who Jesus is and they are; What does knowing who Jesus is mean to me? And What do I do with Jesus now that I know who He is?
I guess for me the most important realization of who Jesus is manifests itself in these two statements.
Jesus is the Love of God
And
Jesus is the Heart of God
Well you can check out the message here
I am just in awe at the wonder working power of God, maybe I am just easy to amaze but God is just doing some amazing work in our midst. I want to just share this, it is just so amazing, but several weeks ago, I got some visitor information cards for the church and began to pray over them and distribute them in the pews, that same day we had two visitors that have been pretty regular attendees since, and today we had five more visitors, God is so faithful and so good, and I am so thankful for all He is doing in our midst.
This week we looked at 2 Timothy chapter 4, and this was a very different sermon for me and while I normally flesh out a fair amount of my sermon here, instead I want to ask you the reader the same questions I asked of my congregation and then encourage you to go and listen to the sermon for yourself.
Do you have any regrets about the way you have lived your life?
What about the things you have done or have not done?
How about this are there any regrets in any of your relationships, ones you have currently or ones that are strained or broken?
How about any regrets with the way you have raised your children?
Within your marriage, have you done things, said things that you regret?
If you answered yes to any of these then I would encourage you check out this weeks message
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