DaveTrenholm.com

For the past few weeks, we’ve been talking about our 2012 Discipleship Action Plan. The goal of this plan is to draw our community into life with Christ. That means you, that means me, that means the people in our community that have never darkened the doors of a church – all of us, being drawn deeper into life with Christ. That’s the goal. And our strategy for doing this, in a nutshell, is to build relationships. We’ve repeated this many times that life is all about our relationships. It’s not about our career or the wealth we accumulate or our popularity – it’s about the relationships that we build with God and with each other. And it’s through these relationships that God changes lives.

Last week we looked at the example of the paralyzed man and his four friends. And how God used those four friends to bring about a radical change in that man’s life. God did the changing, but He brought it about through those four friends.

And originally, the plan for today was to look at another example of how God uses people to bring about change in people’s lives – however… This week, God brought about a change in my message. I was going to talk about David’s Mighty Men – a group of 37 men that gathered around the leadership of King David and did mighty and amazing things. But by Wednesday this week, I came to the conclusion that this was not the direction that God wanted me to go with the message, so I had to figure out what the right direction was. So as I was thinking and trying to discern what God wanted me to preach about this morning, I realized that there was a key part of our 2012 Discipleship Action Plan that I had just sorta taken for granted. I just presumed it was in place and so I hadn’t talked much about it.

In fact, if you remember back to January 1st, we started this whole series by looking at what Jesus said was the greatest commandments. It was Mark chapter 12 – verse 29-31.

 29 Jesus replied, “The most important commandment is this: ‘Listen, O Israel! The Lord our God is the one and only Lord. 30 And you must love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your soul, all your mind, and all your strength.’ 31 The second is equally important: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ No other commandment is greater than these.” Mark 12:29-31

And because we were launching into our growth groups, we naturally focused on the second part – loving our neighbors as ourselves – Building relationships with the people around us. But I don’t want to neglect the first part. After all, Jesus said the most important commandment is to love God with everything you’ve got. So we’ve kinda gone about this in a backwards fashion, but that’s ok. We’ve talked about loving our neighbors and building relationships with them, but now we want to talk about loving God and building our relationship with Him. Read the rest of this entry »

As part of our 2012 Discipleship Action Plan, we’ve been talking about Growth Groups quite a bit over the past three weeks. You’ve heard the commercials, you’ve seen the posters, you’ve received the handouts, and hopefully, you’ve registered for one of these groups. And if you haven’t yet, it’s still not too late. You still have about 13 hours left to register. You can register online until midnight tonight. But the reason that we’ve been promoting these growth groups so much lately, is because we believe that they can change our community. That’s a pretty lofty ambition, I know.

But as a church body, our mission is to draw our community into life with Christ – and we believe these growth groups can help us do just that. But I want to clarify something. Every one of you are part of the community that we want to draw into life with Christ. This isn’t just for “those people” out there. We want everyone – from the people who have never set foot inside a church to you people who attend faithfully every Sunday – to be drawn deeper into life with Christ. We want to see Jesus radically transform your life – just as much as we want to see Him radically transform the lives of the people around us.

Now you might be thinking “Well, that’s noble cause, but how do we expect this transformation to happen? How do we expect God to change lives through these growth groups?” Well the short answer is that God uses people to change lives. You see, God created us for community – to be in relationships with each other. And its when we are in community that God brings about growth and change in our lives. Remember, God doesn’t work alone – He uses people to accomplish His will. He uses people to change lives. So if you and I have no relationships with the people around us, how will God transform our lives? Or theirs? To be honest, it probably won’t happen, because God uses people to change lives.

And that’s why we think these growth groups have such great potential – because they provide opportunity for building relationships with each other and with God. So for the next two Sundays, we want to look at a couple of stories from the Bible of how God uses people – specifically small groups of people – to bring about radically transformed lives.  Read the rest of this entry »

Today is an exciting day! It’s the beginning of a new year. Another 365 days of God doing “God-things”. And God has certainly done a lot of God things in this past year. As we look back at 2011, it is amazing to see what God has been doing. Each family here could probably tell us some significant thing that God has brought about in their life in this past year. I know, as a church, this past year has been one exciting ride!

And after looking back to see what God has done in 2011 – I am totally excited to see what God is going to do 2012. But its interesting to note that in all these amazing things that God does, He doesn’t work alone. He involves you and me. God used people to put together this building. God used people to invite Dennis to church and to teach him and encourage him. God uses people to carry out his will.

We talked about that a little bit last Sunday. How after Jesus rose from the grave, He went back to heaven and left us with the task of telling people everywhere the good news of Salvation. We read the Great Commission in Matthew 28:18…

18 Jesus came and told his disciples, “I have been given all authority in heaven and on earth. 19 Therefore, go and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. 20 Teach these new disciples to obey all the commands I have given you. And be sure of this: I am with you always, even to the end of the age.”

Matthew 28:18-20

You see, God didn’t just leave us on this planet to kill time until He returns. He’s given us a job to do – He’s given us a mission. And in our church DNA, we’ve worded it this way:

Our mission is to draw our community into life with Christ. 

That’s what we’re all about. That’s why this church exists. To draw our community into life with Christ. Because God doesn’t do that all by Himself – I mean, He can if He wants – But He has chosen to involve us in the process of drawing people to Himself.

So this morning, I want try to work out exactly what that means. What does it mean for us to draw our community into life with Christ? What does that look like? How do we actually make disciples as Jesus instructed us? What’s the game plan? Or as Steven Harper might put it – What’s our 2012 Discipleship Action Plan? That’s what we want to figure out this morning.

Read the rest of this entry »

Over the last three weeks we’ve been looking at background of the Christmas story. And we’ve discovered that this history of hope goes all the way back to the beginning of time when God created the heavens and the earth.

You see, God had set up the perfect system for the perfect life – He would be the source of everything mankind would ever need. He would give them life, food, meaningful relationships, purpose in their work – everything they needed, He would provide. But He would also be their authority. Of course, He certainly gave them responsibilities and authority as well, but He was to be the ultimate authority. That was God’s setup for the perfect life. As long as mankind looked to God as their source and as their authority, life would be amazing.

And it worked great! With this setup, Adam & Eve enjoyed life to the fullest as God intended it – and it was sweet. They had everything they wanted. Their relationship with God and with each was perfect and beautiful – Never any conflict or never any strife – it was what you might describe as heaven.

But something happened. Sin happened. Adam & Eve rejected God as their source and as their authority and they took that role for themselves and as a result – everything fell apart. Their relationships with God and with each other was broken. The sweetness of life became bitterness and life on earth has been a struggle ever since.

But God had a plan. God knew this would happen even before He created the world, so all along, He had a plan. And this is what we’ve been looking at for the past three weeks – God’s plan to put things back to the way they were when He first created them.

And in case you missed those first three Sundays, let me give you just a quick summary.

On week one, we learned how God promised Adam & Eve that one day, one of Eve’s descendants would crush Satan’s head and defeat sin for all time.

On week two, we learned how God promised Abraham that one day, one of his descendants would be a blessing to every family on earth.

On week three, we learned that God promised King David that one day, one of his descendants would be King for all time.

And as we looked at some of the old testament prophecies and as we looked at the Christmas story as recorded in Luke, we came to realize that all these promises were fulfilled in the birth of Jesus Christ. He was the one that God had been promising for some 4000 years.

And that’s what makes Christmas such a big deal – its because finally, after years of hoping and waiting for God to fulfill his promises, finally, God’s own Son, Jesus Christ was born as a man and He would make things right again.

But here’s the problem. If you look around at the world today – it doesn’t really seem like everything right again – does it? There’s still pain. There’s still suffering. Satan seems as active as ever. Sin is still around in bountiful supply. Our relationships with God and with each are far from perfect. So… what happened? Was it all a joke? Did God’s plan fail? Or is it just that the story isn’t over yet? Well, that’s what we’re going to look at today.   Read the rest of this entry »

In the month of December, we’ve been looking at the Bible as a History of Hope. Sometimes it difficult to put the whole Bible together – to see how one story connects with the others – to see how the old Testament fits with the new Testament. But over the past couple of weeks, we’ve been trying to do just that and what we’ve discovered is that the whole Bible is really the Christmas story. Everything in the old testament points us ahead to the birth, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ – and everything in the new testament is a result of the birth, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ is the central figure of world history. And it’s not just history – it’s HIS STORY – God’s Story.

And so today we’re going to continue looking at God’s story. Two weeks ago we started in the beginning – with God creating the heavens and the earth. And He made the perfect system for a perfect life. That was basically, as long as mankind looked to God as the source of everything they needed in life and as long as they looked to God as their ultimate authority, their relationships with each other and with God would be sweet and life would be awesome.

But of course, we know that Adam and Eve chose to reject God as their authority and as their source – and as a consequence, their relationship with God and with each other was broken. And although the consequences of their sin would effect mankind for the rest of history, God made a promise to Adam & Eve – that one day He would set things right again.

Well, then we fast-forwarded last week to Mount Sinai – where God made a covenant – or an agreement with the Israelites. And the basic gist of that agreement was that as long as the Israelites looked to God as the source of everything they needed in life and as long as they looked to God as their ultimate authority, their relationships with each other and with God would be sweet and life would be awesome. Sounds familiar doesn’t it?

The problem with that agreement was, that because the Israelites were all born with a sinful nature that they inherited from Adam & Eve, (just like the rest of us) it would actually be impossible for the Israelites or anyone else to fully obey God. Man was just too sinful. That rebellious nature in us kept us as slaves to sin. We couldn’t obey God even if we wanted to.

But God knew about that and He offered us another bit of hope. He allowed the Israelites to bring a lamb and offer it as a sacrifice for their sins. In other words, instead of that person being put to death for their sin (as they deserved), a lamb would be put to death in their place. The lamb would take their punishment.

Of course, the blood of those lambs couldn’t take away their sin, but it gave the Israelites hope that one day, the Lamb of God – Jesus Christ – would die in their place and His blood would take their sins completely away.

So that’s where we left it last week. There’s more to this story, so let’s see what happened next. Read the rest of this entry »

Last week we started looking at the Christmas story. Mind you, we didn’t get very far. We started in Genesis chapter one and we made it all the way to Genesis chapter 3. There’s just 927 chapters to go before we get to the part about the baby in a manger. But that’s ok. You’ve probably heard that part of the Christmas story before anyway.

You see, most people are familiar with the shepherds and the wisemen and the angels – but they might not have heard the parts of the Christmas story that come before all that.

Because as we talked about last week, the whole Bible is the Christmas story. It begins with Adam and Eve and it goes right through to the end of time. All of history is the Christmas story.

And so we started in the Beginning – when God created the heavens and the earth. And He set up the perfect design for the perfect life. God set up three principles that would make life on earth awesome and amazing. And I told you that if you remembered nothing else from my sermon last Sunday, to remember those three principles. So here’s the pop quiz: Do you remember what those three principles are?

God is the source. God is the authority. Life is about relationships.

And with these three principles in place, life on earth would have continued to be awesome and amazing. Except for the fact, that one day Adam & Eve decided to reject God as their source and to reject God as their authority – and as a result, their relationship with God and with each other was broken.

And to this very day, we suffer the effects of those broken relationships. But the good news is – there is Hope. The entire Bible is a History of Hope. One day, God would undo the damage that was done in the garden of Eden and we would again experience life as God intended it.

And so today, we’re going to continue looking at God’s story, the Christmas story – to see how God continued to give mankind hope throughout the course of history. Read the rest of this entry »