Category: Sermons

Published February 4, 2013

Eating to be a Blessing

Well, I have been very excited for this Sunday. Not because of the SuperBowl later this afternoon – although I am looking forward to that – but because we’re tackling a subject that’s very dear to me. That subject is eating!

We’ve been going through our B.L.E.S.S. acronym over these past few weeks. And in case you’ve missed a week or two, let me give you a quick recap.

We began by talking about how greatly God has blessed us. Everyone of us are truly some of the most blessed people in the world. But God hasn’t just blessed us so that our lives can be comfortable and easy. Rather, God has blessed us, so that we can be a blessing to the people around us. And we do that all to the glory of God.

So using this B.L.E.S.S. acronym, we’ve been learning how we can be a blessing to the people around us.

The B stands for …. Begin with Prayer. It’s the kinda prayer that goes like this: “Here I am. Send me. Please God, give me a divine appointment for me where my blessings can meet someone else’s need.”

And I trust that as you’ve been praying that prayer, God’s been answering it. I hope by now you’ve all had the awesome experience of being God’s delivery person – delivering God’s blessings to the people around you.

The L stands for Listen. And there were a couple of lessons on listening. The first was to listen to the Holy Spirit. We talked a bit about listening to the nudges of the Holy Spirit as He guides us along on our blessing delivery route. The other lesson was to actually listen to people. Don’t just wait your turn to talk – actually listen to people. Hear what they’re really saying. Ask the right questions to find out what their real needs are.

And now today, we get to talk about the E in bless. And the E stands for Eat! And hopefully by now I’ve stirred up your curiosity. What on earth does eating have to do with being a blessing to the people around us?

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Published January 21, 2013

Listen

Over the past couple of weeks, we’ve talked about all the blessings that God has poured out on us. And we’ve learned that God hasn’t just blessed us so that we can live a fun and fantastic life, but rather, God has blessed us so that we can be a blessing to others.

God wants us to pass along our blessings. He wants us to bless the socks off the people around us.

So we’ve been trying to learn – just exactly how do we do that? How do we bless our community?

To help us remember our lessons, we’ve been using the acronym BLESS. The B – as we learned last Sunday – stands for “Begin with prayer.” And it’s a pretty simple prayer – It goes like this “Here I am. Send me.”

And I’m curious to know… Did anyone take me up on my one-week challenge – where you begin each day with that prayer – volunteering to be used by God. Did anyone begin their days by asking God to setup some divine appointments for you that day?… And did God send people to cross your path so that you could bless them?

He did for me. It was actually pretty exciting to know that God set up a divine appointment for me to be a blessing to someone else. It was great. It was fun. I’m excited for God to do it again! And it all began with that little prayer “Here I am. Send me.”

Now today, we’re moving on to the L in our acronym BLESS – which stands for “Listen”. If we are going to be a blessing to the people around us – we have to learn to listen. And this morning, I’m going to show you how Jesus did that, how his disciples did that, and then finally, how you can do that too.

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Published January 14, 2013

Begin with Prayer

Last week we started off the new year by counting our blessings. And I dare say that each one of us was humbled by just how greatly God has blessed us. We talked about our physical blessings – 1/3 of the world is starving and we can’t even eat all of the food we have. 1/2 of the world lives on less than $2.33 per day – our minimum wage here in Alberta is $9.75 an hour! We truly are some of the wealthiest people in the world.

But that’s only our physical blessings. We are also relationally blessed – we have friends and family who love us dearly – that’s not the case for everyone in the world. We are blessed historically – To live in Alberta, Canada in 2013 is a blessing that billions of people do not enjoy! And of course, as Christians, we are also blessed spiritually. To know Christ – to have salvation, forgiveness, peace, joy, eternal life – Billions of people die never knowing any of that.

We are truly the most blessed people in the history of the world! And that begs the question “WHY?” Why has God blessed us so much?

That’s the question we looked at last week, and one of the key Scriptures that we found was Romans chapter 11 – verse 36.

“For everything comes from him and exists by his power and is intended for his glory. All glory to him forever! Amen.”
Romans 11:36

We came to the conclusion that God has blessed us in order to bring Himself glory. Remember our Spider-man line? “With great power comes great responsibility”

With such great blessings, we have a great responsibility to bring God great glory!

So how are we going to do that? How do we bring God great glory through all these great blessings that He has poured out on us? The answer is that we have been blessed so that we can be a blessing. God intends us to use our blessing to bless others for his glory. In other words, we have not been blessed just to be blessed – we have been blessed so that we can be a blessing to others.

And over the next five weeks we are going to be looking at exactly how to do that – not just with our physical blessings – but with our relational, historical, and spiritual blessings as well. How can we bring God glory by being a blessing to the people around us?

And again for you studious folk who like homework, I’m going to be using a lot material in these next five weeks from a couple of books. You might want to read them for yourself. One book is called “Discover Your Mission Now” – it’s a free ebook and you can find a link to it on our website – www.mirroralliancechurch.com. The other book is by Bruce Wilkinson called “You were born for this”. If you’re interested in reading this, I can certainly get you a copy.

To help us remember the lessons over these next few weeks, we’re using the acronym B.L.E.S.S.

Begin with prayer, Listen, Eat, Serve, and Story. And so today, we’re looking at lesson #1. B – Begin with prayer.

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Published January 7, 2013

God’s Blessing Strategy

Who here feels like you are extremely blessed? Do we even realize how incredibly blessed we are?

Why has God blessed us so much?

Think about this: The World Health Organization estimates that one-third of the world is well-fed, one-third is under-fed, and one-third is starving. Why has God blessed us so much? All of us had some sort of Christmas dinner, I’m sure. And I’m sure that most of us had left-overs. We can’t even eat all the food we have. Yet, millions starve to death every year. Why has God blessed us so much?

50% – thats half! – of the world population survives on less than $850 per year. That’s just $2.33 a day. Yet, if we accidentally dropped 2.33 worth of change into some deep snow, we might not even bother to try to dig it out. Its just a couple bucks.

Why has God blessed us with such an incredible amount of wealth? I found an interesting website called “globalrichlist.com” and if you go to that website, you can put in the amount of your annual income and it will tell you how you rank in wealth compared to the rest of the world. I don’t know how much all of you make in a year, but if you make just $20,000 per year, you’re in the top 12% of the world’s wealthiest people. (By the way, the poverty line in Alberta right now is $23,000) You could be considered to be “living in poverty in Alberta” and still be in the top 12% of the world’s wealthiest people. Why has God blessed us so much!?

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Published January 7, 2013

Go Tell It

At that time the Roman emperor, Augustus, decreed that a census should be taken throughout the Roman Empire. 2 (This was the first census taken when Quirinius was governor of Syria.) 3 All returned to their own ancestral towns to register for this census. 4 And because Joseph was a descendant of King David, he had to go to Bethlehem in Judea, David’s ancient home. He traveled there from the village of Nazareth in Galilee. 5 He took with him Mary, his fiancée, who was now obviously pregnant.

6 And while they were there, the time came for her baby to be born. 7 She gave birth to her first child, a son. She wrapped him snugly in strips of cloth and laid him in a manger, because there was no lodging available for them.
Luke 2:1-7

Now I’m sure you know the next part of the story – the part about the “shepherds watching over their flocks by night” – But before we continue with the rest of the passage – I want you to try to put yourself in the shepherds place as we read this. Imagine that you are with them that night – out on one of the grassy hills that surround Bethlehem. You’re just up there on that big hill with your flocks of sheep and a few other shepherds. The sheep are in their pen for the night already. You can hear their “baaas” in the background. It’s a cool, clear night so you’re probably sitting around a fire to keep warm – just relaxing and chatting with the other shepherds. Its a beautiful night. You can see a million stars and the lights of the village of Bethlehem maybe down there in the valley. It’s just beautiful. Kinda makes you wanna quit your job and go be shepherd, doesn’t it? Well, keep that picture in mind as we continue reading at verse 8.

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Published December 11, 2012

God Is With Us (or What’s the Big Deal About Christmas?)

How many of you have heard at least 10 Christmas sermons during your lifetime?

I’m 33 years old – I grew up in the church – and I’m sure that I have averaged at least 3 Christmas related sermons every year. In fact, growing up we had the five advent Sundays so I’m sure I heard at least 5 Christmas sermons every year. But even at just three sermons per year – in my 33 years of life, I have heard just under 100 Christmas related sermons.

That seems a lot to me. Does the Christmas story really warrant that much sermon time? Do you ever get the feeling that Christmas is ‘over-celebrated’? What’s the big deal about Christmas anyway?

I’m not anti-Christmas, but why do we focus so much on Jesus birth? That’s just one aspect of his life. Why not his baptism? That was significant. Or the 40 days he spent fasting in the wilderness? There are no special days on the calendar that we celebrate that! The only thing that even comes close to Christmas is Easter – when we celebrate Jesus’ death & resurrection – and even that is celebrated way less than his birth.

Think about it. Even outside the church culture – think of retails stores. They spend 2 months selling Christmas – as soon as halloween is over, they start selling Christmas stuff. From November 1st through the bulk of December, the focus is Christmas. That’s 1/6 of the year. That’s a lot of Christmas!

Christmas music in another example. We have a whole genre of music dedicated to Jesus birth. We don’t have passover music – we don’t have Jesus’ baptism music, we don’t have Jesus’ forty days in the wilderness music – but we have album after album after album of music celebrating Jesus birth.

I look in my Bible and there are maybe 10 pages in my Bible about the birth of Jesus. The Gospel of Mark & and the Gospel of John don’t even include Jesus’ birth in their Gospels. There are two chapters in Matthew and two chapters in Luke – in my Bible about 10 pages of Christmas out of the 2300 pages of Scripture.

Yet at the same time, there are 65 pages of Job and his friends arguing about why God allowed all that bad stuff to happen to Job. If the Bible talks about Job about six time as much as it talks about Jesus birth, why do we take a whole month every year to preach about Jesus birth – and not job? We preach on Christmas (those ten pages) 2,3,4,5 times every December, but you’ll be lucky in five years just to get one sermon on Job.

So what makes Christmas such a big deal? What is so significant about the birth of Jesus Christ? What, in those ten pages, has had so much impact on life as we know it?

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