As of today we are half way through our Whole Church Initiative for the summer. As you may recall, we started off in May by…
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Published November 14, 2010
Category: Sermons
Published November 12, 2010
Our Roles in the Family of God
For a long time, my brother lived the bachelor life. He drove truck – coming and going as he pleased. He ate those frozen “Hungry…
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Published November 10, 2010
Fanatical Christianity
Over the past couple of weeks we’ve been on a quest to find out how to live as the family of God. Last week we…
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Published June 28, 2010
Instructions for Engagement
I want to begin this morning with a question: What responsibilities come with being in a family? If you’re in a family, what is expected of you? I’m going to give you just a minute or so to discuss this with the people sitting around you and then I want to hear some of your answers.
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It’s tough to come up with one conclusive answer because all of us have grown up in different families. And different families do different things. And sometimes they do the same things, but in different ways.
But despite these differences, there are some universal, core responsibilities of a family. For example: A family shares. They share a home together, they share food together, they share money, they share time and experiences. Sharing is a universal, core responsibility of a family. No mom or dad would refuse to share their home with their kids. No mom or dad would refuse to share their food with their kids. Sharing is just part of being a family. It’s one of those universal, core responsibilities that comes with being in a family.
So this morning, I want to look at some of the universal, core responsibilities that come with being part of the family of God. How are we to function as members of the family of God? What is expected of us? Even though different churches do different things in different ways, what are those things that are expected of every person in every church?
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Published June 28, 2010
Engaging with God’s People
We’ve been talking a lot about the word “engaging” recently. And before we go further, I want to refresh our memory on the definition of the word “engage” so we don’t get lost in the jargon.
Engage Defined:
- To become involved in or participate in
- To pledge or to promise
- To assume an obligation
- To become meshed or interlocked
- To draw into
Over the past few weeks, we’ve been looking at how we engage with God and I realize that we’ve only just begun to just touch on what exactly that involves, but I trust that God has stirred your heart a little so that you will continue to explore what it means to engage with God in a deep, significant way in your own life.
But now, once we’ve begun to engage with God, the next area we want to look at is engaging with God’s people. So here are our goals for the next month.
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Published June 16, 2010
Engaging in Prayer
Over the past few weeks we’ve been looking at “Engaging with God”. We started by giving a basic definition of worship – and that is simply saying ‘Thanks’ to God for who He is and what He’s done. And as we express that thanks, we realize how great our God is and how He is infinitely more He is than anything we could ever imagine. And that causes us to approach God with an attitude of humble submission.
Now a lot of what we’ve talked about so far has been kind of the prep work of engaging with God. Adjusting our perspectives – changing our attitudes. And of course, doing all those things is all part of the process. But today I want to get down to the meat of the issue. I want to talk about actual actions. Day by day, real life engaging with God. Like we talked about at the beginning of this series – becoming interlocked, like a jigsaw puzzle piece with our God.
Because I think that’s really what each of us want. We want to connect with God. We want God to be as real and active in our lives as He was with the heroes of the Bible. We want God to actually make a difference in our lives.
I guess I can’t speak for you, but I’m not content to stay like I am forever. I’ve got too many faults and flaws in my character. I want to engage with the One who created me, so that He can make me into the person He intended me to be, so that I can do the things that He intended for me to do. I want to engage with God.
And unless I’m wrong, I think that’s what most of you want too. So how do we do it? Once we’ve got that attitude of thankfulness and humble submission before God, then what? How do we engage with God on daily, real-life basis?
Well, the answer probably isn’t as complicated as we might think.
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