Episodios

  • The Family You Choose (From Our 10-6-24 Worship)

    The Family You Choose (From Our 10-6-24 Worship)
    Oct 11 2024
    Watch Video Version Here: https://youtu.be/Zd0wqHjQZxATranscript:Good morning. So we had our fall harvest fish yesterday. You know, janitor making a prayer this morning. I had him request for that. And there's a lot of things that people that we found out that that's needed. But families was one of the things that really keyed in on us this weekend because of the people we meet and how we approach things and how we try to reach people's lives.A lot of this. Through family, through family actions and through family, things like that. But think about this morning. What comes to mind when you think of the word family? Everybody has a picture in their head of what you think a family is. You think about that one? Is that is that? Is that the perfect American family? There's a good one. No dysfunction in that family. There's a there's a there's a governor. But even even that family is, you know, when I put that picture up, you kind of see, Oh, do you have that feeling like, Oh, that's a good family. But was it out? Was it without dysfunction? Probably not. I look through the Old Testament and all the all the people that we have in the Old Testament, starting from Adam and Eve, I could not find the perfect family. I could not find it. And if it's not, if it's not written down for us in the Bible, why do we, why do we assume that we have to be the perfect family? You know, we have those, we have those things that we can think about, you know, now y'all know that's a dysfunctional family, but you know, everybody, everybody has, everybody has had your family picture. You know, it's all it's all a photo shop and crops and and sometimes we take we take this head, put it on this body. You know how you like you wanted to look the perfect picture. You want the perfect picture. You want to be perfect. But how much chaos and how much sometimes disorganized goes on before that picture is taken. You don't have to answer. I know I've been there. It's sometimes this it's like it's like herding cats to get everybody together. You know, at one time. Stop. Let's let's take this. Let's take this. Let's take this perfect picture. We wanted. We wanted to look like this perfect picture. But family goes beyond that. We all know that we with all the characters in the Bible, they're all dysfunctional. all of them have their issues and have their things. But in the end, in the end, there's a lot of good that comes out of families. You take you take this church family here. The things we started a year ago in trying to reach people and trying to save souls. I know we have changed people's lives and we have changed families. There's a story right there. The story right there. Just I picked up just a few verses to key in on to think about family. God instituted family early on informed Adam. He said, Let us make man in our own image. Let us When he's to me, it sounds like that God is already a part of a family when he says, Let us because it was God that the father, the son and Holy Spirit. So there's there's already there's already a family unity type thing started before we were. We were here. That's reason family so important. Therefore, a man shall leave his father, mother and hope fast to his wife, and they shall become one flesh. So when the earth moment when God created Adam and Eve, he knew that they need to start replenishing earth. So that's where that family here just started to get going. So now we have we have we have we have Adam and Eve. We had the family had the nucleus going. We have things going on. We're starting to raise kids.We're starting to do things. I know y'all heard this this passage before train up my train up a child in the way that he should go. And when he's old, he would not depart from it. Train up the child as a family. Who's responsible for training? That child should be. It should be a parents. We should have a close enough relationship with the Lord that that we want to train up a child in the right way. And sometimes I know that's difficult to do at times, but it's something that I think that is that is instilled in us that we have that responsibility. If we start off in Genesis creation of the world and then families created and then through us in the Old Testament, we have the things that help that family to be more nurtured and closer to God. You ever thought about the last verse in the Old Testament, the last person, Old Testament, and he will turn the hearts of the fathers to the Children and the hearts of the Children to the fathers. Lest I come and strike the land with the creed utter destruction. He's talking about the family there. He started off in creation, but the family Old Testament ends with family. I really think that the key part right here is turning the hearts of the fathers to the Children that have time first. It's our ...
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    23 m
  • Faith Must Work(From our 9-29-24 Worship)

    Faith Must Work(From our 9-29-24 Worship)
    Oct 2 2024
    Watch the video version here: https://youtu.be/oY_Tz1kPLH4Transcript:When I say the phrase the American dream, what comes to your mind? Probably some rags to riches story where a person is able to maybe in one generation completely changed not only their life, but maybe their entire family tree. And you think about that. How do you How do you achieve the American dream for a California born man named Richard Montanez. The way that he achieved the American dream was maybe a little out of the, out of the ordinary. His was achieved with Flamin Hot Cheetos. Now, Mr. Montanez was working in a Frito Lay factory in 1992 when Flamin Hot Cheetos were first introduced. They were introduced into a test market, they went wild, and then all of a sudden they lost them nationally. and then, uh, all over the world. But the interesting thing is, is when, when he developed this new flavor, he was not a product engineer.He was not a scientist or a chemist. He was a janitor. And you say, How did the janitor develop flaming hot cheetos? Well, it's a long story, but the crux of it is, is that One day, the president of Frito Lay made a video to show internally the company. He was trying to boost morale. And one of the things he said in that video is, is, I want everybody in the company to act like an owner of the company. Well, for most people, that message went in one ear and out the other. They didn't pay much attention to it. But it meant something to Mr. Martinez. So, a few days later, he was at work and Besides his regular duties, the other thing that he did was if something happened on one of the lines and the line stopped when they had to fix the machine, generally what had to happen was they had to empty out the entire line to clean it and reset it and started again.So Mr Martinez was at work one day and a machine broke down at the very end of the line, the machine that put the powder on the cheetos, you know, let's sticks to your fingers. So there was this whole section of Cheetos that were fully cooked, but they hadn't. They didn't have powder on them yet. So, Mr.Martinez, I'm not being an owner. Instead of just taking those and gathering up and throwing them away, he gathered up and took him home. And when he took him home, he decided that I wonder if I could develop something else to put on the outside of this. that would be, you know, be better than a normal Cheeto. So he pulled on some other, uh, typical Hispanic, uh, treats of the day, and he created his own recipe. He dusted those Cheetos that he took home, and he started passing them out to friends and neighbors, and everybody loved them. You see, there was something, something about his recipe that spoke to the Hispanic market especially.It would And they kept encouraging. You got to go. You got to go take this to work. You got to tell him about this. You know, it'd be such a wonderful thing. But he's he's a janitor. Well, eventually they encourage him enough and he does something pretty brave. Mr. Martinez goes to work. He gets through the company phone book and he looks up the number for the CEO's office. And a janitor in a Frito Lay company. Calls the CEO's office and it may be a slight miracle that the secretary didn't laugh in his face and hang up the phone. But within just a few minutes, Mr Martinez was on the phone talking to the CEO of Frito Lay and he told him about his idea. He said, Well, I'll be there in two weeks.I want you to make a presentation. You see, when we think about how you achieve the American dream, It's kind of funny to say, well, his was achieved by Flamin Hot Cheetos, but that's not really how it was achieved. It was achieved by what? By hard work. And work that went above and beyond just normally sweeping the floors, isn't it? Not only did he have to work to develop this new flavor, but when the CEO of Frito Lay looked at him and said, Okay, in two weeks you can make a presentation in front of the entire board for Frito Lay. Mr. Martinez was a man who had dropped out of school, not even high school, dropped out of school very early to help support his family working in the, in the fields as migrant workers. So, you know, the whole public speaking and marketing and all those skills were not exactly something he had in his back pocket. For two weeks he went into a mad dash to develop those skills. He even had to go out and buy a suit and tie, and he didn't have time to figure out how to tie the tie, so his neighbor had to tie it that morning and put it on him. And of course, he made that presentation and the rest, he says, history. Think about hard work. It's maybe not a message that's so popular today. And yes, it is the key to the American dream, but it's also, when you think about it, it also has to do, a lot to do with, with a Christian in a spiritual walk. The Bible has a lot to say about work. Gotcha. Bible's going ...
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    23 m
  • Gratitude Dilutes Negativity(From Our 9-22-24 Worship)

    Gratitude Dilutes Negativity(From Our 9-22-24 Worship)
    Sep 25 2024
    Watch The Video Version Here: https://youtu.be/5aBhahbwrYYTranscript:It's taller up here. It was New Year's Day two thousand and sixteen and Matthew South Carolina police officer Quincy Smith was on duty. This was the first time this year that he would be on patrol and for a long while, it would be the last time he would be on patrol. He received a call about an attempted burglary that had happened. call. Come in the 911 and, and a description was given. And when he got on the scene to his surprise, standing literally behind the building was a guy who matched the description of the suspect. And he was standing there talking on the cell phone. Now, officer smith didn't think much of this. He just figured it was somebody you'd have a little too much celebration. So he goes and he gets out of his police car and he rolls up on this guy and he's talking with his cell phone in one hand and he has his other hand in his coat pocket. Officer Smith asked him to remove his hand from his pocket and he won't. He asked him again. He asked him again. And the fourth time the man finally turns in anger. and removes his hand from his coat. And in his hand is a 38 caliber. He opens fire on Officer Smith. Four shots rang out. All four of them hit him. There's video of him making it back to the car and talking to dispatch him sitting there thinking that he was not going to make it. Well, the last things he said before he passed out was Tell my family I love them most time. A situation like that ends in tragedy. But in this case, it did not be taking a little over a year and a half. But Officer Smith would fully recover from his injuries and nobody would have blamed him if he got out of law enforcement business. But he didn't hop out. He hopped back in. He went right back on patrol as soon as he could. And there's a reason why this story did not end in tragedy. Because that morning, before he answered that call, Officer Smith had went, and he had put on something that was very critical. This right here, is a bulletproof vest. My son come running in the office and said, Daddy, are you one of those secret spy people?I If you don't know, this is Jeremy's rig, because God made Jeremy be the type of guy to run towards danger, not away from it. I told my wife, I said, I got a bulletproof vest coming. She said, you order it on Amazon? No, they don't have 5X bulletproof vests, I bet. But what he put on that morning saved his life. Two of the four shots went center mass. And these things don't work like in the movies, of course, they'll stop the bullet, but when you get hit, there's still thousands of pounds of force that hits you right in the chest. But what he put on saved his life. And when you think about being a Christian, in a spiritual sense, what we decide to put on decides our eternity, doesn't it? I didn't realize until this lesson, but how much the Bible talks about You think about putting on. You think about Galatians chapter three, verse, starting in verse 25. But now that faith has come, we are no longer under the guardian, for in Christ Jesus, you're all sons of God through faith, for as many of you as were baptized into Christ have what, have put on Christ. I can't imagine being a police officer and going in the line of danger and not putting on all the protection that I could. And yet so many people in this day and time want to go and live their lives like eternity does not matter. And they don't care anything about putting on Christ. Putting on the only form of protection that can save their souls from eternity separated from their God in hell. Now, that's a lesson in and of itself, but that's not the lesson that I had planned this morning. If you need to know more about putting on Christ we can sit down and we can study that after this. But this morning I want to go to the book of Colossians. You got your Bibles, go with me to the book of Colossians because There's some very interesting things here.Paul uses the word put a great number of times And the things that we're going to see him talk about here are going to help us now This morning's sermon is a little bit different. I usually have multiple poets and and Go through the thing. There's just one point today, but I've got to explain some things to get to the point.So if you're wondering when, when's he gonna get to the point? I'll tell you what I'm gonna get to the point. Okay, but we gotta set the framework. Okay. In Colossians chapter three, we're gonna get in verse five. Put to death. Therefore, what is earthly in you? Sexual immorality, impurity, passion, evil desire, covetousness, which is idolatry. On account of these, the wrath of God is coming. In these, you too once walked when you were living in them. You see, Paul tells them, if you're going to put on Christ, you're going to have to put off some other things, ...
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    27 m
  • Take Heart, Jesus Has Overcome The World(From our 9-15-24 Worship)

    Take Heart, Jesus Has Overcome The World(From our 9-15-24 Worship)
    Sep 16 2024
    Watch The Video Version Here: https://youtu.be/0vn4GCY-lFoTranscript:Have you ever had a hard day? October the 20th of 2013 was a hard day for a a Decatur, Georgia native named Antoinette Tuff. Turns out she was going to be named pretty correctly, or the last name at least. Before we talk about October the 20th, I need to tell you about all the days that kind of led up to that. You see, October the 20th 2013 was gonna made was gonna be made harder and better because of all the hard days that Miss Antoinette had been struggling with up to that point. She had a child with several, several development, developmental problems and several health problems that went, went along with that. And they had struggled for years. through all the health struggles that went along with that. Then, right before this day in 2013, when she went to work, her marriage had fell apart and her husband left after 33 years of marriage. She was left with a home and with a child to take care of. And on top of everything else, with only one income, She was several months behind on the mortgage payments. She was worried that she was going to lose her home and didn't know what was going to happen. All of those things were swirling around in her mind as she stepped into her office at, at a, um, a school there in Decatur, Georgia.Had about 800 students in it that morning. But that morning, a man named Michael Brandon Hall Stepped into that school with an AK 47 and enough ammunition to change the community forever. But on that day, there would be no school shooting. On that day, there would be no loss of life because it's Mr Brandon walked into the school with his rifle ready to do an evil, horrible and atrocious thing. The first thing he did is he went to the office. And there he come into contact with Antoinette. And Antoinette did something that was incredibly brave. Some might have thought it was foolish. But she began to talk to Michael. And I want you to hear her own words. About this young man who, who was coming to do something evil. Listen to what she said. Okay? I could see the pain on his face. He was a hurting soul, and I felt that I just kept telling him it was going to be okay. I understood what he was going through, dealing with depression and feeling alone. I told him about my own struggles to let him know that he wasn't the only one. You see, for about 35 40 minutes, Michael Brandon Hall was inside that school with an assault rifle and he did fire a few shots out the door towards police. But the more Antoinette talked to him, the more he began to calm down. She was able to get 911 on the phone and become an intermediary intermediary between him doing Michael and the police. And after I'm sure what seemed like an eternity, Michael laid his rifle down and laid that on the ground and surrendered himself to police. You see, the things that she had been through in her life, even though I'm sure, you know, maybe when this first started, she's thinking, of all, of all things that's been going on in my life today, we've got to deal with this, right? You imagine. But all those hardships she went through in her life. Allowed her to build a bridge to a soul that was hurting. And because of that bridge, she was able to stop an unspeakable evil. I don't know why good people have to suffer. I wish that you didn't have to suffer. I, I wish that you never had to feel any pain, but I, I just know, I know that you will. I know that if you haven't been through it yet, that you will. I mean, the last few days have just reminded me over and over again. I went to the which Spring Hill Tennessee yesterday and went and said goodbye to a christian sister who left three daughters and a husband. Her husband was a is a preacher there and a mentor of mine and they're hurting. There are people who are dealing with sickness. They can't diagnose it. They don't know what's going on. We've heard the cancer word far too much here lately. Why do these things have to happen to good people? I mean, I know the answer. I know the answer. We live in a fallen and broken world. I get it. But if you're like me, even if your mind knows the answer when it's When it's you that's hurting, when it's your loved one that's hurting, your, your heart don't want to buy it. That's just not good enough. It's not good enough. So what do you do? How do you, how do you struggle? How do you, how do you hang on? I want to try to maybe answer that question this morning by looking at one of the most stressful pieces of scripture that I can imagine. And when I say stressful, what I mean by that is We're going to try to put ourselves in the place of those that were going through these things and And I think For the apostles and for Jesus, this is one of the most stressful Pieces of scripture that there is But I also know I...
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    29 m
  • God Doesn't Care About What We Care About(From our 9-8-24 Worship)

    God Doesn't Care About What We Care About(From our 9-8-24 Worship)
    Sep 9 2024
    View the video version here: https://youtu.be/21cEX3Y1KD8Transcript:As far as companies go, it was, it was a behemoth. In 1970, in the primary market in which it operated, it had 90 percent of the market share. In the secondary market that it operated in, it had 85%. And everyone thought that this company was just gonna be one of those greats that just went on forever. And yet today, it's name, for a lot of people aren't even known.I was doing my research for this lesson and I had something pulled up on the computer about it. And just to give you an example, my son walked in, called it and said, Dad, who's And he called off the name. He'd never even heard of them before. In 2012, they went bankrupt. And it's a pretty interesting study as to why they went bankrupt. But most of us here, if you drove here today at least, you probably remember Kodak. I mean, they were such a big player in the market that when you captured those special moments in life, what'd you call them? A Kodak moment. I mean, they were, they were just massive. But in 2012, when they declared bankruptcy, they were put out of business. Some people say because of the digital camera. In the 1990s, in the 2000s, digital photography took off and you didn't have to, you didn't have to send that little roll of film off and, and wait a week or so for it to come back and you had the little print that had all your pictures in about a, you know, a quarter by quarter square and you're trying to, you know, look at them. Now you can just take the picture and pull it up, hook it to your computer, and, and go ahead and, and just get it right there. And you say, well, Doug, people miss trends all the time in business, right? Businesses go out of, out of operation because they just can't see the future. But that's not exactly the case with Kodak. They were taken out of business by the digital camera, but guess what? In 1975, one of their employees invented the first digital camera. He's got it on his shoulder right there. It looks like a One of those old beat boxes, one of those, you know, radios that you used to pack around. So it wasn't like they couldn't see the trend coming. They invested some in this technology, but for most of, most of the time, they just, they didn't care. They didn't care because film was such a profitable industry. They focused more on the wrong thing. Because at the time, when the film industry was still booming, it had a markup of like 70%. And they really liked that. And they wound up caring more about the profits that film was making than where the future happened to be going. And because of it, it took them under. You see, it's easy for a large corporation to care about the wrong things. Because a large corporation is filled with people. And a great number of times people what care about the wrong things. And this morning, I don't know any better way to illustrate this fact than the book of Jonah. Now Jonah is a nursery, a nursery room favorite, right? We, every time we think about Jonah, all we can think about is the big, huge whale. And yes, that's a pretty cool part of the story. I gotta admit, you know. God, I'm just not gonna do what you want me to do.I'm gonna run away. Okay, God, God. In that instance, what we what I'd like to call a range transport right for Jonah to get him to go to where he wanted him to go. But the real story to me in the book of Jonah is not in chapters one, two or three. It's in Chapter four and in Chapter four, I want us to zoom in there this morning.And I want us to look at what God cares about. And I want us to look at what and what Jonah cared about, because you're going to see that those two things are drastically different. And I hope the things that we see this morning keep us from getting eaten by a whale. I mean, help us to be better Christians.You don't know what I'm trying to say. Now, as we get started here, I need to kind of I guess I I need to tell you where the idea for this lesson come from. I need to give you some structure before we get all the way down to the end of this to say what's he been talking about for for 20 30 minutes. If you look at the end of Jonah chapter 4, there's a verse in verse 11, and there's a word in that verse that depending on the English translation you have in your hand is translated one of several different ways. The ESV says this is God speaking to Jonah. And should I not pity Nineveh, that word pity there in the ESV, in the NIV, should I not have concern for the great city of Nineveh? The Christian Standard Bible says it this way, so may I not care about. You see this word here in, in the original Hebrew is a word that, it talks about an emotion, an emotion.But it also talks about an action that's caused by that emotion. You think about pity or concern or or care? I think care is the best English word that we have today for ...
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    26 m
  • Redeemed(From Our 9-1-24 Worship)

    Redeemed(From Our 9-1-24 Worship)
    Sep 4 2024
    Watch The Video Version Here: https://youtu.be/YCXI4MHHqHQTranscript:They're, uh, they're basically worthless to most people. I dare say probably half the people in the room here today probably never even seen one, let alone had to use it. If you had to go, had to go find one, I would say that probably your parents or your grandparents house, probably in an attic or a closet would be the best place to go look. You see, at one time this was an absolute necessity, but The world's kind of moved on. The mechanical typewriter, when it was invented, was an absolute game changer. And if you've ever seen one, handled one, they're heavy, they've got all these moving parts and pieces, and you think, How in the world did somebody design that the first time?Right? How did they come up with that? But as important as they were, Today, you think, well, There's no need for that. You probably couldn't get, I mean, you could expect to find something like that at a yard sale, maybe with, with 50 cents wrote on it. Although there was no telling what they cost when they were brand new. But like I say, they're almost worthless to most people. But this typewriter right here, the one you're looking at, this specific one, um, it sold at auction in 2009. For $254,000, that's like new house money, y'all, $254,000. And on top of that, this one here, it's broke. You literally can't even use it to type on anymore. Now, the reason it's broke is because it was used by famous author or famous author. McCormick McCarthy. I think I got that right. And for 50 years, he wrote some of the best fiction novels. And he did it on a old typewriter that he bought at a Knoxville pawn shop for 50 bucks. Bought it for 50 bucks, sold it for 254, 000.I mean, woo, it's an investment. You think about that. My question to you is, do you think that it's worth it? And I'm actually, I'm going to stop interrupting you for a second. Let's put the top runner on hold this month. What happens at an auction or when you go to a store? Okay, you walk in there and you look at something, maybe it's a bottle of, a bottle of Tide, and you think to yourself, Self, I need that. You pick it up, you take it up front, you set it on the counter, And then, in some way, shape, form, or another, you trade something of value that's equal to the price tag on the item. You basically have to trade value for this item to be able to carry it out to the store without the police chasing you. Now, we call that buying, but there's a really fancy word for it called redemption. When you redeem something You give something of value in exchange for it. You buy that munchmeat on that laundry detergent, and you give something of equal value, you trade it for it. You'll take it home. So that, that word in my addiction, okay? Let's go back to our top reference for a moment. Now this is probably going to sound silly, but I need you to work with me here, okay? I won't teach nobody. This moment, you're in this time, right? Okay. Imagine what it would be like to be this time, right? You're I don't know, 60, 70 years old. You're completely worn out. You're a racial function and purpose of piping. You can no longer do any more. You probably think, what? Want to work? No good. And you probably imagine that someday somebody is going to come in and pick you up, and you're going to hear this thud as you hit the bottom of the trash can. You just figure it's coming. But instead, one day, someone comes in and picks you up, and you're just crawling out there waiting for it. You know you're going to the trash can, but you walk outside past the trash can, they put you in the back of the vehicle, and they start driving. They drive in this place, seems to be pretty fancy. Everybody in there's got their got their suits on. You know, they look nice and smelling good and they put you out on a table and you're still not confused. You don't know what's going on. There's all this talking, meeting with and chatter going on in the background and you're there for several hours. And then all of a sudden, this guy that talks really fast starts to talk and everybody gets quiet. He's talking fast. You can't really understand even what he's saying, but eventually he gets down to the end, boom, boom, whacks that guy, $254,000. You thought you were going into the trash pile and someone has just paid for you $254,000. You thought you were worthless, and now someone has given an immense value for you.They traded this money that they worked hard for. They traded it for you. Why'd they do that? How can they see value in me? But all of a sudden, the instant you feel like you were destined for the bottom of the trash can, and now you're someone's valuable possession. And, you know, you don't understand why, but at the end of the day, all you know is you're grateful that ...
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    17 m
  • Failing Doesn't Make You A Failure(From our 8-18-24)

    Failing Doesn't Make You A Failure(From our 8-18-24)
    Sep 4 2024
    Watch the video version here: https://youtu.be/-8Adwrqg6yMTranscript:It was a beautiful spring morning in April in Paris, no less. 1910. And a great crowd had gathered to hear the speaker of the hour. You may know his name was Teddy Roosevelt, Theodore Roosevelt. Now, at this point in his life, he was former president. He had finished up two terms, and after his presidency, he went on a year long hunt in Africa, I guess to decompress from being president a year.And then he went on a public speaking tour. And on this day, April the 10th, 1910, Theodore Roosevelt would stand up and deliver a speech called Citizens in a Republic. And we talk about the speaker of the hour. His speech lasted an hour that day. Um, but most people don't remember the speech, but they do remember one piece of it. It was an illustration. And we have come to know it as the man in the arena. I'm going to read it to you. It's not the critic who counts. Not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena. Whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood. Who strives valiantly, who errs and comes up short again and again because there is no effort. There's no effort without error and shortcoming. But who does actually strive to do the deeds. Who knows great enthusiasms, the greatest devotions. Who spends himself in a worthy cause.Who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement. And who at worst, if he fails, at least he fails while daring greatly. So that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls. who neither know victory nor defeat. You see, Teddy is a colleague. Teddy was trying to speak to this group of people about civil life, about how the fact that it's easy for people to sit back and point a finger and talk about how bad things are. And he was trying to encourage them. Listen, if you're going to be a part, This thing we call democracy, you're going to have to be an active part of it. Right? And even if you fail and mess up, at least you're trying. At least the nation is better for you trying. And you read a lot of that speech, and he's not wrong, I don't think, but I'm not here today to talk about government. I want to take this idea that Teddy had, and I want to apply it to citizens of heaven. This idea that it's really easy to sit back and talk about what's wrong in the kingdom. Well, they ought to do that better. They ought to do this better. You see, Teddy Roosevelt was trying to encourage his people to engage. To come on and to be an active participant. And you think about this, the same thing is needed in the kingdom of heaven today. If the most participation that we have in the kingdom of heaven is coming and assembling with the saints and setting and making sure that we have a pew that was warm for an hour a week, That's not what the kingdom of heaven is about. If our engagement with the kingdom of heaven is sitting in a seat for an hour a week and that is it, we have missed the boat on what the kingdom is and what it means and what it's about. And it's easy for me to sit up here and point my finger and say, well, we ought to do more. But that's not my intention this morning. Because I think a lot of people, a lot of people are afraid. I think fear is the number one tool that Satan uses against us. And I know because I have felt, I feel like, I don't know this to be true, but I feel like I've felt more than my fair share of it over the course of the years. And one of the biggest fears that's ever affected me is when he talks about this fear of failure. How many times have people had great ideas and great things that could have come about either in the business world or the kingdom of God and yet they did not take the first step because they were afraid of failure.You see this morning I hope to encourage us all to dare greatly. I want to talk about this idea of failing. And to do that, to kind of set our stage here, I want to, I want to share with you a verse of the Proverbs, Proverbs 24 verse 15. Well, I'm not in weight as a wicked man against the dwelling of the righteous.Do not do no violence to his home for the righteous falls seven times and rises again. But the wicked stumbles in times of calamity. The righteous falls seven times and yet what? Rises again. Don't you think about that rising again and hope that the things that we studied this morning could help us all to rise again when we fail.And to help us continue not only for the kingdom of God, but help us continue towards the kingdom of God. Now this idea of the righteous falling seven times in that proverbs, you look at the words in the original language and the idea there is it's accurately conveyed, is the fact that that sometimes the wicked lie and wait and they try to trip up ...
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    26 m
  • How To Suffer Well (From our 8-11-24 worship)

    How To Suffer Well (From our 8-11-24 worship)
    Aug 30 2024
    Watch the Video Here: https://youtu.be/xGhzPwbeTy4?si=CjGGMoMG09eVxpxiTranscription of Episode: When I say the Watergate scandal, what image comes to your mind? I bet it's something like this, right? Course now, I mean, it's just a freebie, but if you gotta tell somebody you're not a crook, I mean, chances are you done lost that battle, you know. It'd be like me telling somebody I'm not fat, but yeah, Doug, okay, you're right, sure.Um, and while, yes, he was ultimately in charge, he's not really the person you should think about when you think about the Watergate scandal. You should instead be thinking about this guy. Chuck Clawson. Kinda looks like a Chuck, doesn't he? Right? Chuck was born in 1931 in Boston, Massachusetts. Uh, did a stint in the Marines.Later on became a lawyer with his own private practice. And all that was fine and good, but uh, old Chuck here, he, he had bigger aspirations than that. He was known to be very active in political circles. in the late 1960s. And in 1969, he was appointed a special counsel to President Nixon. That's a really cool sounding job title, and it sounds all important and everything.But basically, what that meant was Chuck had an official license basically to be a bully. It's what he was. You see, Chuck was known for being very, very ruthless. And, you know, his dog eat dog style basically wound up making Nixon a crook. And it wound up landing Chuck in jail for his part in the Watergate scandal. Now, you imagine that when a bully goes to jail, that he's probably not happy about it, right? He'd probably hate to be there, they're gonna be in a bad mood, you know, all these things. But that wasn't the case with Chuck. You know what I mean? You see, Chuck goes to prison for roughly seven months. Okay. Some don't.That was maybe a slap on the wrist. But while Chuck was in jail, he discovered something. He discovered something more important than all the fame and the money and the power that he had been chasing. He discovered God. A lot of people thought, Well, he's not serious about this. He's just, you know, he got jailhouse religion.Just to make everybody think that he's a better person, but that's not the case. When Chuck got out, he used his skills before that he was trying to use for bad. He wound up forming what was called Prison Fellowship, which turned into one of the largest prison ministries in the world, and it's an organization still going on today. His time in jail, he's got a quote and I didn't paste it up here, but basically he said all the awards and all the degrees and everything that I have is not what God used with me. He said he used the fact that I was a convict and a felon. That's what God decided to use with me in my story. And I was thinking about Chuck, you know, you go to jail and, and you don't want to be there, but your attitude completely changes.And it makes me think about Paul. So that's chapter 16, right? Acts chapter 16, we're going to begin in verse 16. As we were going to the place of prayer, we were met by a slave girl who had a spirit of divination and brought her owners much gain by fortune telling. She followed Paul and us, crying out, These men are servants of the Most High God, who proclaim to you the way of salvation.And this she kept doing for many days. Paul having become greatly annoyed. I'm glad I'm the only one that doesn't ever get greatly annoyed, by the way. Turned and said to the Spirit, I command you in the name of Jesus Christ to come out of her, and it came out that very hour. But when her owners saw that their hope of gain was gone, they ceased Paul and Silas and dragged them into the marketplace before the rulers. And when he had brought them into the magistrates, they said, These men are Jews and they're disturbing our city. You see they abdicate custom. They're not lawful for us as Romans to accept or practice, and the crowd joined in attacking them. And the magistrates tore their garments off them and gave orders to beat them with rods. And when they had flicked many blows upon them, they threw them in prison, ordering each other to keep them safely. Having received this order, he put them in the innermost prison and fastened their feet in the stalks. And then look what happens in verse 25. About midnight, Paul and Silas were praying and singing hymns to God, and the prisoners were listening to them. Now, we've studied the story of the Philippian jailer, and usually we would go on and talk about what happens next, the earthquake, and the jailer who comes running in, and that's an awesome story, but that's not our lesson today. I want to stop right here at verse 25. And I want to ask you, how did they do this? I mean, they're in some of the most miserable conditions you can imagine. I was talking to somebody the other day at one of my prison studies. You know, a Roman jail, I said, the jail you're in ...
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    29 m