Sermon Preview: Coming to Hope

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When I was a child I loved traveling during the Christmas season. It meant experiencing the holiday even more special to do it with people I only saw a few times a year. I have plenty of stories I could share about those few days with family during the Christmas season (and on Sunday you will hear a great one!!!).

We associate Christmas with simpler times. We even make the journey home, to those places and relationships that signify simpler times. We go home to Grandma’s, see family, and talk about the last year. We relax in the company of those we love and care about.

Part of the spiritual season is celebrating the coming of Christ to our world. Since we celebrate a God who comes to our world both fully human and fully divine, God himself came home for Christmas. Another dimension to our reflection and worship during the Christmas season is at the center of Christian belief–that Jesus Christ is coming again and we are looking forward to it. Christ is coming home, to relationships and an environment with people he loves.

Coming Home for Christmas is our conversation theme this Advent at New Song. We are going to do some silly things, some serious things and some things for others. But the big thing is us thinking about what does it mean for Jesus to come home, here on our earth for Christmas.

Our Scripture for this first Sunday is a prophecy from Isaiah.

Isaiah 40:3-5,9-11

Listen! It’s the voice of someone shouting,
“Clear the way through the wilderness
for the Lord!
Make a straight highway through the wasteland
for our God!
Fill in the valleys,
and level the mountains and hills.
Straighten the curves,
and smooth out the rough places.
Then the glory of the Lord will be revealed,
and all people will see it together.
The Lord has spoken!”

O Zion, messenger of good news,
shout from the mountaintops!
Shout it louder, O Jerusalem.
Shout, and do not be afraid.
Tell the towns of Judah,
“Your God is coming!”
Yes, the Sovereign Lord is coming in power.
He will rule with a powerful arm.
See, he brings his reward with him as he comes.
He will feed his flock like a shepherd.
He will carry the lambs in his arms,
holding them close to his heart.
He will gently lead the mother sheep with their young.

God wants to come a clear a path through all of the mess of our life straight to him. He wants us to be making this path as well.

photo(28)Clear hearts create clear roads.

Scripture tells us of a God who is making a straight path for His people to follow. His people are also called to begin clearing that path themselves. The best way for us to encounter God is to begin preparing ourselves for when he comes.

It is easy to blindly celebrate Jesus during this season. I imagine Christmas is probably the easiest time of the year to be outwardly Christian. We have baby Jesus in mangers, wisemen, angels…the whole nine yards. But how often to we take a moment to actually pray and think over why each of us desperately need Jesus to come into our world. How often do we let God tell us the areas in our life where Jesus needs to come and live.

When we truly know exactly where we need Jesus to come, both for all of humanity and how he has in the past as well as how we need him to right now for us as well as for the full salvation and redemption of this world, we will understand what it means to hope. We will understand what we need to be doing to clear this path.

So we start off this advent thinking about the coming of Christ. The coming of God into our world. About that time in the past and the time in the future when God Himself will be coming home for Christmas.

See you in worship this Sunday!

Chad Brooks - March 9, 2014

Practicing Prayer

Practicing Prayer

Have you ever felt like you bumble through prayer or are dissatisfied with your prayer life? One of the keys to the Christian life is understanding how prayer builds a big vision of who God is. This week we look at the Lord's Prayer in Matthew 6 and find out how it helps us build a great prayer life.

From Series: "Celebration of Discipline"

For Lent we are taking a journey into the disciplines. The disciplines are the garden in which we are planted and grown into mature followers of Christ.

Scripture and Discussion

More From "Celebration of Discipline"

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*What is a sermon preview?
Sermon previews are released on Friday’s. They are to give YOU a short glimpse of what the conversation is going to be like on Sunday morning. On Monday, the preview is updated with some discussion questions, scripture guide and an mp3 of the sermon. I do these for 2 reasons. The first is so God can continue working in your life throughout the week. The second is for you to share this with a friend. I invite and encourage you to share the preview on Facebook/Twitter and through email.

Life Lessons I Learned Losing 70 Pounds

Losing weight has possibly been the hardest and most transformational thing I have ever done. For as long as I can remember I was bigger than most guys I hung around. It began to be out of control around 8 years ago. In the last few years I realized my body was holding it differently and I needed to do something about it. I never managed to make a dent though. I had no idea how to start and I truly believed anything different was out of the realm of possibility.

A friend of mine, who works in weight loss, cared for me enough to say he wanted to help.*

This Monday I transitioned off my diet from the last 90 days or so. I have lost 70 pounds and I have never felt better. What used to seem impossible is now my new reality.

Three “anythings” that changed by losing weight

I learned anything is possible.
I had resigned myself to being a large man. I prefer the word large to fat because I felt it more accurately described me. I used my inherited family frame as an excuse.

Dropping this weight taught me so much about persistence and the value of measurable change and proper goal setting. Those two things give every one of us the ability to make anything possible. When we look at something impossible and divide it into bit sized chunks, we can chip away at it. Easily.

I learned that anything can be changed.
This summer I privately admitted to just learning to be fat. I wasn’t large. I was fat. I no longer looked like a former athlete (which I never was) who had just let things get a little lax. I looked like I came off a 3 month waffle house binge. l needed to learn to deal with my weight and find a new way to get around the tough issue.

When I dropped the first 30 pounds in 30 days I started to see things differently. I was lighter than I had been my entire marriage. Pants began to not fit. I was actually beginning to change something I thought was permanent in my life.

Anything can be a new reality
At this point I am still in the honeymoon phase of my weight loss. I still get scared and write down everything and weigh 2x a day. I love who I have become. I caught myself craving asparagus earlier this week.

I actually have a hard time remembering what life was like only THREE MONTHS AGO!!! I have a new reality and it is one I never could have imagined. Many times we think the dangerous and destructive parts of our life are just something we need to live with. I thought for ages about the planned meal I would have the night after my final weigh in. When it came, it was good, but it no longer was a “dream meal”. What my mind and body craved in my former (fat) life is no longer satisfying in my new reality.

This doesn’t apply to just weight. Any part of our lives that hold us back from becoming everything God made us to be doesn’t have to be permanent. I will tell you it took every bit of discipline across every part of my life to make this sort of categorical change. I prayed many prayers as I was out walking at night to get used to a new level of fitness. I learned to lean on God in new ways these last 3 months.

Anything is possible, can be changed and anything can be a new reality.

*I spent the last three month using the Ideal Protein diet and my friend Dan Wood’s coaching and assistance. I am eternally thankful to him for it.

The Class Meeting by Kevin Watson

class meeting

The early Methodist revival was fast moving and organized behind a single purpose, saving people into a radical and transformed life with Jesus Christ and characterized by holy love. Highly organized (hence the name Methodist), the class meeting played a pivotal role in the longevity of the people called Methodist.

Possibly the largest conversation current in the United Methodist Church focuses on renewal. Whichever side you are on regarding other debates, everyone appears to be in a fervent search for a solution for church decline. There are many opinions and solutions offered up.

I think Kevin Watson has given us a game changer in his book The Class Meeting.

I never intended on doing many book reviews on this website, but I also never intended reading a book like The Class Meeting. Instead of looking at what many believe to be a historic, but dead practice, Kevin digs down into the functional goals of the original Methodists and brings a highly successful core strategy back into the future. He gives a convincing case of the importance of the recovery of the class meeting and leads us into the practical aspect of beginning one.

Here are 3 reasons Class Meetings change the game.

Class Meetings were the secret sauce in the Methodist Revival.
Part of the general concern between the early Methodists was a deep love for one another and participating in a life together with God. The were coming together and putting themselves in a situation to be changed by grace (pg141). The structure and relationship the class meetings provides gave a practical framework for the mobilization of thousands of people into living examples of the perfecting love of Jesus Christ.

It means taking your faith into your own hands
The Christian life is not passive. When people take faith out of the passive role it has previously occupied (and not given any tangible benefit) they are unleashing the love of God and the changing power of the Holy Spirit into real life. In real ways. Christians are made, not born. John Wesley knew the power of the Class Meeting and how it taught individual ownership to its participants.

How to sustainably manage a small group
Many churches know they need small groups. Sunday School as an enterprise is slowly not working for large masses of people like it did in the past. Their are plenty of explorations about how and why to do small groups. Let’s also be honest, many churches have been doing modern styled small groups for almost two decades. Your average Methodist church is just beginning to think about them and is behind the times. We don’t have the infrastructure to raise up and organize a large mass of teachers. The beauty of the modern small group movement is how much it took from the Class Meeting and inside the very DNA of Methodism is a practical and sustainable and lay-led small group model. Class Meetings are who we are.

The fourth hidden tidbit is the genuine ecumenicism of the book. John Wesley himself was known to cooperate with anyone who genuinely loved Jesus and wanted to see his kingdom advance (read the catholic spirit). No matter what your denominational affiliation, The Class Meeting can be a dynamic resource to grow people closer to God.

Kevin does a tremendous job teaching us to love the idea of a class. He makes it easy to understand the necessity and historical side of class meetings as well as how to functionally begin class meetings. I honestly believe this is the beginning of a new wave of Methodism.

Get yourself a copy of The Class Meeting and read through it. Prayerfully consider starting a class or implementing a series of classes in your own local churches.

Failure to Launch and The Sin that Steals

http://distilleryimage5.ak.instagram.com/ece766064c8811e3b0eb12336c476ee8_8.jpg

Quite often I am in a situation where the idea of “failure to launch” is a problem someone is trying to overcome. At times I even think it is a generational hurdle, affecting many people in their 20’s and 30’s. Listlessness is part of the path many consider to be growing up. It is acceptable to be a non functioning adult, without any sort of clear direction. I don’t think life was supposed to ever be like this. It should be seen as a sin that steals life away from us.

I realize I am stepping on some toes here…but I ask you to hear me out. I completely agree our current society has set up an odd dichotomy of vocational exploration. Higher education no longer offers the best path towards adulthood and sustainability. For many, a non-traditional route must be taken to explore what calling looks like. I know people who spent years in college and are now entering into the workforce as apprentices and journeymen (and women) learning skills they deeply love. This isn’t the issue at hand.

What I am talking about is when people appear to be aimlessly drifting through important seasons of life. Some might call it an issue of personal drive. I think it is an example of a very serious and ancient form of sin called Acedia.

Hebrews 12:1-2 tells us this.

Therefore, since we are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses, let us throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles, and let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us. Let us fix our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy set before him endured the cross, scorning its shame, and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God.  (NIV)

The author of Hebrews talks about focus. Focusing on something instead of allowing oneself to be tangled up. Acedia is the very behavior that does the tangling.

Many of us are familiar with the concept of the 7 deadly sins. Laziness is listed as one of them and we can easily see what the particular issue of laziness looks like. It’s close cousin is acedia. The particular idea of acedia developed in the medieval monastery. Participants displayed a unique form of carelessness and disregard for the environment around them. Some have said it is connected with depression (which many people use to describe their modern listlessness). But acedia lives as the highway to a soul simply not caring about anything around them. Their environment doesn’t matter and their current state leads them deeper and deeper into deadly helplessness. The monks saw acedia contributing to suicide.

Acedia has the ability to slowly strangle the soul, rip it away from the love of God and literally kill. Put simply…

Acedia Steals Life.

So what does an obscure medieval idea of sin actually teach us about life?

1. There is more to productivity than getting things done. It is about being fully human.
Reinhard Hutter wrote a phenomenal article last year in First Things about the relationship between acedia and pornography. He essentially argued the basic stimulus people seek from a detached intimate relationship stems from spiritual boredom. Pornography is the willingness to live an unreal life in the most intimate space.

When we are willing to put ourselves to any sort of forward facing work, we are exercising the fullest human capacity. Work makes us who we are. We were made by God to be active and doing things. Acedia is a sin which traps us inside our own mind and makes us unable to fulfill even any sort of action that makes us human.

2. Acedia keeps us from seeing the relationship between work and worship.
Part of the monastic vocation from the beginning has been engaging in mundane vocational tasks for the sake of sustenance. Modern monasteries are known for making cheese, fruitcakes, fudge, candles, beer, bread, coffins and many other things. Besides the high quality, these monks are working to grow closer to God.

Part of the tradition of the Jesus Prayer is the repetition of the gospel message of God being done through the daily work. People train themselves to pray without ceasing while doing simple and complicated work.

Work (and it’s companion productivity) is a holy task. Faithfulness to all the rhythms of life is part of growing closer to God. Amy Freeman wrote a wonderful article on this in the latest issue of Christian Reflection and you can read it free in this link.

3. Christians aren’t born, but made.
Being born into church and baptized doesn’t make someone a Christian. Becoming a Christian is a constantly evolving process where one harness themselves daily to the demands of Christ. They are willing to put work into it. Think back to Hebrews. We have the example of those who have gone before us as well as the sacrifice of Christ which fuels us in the journey.

Recognizing the reality and negative power of acedia helps each of us internally understand how important it is to actively put ourselves in environments to be changed and fueled by the grace of God. When we understand the power listlessness and boredom have in our life it really helps us to think theologically about why we should keep ourselves busy. Don’t let your life get stolen away from you.

If you are bored in life…please hear this one thing.

God doesn’t intend your life to be like this!

Sermon Preview: When Jesus Defines our Abundance

 

abundance

This morning I went in my local Starbucks and ordered my usual grande coffee and a bottle of water. It costs the same thing it costs every morning…4 dollars and some change. 5 bucks. I have spent 5 dollars several times today. I normally don’t blink at anything costing 5 dollars. It’s like the 25cents of a grown up.

Funny thing, when I was a kid, 5 dollars was my weekly allowance. I saved up my 5 dollar bills in a can to buy a Nintendo Entertainment System. It took over a year. It’s funny how what used to be a HUGE amount of money is now pretty small.

Abundance is defined by environment and need. When I was a kid that 5 dollars could do a lot more than it can now. My environment was different and my only need was to try out the Konami Code.

We are continuing our conversation on giving in the church this weekend. Our focus scripture is Luke 5:1-11.

One day as Jesus was preaching on the shore of the Sea of Galilee, great crowds pressed in on him to listen to the word of God. He noticed two empty boats at the water’s edge, for the fishermen had left them and were washing their nets. Stepping into one of the boats, Jesus asked Simon, its owner, to push it out into the water. So he sat in the boat and taught the crowds from there.

When he had finished speaking, he said to Simon, “Now go out where it is deeper, and let down your nets to catch some fish.”

“Master,” Simon replied, “we worked hard all last night and didn’t catch a thing. But if you say so, I’ll let the nets down again.” And this time their nets were so full of fish they began to tear! A shout for help brought their partners in the other boat, and soon both boats were filled with fish and on the verge of sinking.

When Simon Peter realized what had happened, he fell to his knees before Jesus and said, “Oh, Lord, please leave me—I’m too much of a sinner to be around you.” For he was awestruck by the number of fish they had caught, as were the others with him. His partners, James and John, the sons of Zebedee, were also amazed.

Jesus replied to Simon, “Don’t be afraid! From now on you’ll be fishing for people!” And as soon as they landed, they left everything and followed Jesus.

When we define abundance, we look at our environment and need. When Jesus defines our abundance he looks at environment and need as well…but also at possibility. The Holy Spirit has the ability to mobilize our resources in ways we can never imagine.

You see, Jesus can multiply when we can only add.

See you in worship this week. If you missed last week, you can catch the message below as well as download the scripture and discussion guide.

Chad Brooks - March 9, 2014

Practicing Prayer

Practicing Prayer

Have you ever felt like you bumble through prayer or are dissatisfied with your prayer life? One of the keys to the Christian life is understanding how prayer builds a big vision of who God is. This week we look at the Lord's Prayer in Matthew 6 and find out how it helps us build a great prayer life.

From Series: "Celebration of Discipline"

For Lent we are taking a journey into the disciplines. The disciplines are the garden in which we are planted and grown into mature followers of Christ.

Scripture and Discussion

More From "Celebration of Discipline"

Powered by Series Engine

*What is a sermon preview?
Sermon previews are released on Friday’s. They are to give YOU a short glimpse of what the conversation is going to be like on Sunday morning. On Monday, the preview is updated with some discussion questions, scripture guide and an mp3 of the sermon. I do these for 2 reasons. The first is so God can continue working in your life throughout the week. The second is for you to share this with a friend. I invite and encourage you to share the preview on Facebook/Twitter and through email.