Our pastor used one of my favorite illustrations last Sunday. He was talking about how boundaries and laws set us free, and used a goldfish to explain that seeming contradiction. Suppose you have a goldfish in a fishbowl, and one day you decide that you want to liberate the goldfish from its water and glass prison and free it to experience the real world all around it. You scoop it out of the fishbowl and put it on the kitchen table. You may have "freed" the fish in your mind, but you actually just killed it! This is because the goldfish can only survive and thrive when it is within boundaries that allow it to function the way it was designed: pulling water in through its gills to gather oxygen for its body and using its fins to move around in the water. For the goldfish, total freedom from all restrictions means death.
The same is true of us. When we ignore God's restrictions and boundaries for our lives, we engage in destructive behaviors that often lead to physical death and even more often, spiritual death. Only when we operate within the confines of God's rule will we be able to function as He designed us. God's rules for Godly living set us free to be all that He made us to be.
Showing posts with label sermon. Show all posts
Showing posts with label sermon. Show all posts
Friday, March 30, 2012
Thursday, March 1, 2012
My Number One
When God really wants to teach us something or remind us of something, He often uses many different experiences in our lives to emphasize it. This has definitely been the case for me during the past few weeks.
The pastor at our church has been preaching a short series through the Lord's Prayer, petition by petition. In his sermon on the first petition, "hallowed be thy name," he introduced a key point for the series: we try to fill God's place with other things that we hallow and praise, but whatever we praise will control us. Only when we put God first will He control our lives and make us complete. The second petition, "Your kingdom come, Your will be done on earth as it is in Heaven," has a similar focus. The primary point of his sermon on this petition was active and passive obedience and submission to God's will. Whatever we submit to will control us, and so we need to submit to God to have a thriving Christian life.
In my personal reading time I have been going through books ranging from Money, Possessions, and Eternity by Randy Alcorn to Emotional Purity by Heather Arnel Paulsen, and I have been struck by how all of these authors emphasize contentment with God's will and a close relationship with Him as the foundation or even the solution to so many problems that we experience in this life. When God is our number one, our all in all, our first priority, we no longer feel compelled to seek satisfaction, identity, and fulfillment in wealth, power, or relationships. God may graciously give us those things in His good timing, but even when we receive them, we will treat them as gifts rather than the Giver if our hearts are God's first. Our pastor preaches a similar message in many of his sermons.
I sometimes read Oswald Chambers' My Utmost for His Highest as a devotional. It teaches that we must be filled with God and with the Holy Spirit in order to accomplish His purposes in our lives.
Hmmmm.
Maybe God wants me to concentrate more on my relationship with Him and make Him my number one priority in my life? Maybe He wants me to focus on being filled with the Spirit to be His agent on this earth?
It has been challenging to see His standard for Christian living and to see how far I am from that standard. Over the next few weeks I am going to attempt to analyze my life from His perspective and see what needs to be changed or removed. I definitely can't do this on my own, so I would appreciate prayers for the Holy Spirit's help.
~Mac
The pastor at our church has been preaching a short series through the Lord's Prayer, petition by petition. In his sermon on the first petition, "hallowed be thy name," he introduced a key point for the series: we try to fill God's place with other things that we hallow and praise, but whatever we praise will control us. Only when we put God first will He control our lives and make us complete. The second petition, "Your kingdom come, Your will be done on earth as it is in Heaven," has a similar focus. The primary point of his sermon on this petition was active and passive obedience and submission to God's will. Whatever we submit to will control us, and so we need to submit to God to have a thriving Christian life.
In my personal reading time I have been going through books ranging from Money, Possessions, and Eternity by Randy Alcorn to Emotional Purity by Heather Arnel Paulsen, and I have been struck by how all of these authors emphasize contentment with God's will and a close relationship with Him as the foundation or even the solution to so many problems that we experience in this life. When God is our number one, our all in all, our first priority, we no longer feel compelled to seek satisfaction, identity, and fulfillment in wealth, power, or relationships. God may graciously give us those things in His good timing, but even when we receive them, we will treat them as gifts rather than the Giver if our hearts are God's first. Our pastor preaches a similar message in many of his sermons.
I sometimes read Oswald Chambers' My Utmost for His Highest as a devotional. It teaches that we must be filled with God and with the Holy Spirit in order to accomplish His purposes in our lives.
Hmmmm.
Maybe God wants me to concentrate more on my relationship with Him and make Him my number one priority in my life? Maybe He wants me to focus on being filled with the Spirit to be His agent on this earth?
It has been challenging to see His standard for Christian living and to see how far I am from that standard. Over the next few weeks I am going to attempt to analyze my life from His perspective and see what needs to be changed or removed. I definitely can't do this on my own, so I would appreciate prayers for the Holy Spirit's help.
~Mac
Tuesday, June 21, 2011
Too Busy to Live?
This past Sunday's sermon was on resting - both during the Sabbath and during the week. The pastor made the point that our constant busyness - which is often a badge of distinction in our culture - actually detracts from the quality of the life we are seeking to live so busily. He quoted one man who, when asked what his biggest regret in life was, answered "busyness". It really made me think. I am not a person who greatly enjoys busyness for its own sake, but I like to be doing things, accomplishing things, and living life according to my plan. How many times a week am I truly still and meditating on the things of God, worshiping Him? Even my quiet times are often times where I make a goal to "learn lots of things" and spend my time digging for information about God when I could be focused on strengthening my relationship with Him!
Busyness also tends to keep us from deep, meaningful relationships. For me personally, even on a vacation or with a group of friends, I tend to let the activities take over my time and make my thoughts, words, and actions shallow, when I could be using my time in meaningful ways to grow closer to my friends and family. Activities are fun and important in relationship building, don't get me wrong - and I like to have fun and goof off as much as anyone I know. But do we let activities and busyness and "stuff" in general consume our lives when we could be growing closer to God and others in deeper ways? Just something I've been thinking about this week. What do y'all think?
~Mac
Busyness also tends to keep us from deep, meaningful relationships. For me personally, even on a vacation or with a group of friends, I tend to let the activities take over my time and make my thoughts, words, and actions shallow, when I could be using my time in meaningful ways to grow closer to my friends and family. Activities are fun and important in relationship building, don't get me wrong - and I like to have fun and goof off as much as anyone I know. But do we let activities and busyness and "stuff" in general consume our lives when we could be growing closer to God and others in deeper ways? Just something I've been thinking about this week. What do y'all think?
~Mac
Tuesday, May 17, 2011
Training to be Obsessed
ob·sess (
b-s
s
, 
b-)
b-ss, b-)v. ob·sessed, ob·sess·ing, ob·sess·es
v.tr.
To preoccupy the mind of excessively.
v.intr.
To have the mind excessively preoccupied with a single emotion or topic.
Obsession is an idea that I have been learning about a lot recently. We have been going through a series on the Fruit of the Spirit in church, and last Sunday, the sermon was on 1 Corinthians 9:19-27, a passage about self-control. The analogy of an athlete training for a competition struck me in a fresh way. Our pastor asked us, "If you decided today that you were going to train for the Olympics, how would your life change during this coming week?" You would make changes in your diet, you would cut out activities that interfered with your training, because your eyes would be fixed on the goal. In the same way, we should have our eyes constantly fixed on the goal of sanctification, eternal life, and living the Christian life. Things that hinder us, even good things that keep us from the best things, must be sacrificed in order to attain the goal.
In my study group, we are going through Francis Chan's book Crazy Love, and the chapter for this session was The Profile of the Obsessed. Chan lists thirteen things that people obsessed with God display in their lives. It is challenging to look through a list like that and realize how little time I actually spend obsessed with God and the things of the Kingdom. However, I know that with the help of the Holy Spirit, I can become more conformed to His image, become more obsessed with him, and exercise self-control to attain the goal which is set before me.
Therefore, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us also lay aside every weight, and sin which clings so closely, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us, looking to Jesus, the founder and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is seated at the right hand of the throne of God. (Hebrews 12:1-2, ESV)
~Mac
Tuesday, July 20, 2010
Hearts of Darkness - Redeemed
What do Blind Bartimaeus and Heart of Darkness have in common?
Sadly, however, Conrad stops there. But fortunately, Bartimaeus' (and the Gospel's) story doesn't end there!
Bartimaeus recognized his helplessness. But he responded by turning to the one Person able to help him - Jesus! Trusting in faith that Jesus could and would do what he asked, he received his sight.
I don't know about you, but I am so glad that we don't have to stop where Heart of Darkness does. We have a Savior who we can run to, and who can and will free us from bondage to the darkness within each of our hearts.
~Mac
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