Category: Sermons

On Vines and Branches

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This week, as we continue in our series, Plugged In, we’re talking about why staying plugged in matters at all. Knowing that and knowing why are two different things. We’ve talked about some of the thats and the hows, but the whys haven’t been so clear. In this passage, Jesus gives us three reasons staying plugged in matters so much. Check these out and thanks for reading and sharing!

On Vines and Branches

When we first moved into our house almost four years ago, it was a little like clearing a jungle. I’m not sure the bushes or trees or vines around the property had been trimmed and maintained…ever. Noah’s window looks out the second story on the side of the house over the air conditioning units. You couldn’t see out of his window the bushes were so tall. You could see the front of the house a little bit, but not much. And in the back, our property sits next to a great big field, but you wouldn’t have known it standing on the deck. You couldn’t see into the field behind us because the vines and trees were so thick and overgrown. Several of the wonderful folks here at the church came and helped us clean it up. It actually took two different days because there was so much. I believe Jim hauled off 14 total loads of brush from the yard and somebody finally just suggested we burn the rest of it. I think the remaining pile burned for about three days. It was a mess. But, with the help of this wonderful community, we got it cleaned up. Keeping up with it since has rightly fallen to us. 

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Stick to the Path

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For the last couple of weeks, we have been talking about what it looks like to live a life that is plugged in to Jesus. This week, though, we are backing up just a bit to talk some more about the hows of this journey. As Jesus was preparing the disciples for what was to come, it became clear they didn’t really understand where He was going and what He was doing. We know this because they asked Him. His response reveals a whole lot to us about what it takes to stay plugged in to Jesus. Keep reading as we explore His response together.

Stick to the Path

The world can be sorted into all kinds of different groupings based on any number of categories, but one that I’d like to do a little survey on with you this morning is this: Are you the kind of person who reads and follows instructions or ignores them? If you’re in the former group, please raise your hand nice and high so we can all see you. If you’re in the latter group, you can identify yourself however you’d like because we all know you’re not going to follow instructions anyway. 

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Becoming Who You Are

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I did not preach yesterday morning. I was celebrating the wedding of my college roommate this weekend. In Detroit. In March. Anyway, while I did not preach this weekend, I was given the opportunity to speak to our local association’s pastor’s gathering last week. Here’s the message I gave them. If you are a leader in your local church, and you feel like your church could be more than it is right now, this is a message you’re going to want to catch. What I shared with the pastors last week was the secret to setting your church on the track of becoming fully who God designed her to be. Thanks for reading and sharing.

Becoming Who You Are

Have you ever tried to go somewhere blindfolded? Maybe someone’s done that to you as a kind of team-building exercise or an object lesson of some sort. How’d you do? I suppose it depends on where we are. I mean, if I’m at home, I’m going to feel fairly confident. I know where all of our stuff is—you know, minus all the surprises the kids leave in the floor—and feel like I could probably navigate my way around it to reach some goal without the benefit of sight. If you were to take me out of that environment and put me somewhere unfamiliar, though, that confidence level is going to drop like a stone. Even if you were to just put me in my front yard, I’d be moving around pretty carefully, not to mention slowly. It’s hard to get somewhere when we can’t see where we’re going. 

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Dirty Toes

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This past Sunday we kicked off a brand-new teaching series called, Plugged In. For the next few weeks leading up to Easter, we are going to be talking about what it looks like to live lives that are connected to Jesus. We are going to do this through the lens of the conversations Jesus had with His disciples on the final night of His life, beginning with their final meal together in John 13. You won’t want to miss a single part of this journey as we learn together what it looks like to live plugged in.

Dirty Toes

By a show of hands (or thumbs-up if you are joining us online) how many of you have been to Disney World at least once? When you go to a theme park of any kind, the staff are usually pretty well-trained to stay in character as long as the park is open and guests are present. But if you’re a bit sneaky, sometimes you can catch employees having a conversation among themselves like normal people do. (You can also get this if you go “backstage.” I marched in a laser light parade at Magic Kingdom in high school. We started backstage before marching out. It was an interesting experience seeing famous cartoon characters walking around headless while taking a smoke break.) If you listen to those employee conversations very long, there’s a good chance you’ll start to hear some insider lingo. For instance, if you happen to be at Disney and overhear a park employee refer to a visitor as a “treasured guest,” (and hopefully you are not that visitor), you might think at first that these really are model employees to think so highly of the people who are forking over the exorbitant amounts of money that serve, in part, to pay their salaries. You would be wrong. In the insider, staff lingo of Disney World, calling someone a “treasured guest” is not a compliment. It’s a way to refer to a particularly difficult visitor in such a way that seeks to maintain the positive experience for the problem person without being ugly to his face. Here in the South we might just smile and say to the person, “Well, bless your heart!” 

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The Onramp to Big Living

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This week we come to the end of our series, Live Big. We have been talking specifically about how to live with the abundance God has planned for us in Christ through the lens of our finances. This week we broaden things out to see how we can take those same principles and experience that abundance in our whole lives. Let’s talk this morning about the onramp to big living.

The Onramp to Big Living

We’ve talked about advertisements several times over the course of this series. Not any ads in particular, but the trend of advertising generally. The reason for this is that observing a culture’s advertisements can actually tell you a lot about what that culture values and believes. Advertisers work really hard and are paid big bucks to find ways to convince you to want whatever some company has hired them to sell. In order to do this, they always have to have their finger on the pulse of the people to whom they are trying to sell. They frame certain products in certain ways because they have a pretty good sense that is going to be what will convince you to want it. Cultural slogans tell us a certain amount, but advertisements tell us more. With this in mind, check out a commercial I saw recently from the company, Boost Mobile. 

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