Category: Sermons

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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Minding Your Means

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As we continue in our series, Live Big, this week we are talking about how to live our lives in such a way that we can be generous and save wisely and thus use the resources God has given us in a way that is consistent with His own plans for them. Doing this will unlock the abundance He desires for us to enjoy. And how is it that we must live? Within our means. But you already knew that. What we are talking about here will take us to the heart of that challenge so that we can understand what has to be in place first if we are to do it at all. Thanks for reading and sharing.

Minding Your Means

Have you ever met the Joneses? That’s not really a terribly common name around these parts, so you may not have. I grew up with some Jonases (not the brothers), but I haven’t known many Joneses over the years. But they must be doing pretty well because a lot of people live their lives trying to keep up with them. Or, at least, that’s what we’re told. We hear often about keeping up with the Joneses. The Joneses always seem to have just a little bit more than you do. You have a big screen TV. Theirs is bigger. You have a new house. Theirs is newer. They bought their boat just before you did. They showed off their new golf cart to the neighborhood a few weeks before yours arrived. Their kids do more activities than yours do and they’re better at them too. Of course, that’s because they can afford the extra private coaching sessions with the local former-pro. You try to do some exercise occasionally so you can maintain roughly the same shape as your current wardrobe. They run marathons four times a year. You aim to eat and feed your kids somewhere in the region of healthy at least a couple of meals during the week. All you ever hear about from them is how they are enjoying whatever the latest health food craze happens to be for dinner each night. And to top it all off, their kids eat all their vegetables without an argument. The Joneses are just hard to keep up with.

And yet…

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Living with Tomorrow in Mind

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As we continue in our series, Live Big, we have talked about the big life Jesus wants for us and why sacrificial generosity is one of the major secrets to living it. This week we are talking about something that doesn’t get talked about much in church, but can also be a major tool in our quest for living the big life of Christ with respect to our finances. This week we are talking about saving. Here goes…

Living with Tomorrow in Mind

Do you know what the problem with suckers is? (Not people, the candy.) The whole time you suck on them, you have that stick poking out of your mouth. When God designed our mouths, He designed them really well to clear out excess saliva. You simply seal your lips, suck everything in your mouth to one place, and swallow it down. No problem. I suspect you weren’t expecting to hear about the process of swallowing in the sermon this morning. You’re welcome. 

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The Secret to Abundant Living

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This past Sunday we picked back up our series, Live Big. In this journey we are talking about how we can live with the abundance God has for us in Christ. And the particular lens we are using to understand that is our finances. The first thing we need to understand if we are going to live big with respect to our finances is how God thinks about them. This and the implications of His thinking are what this message is all about. Thanks for reading and sharing.

The Secret to Abundant Living

Preachers–especially Baptist preachers–have a stereotype when it comes to their preaching. Most notably, when they preach, they only ever talk about two things: Hell and money. Well, today I’m going to play to a stereotype, and we’re not talking about anyone’s eternal destination. Cards on the table out of the gate here: We’re going to talk about money. Specifically, we are going to talk about giving. I’m not really sorry about it either. I mean, it had to happen at some point, right? The Scriptures talk about giving, so we were bound to come across the topic eventually. We’ve talked about it before—although it’s been a little while. We might as well do it today. After all, I told you two weeks ago when we were virtual that we were going to start talking about our finances as part of our new teaching series, Live Big. And if you’re going to talk about giving at all in a sermon series, you might as well put it right at the beginning to get the uncomfortable stuff out of the way right out of the gate. 

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