Morning Musing: Philippians 4:8-9

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I’m still calling this a “Morning Musing” because it’s fairly short, but it’s not arriving until afternoon today because sometimes being home with three boys means things happen at a little different of a pace than they usually do. All the same, enjoy and thanks for reading and sharing!

“Finally brothers and sisters, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is commendable – if there is any moral excellence and if there is anything praiseworthy – dwell on these things. Do what you have learned and received and heard from me, and seen in me, and the God of peace will be with you.” (CSB – Read the chapter)

One of the more insightful cultural newsletters I have been receiving for a few years now is the Culture Translator from the digital youth ministry, Axis. Just before the end of the year, they analyzed the major cultural trends of the last year. One of them was the practice of Manifesting. This is the idea that we can create whatever we want in the universe by simply wanting it enough and imagining it clearly enough. Now, as far as ideas rooted in reality go, this one is pretty disconnected from it, but at the root of it is a grain of truth. What we think matters and affects our experience of the world around us. What Paul offers us here is a better way to experience this reality.

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Digging in Deeper: Luke 16:13

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“No servant can serve two masters, since either he will hate one and love the other, or he will be devoted to one and despise the other. You cannot serve both God and money.” (CSB – Read the chapter)

Have you ever been a slave? Probably not. That being said, there are more people living as slaves around the world right now than at any other point in human history. Human trafficking is a multi-billion-dollar industry. How about this one: Do you have a master? Once again, your gut reaction to that question may be to say, “No,” but give this one just a little bit more thought. Just because you don’t have a human master (and, no, neither parents nor bosses at work count) doesn’t mean you don’t have any master at all. The truth is that we all have a master. What kind of master we have and how much freedom that master grants us is the real question. Let’s talk about it.

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Morning Musing: Psalm 90:12

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“Teach us to number our days carefully so that we may develop wisdom in our hearts.” (CSB – Read the chapter)

Are you one of those people who count days? As a preacher, I count days by Sundays. I can just about always tell you how many days away the next Sunday is. I can usually tell you the date by adding or subtracting from the date of the next or previous Sunday. If you have kids, I suspect they can tell you how many days are left until their birthday or Christmas or the next break from school. Maybe you have a big project coming up and the deadline makes sure you always know how many days you have left. Two wonderful families I know just added babies to their families. They were counting down the days to the arrival of their bundles of joy. Numbered days are precious days. What Moses is asking God here is for help in treating our whole lives like this. I think there’s something to this. Let’s talk about why.

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Digging in Deeper: 1 Corinthians 12:18

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“But as it is, God has arranged each one of the parts in the body just as he wanted.” (CSB – Read the chapter)

Have you ever felt like you didn’t fit in somewhere? Unless you just have one of those exceedingly extroverted personalities where as long as you’re around people, you’re pretty comfortable, you probably have (and even someone like that might feel out of place if they went to a conference of introverts…which I know is a bit of an oxymoron, but I’m trying here). Maybe it was your first day at a new school or a new job. It could have been a party where you weren’t really invited, but you went as some else’s guest. IT could have been the first time you walked in the door of a new church. Wherever it was, you probably know that awkward, uncomfortable, I-want-to-be-anywhere-other-than here feeling. Let me change up the question on you just a bit: Have you ever felt like you didn’t fit in with your own family. Perhaps your family is really close and that’s wonderful. But it may be that you went through a season at one point during which you were just a bit – or a lot – different from everyone else in your family. That’s no easy path to walk. And still, if you’re connected to a local church, feeling out of place there can be equally as difficult. A recent animated film from Disney does a wonderful job exploring this whole idea of what it means to be a part of a family even when we don’t quite look the same as the rest of its members. This morning let’s talk about being connected and Disney’s Encanto.

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Abundance

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Remember that time you clicked on the wrong date when scheduling your post to go live. I do. This was supposed to go up on Monday. Rather than taking it down and reposting it, enjoy a sneak peak of this Sunday’s sermon. Given that there’s a chance we might be snowed out, this may wind up being your best chance to hear it. I was going to write up a review of Disney’s fantastic new animated featured, Encanto, this morning, but I’ll save that one for Monday instead. Have a great weekend.

This week we kick off a brand-new teaching series called, Live Big. The world calls us to a big life. It offers us many pathways to that life. But when we follow these paths, they keep taking us somewhere other than advertised. Still, though, there is this desire in us to live big. So, we keep searching. In this series, we are going to explore one important way we can live big. Before we get to that, though, we need to understand something that often gets overlooked: As much as we want to live big, Jesus wants it for us even more. Let’s start this conversation off here, then, by talking about the big life Jesus offers and how we can have it.

Abundance

Let me take you back this morning to a TV series that was truly a trendsetter. It was the first of its kind, and the first of a wave of shows like it that has yet to ebb today. In fact, we’ll make this a bit of a trivia question (but don’t worry—I don’t have any emojis for you to decipher in order to figure this one out). The show’s host ended each episode offering you “Champagne wishes and caviar dreams.” Any guesses? It was “Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous” hosted by Robin Leach. Each week, the iconic host would take viewers inside the lives of the wealthiest and most well-known celebrities around the world. It was a glimpse inside a world the vast majority of viewers would never enter on their own. It was a look at what we were confidently told was the good life. And from the look of things through Leach’s eyes, the good life consisted of abundance. Now, an abundance of what exactly depended a bit on the particular celebrity in question, but the one thing they all had in common was an abundance of money. The more money you have, the more things you can have; and when you can have more things than everyone else around you, you are living an abundant life. You are living the kind of life that is going to be featured on some media descendant of “Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous.” 

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