The Way that Seems Right

This Sunday we kicked off a brand-new teaching series. Before Jesus departed the scene physically, He left His disciples some final marching orders. They were to make disciples everywhere they went. They were to be His witnesses locally, regionally, and internationally. They were to proclaim and advance the Gospel. The Christian faith has always been a missionary faith. In recent years in this country, though, being on mission for God has become an increasingly difficult task as our culture continues down the road of becoming post-Christian. How are we supposed to share the Gospel in a post-Christian culture where faith is no longer assumed? For the next few weeks, we’ll be talking about that very thing. This week we are starting with a topic that has to be addressed first in this effort: truth. How do we stand on the reality of truth in a culture that rejects such notions? Let’s talk about it.

The Way that Seems Right

Have you ever found yourself wishing we could go back to a simpler time in the past? You know, one where neighbors talked and actually knew each other better. Where kids could be sent out to play all day without worrying about where they were or what they were doing. Where so many marriages didn’t end in divorce. Where men were expected and allowed to be men, and women were expected and allowed to be women. One where the country wasn’t so polarized by politics; where the political left and the political right at least both loved America, and the ideas the nation stands for. Where most people went to church and you could pray and talk about the Bible in schools and in public, and the people who didn’t already believe it responded with repentance rather than persecution. 

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Morning Musing: Romans 15:14-16

“My brothers and sisters, I myself am convinced about you that you also are full of goodness, filled with all knowledge, and able to instruct one another. Nevertheless, I have written to remind you more boldly on some points because of the grace given me by God to be a minister of Christ Jesus to the Gentiles, serving as a priest of the gospel of God. God’s purpose is that the Gentiles may be an acceptable offering, sanctified by the Holy Spirit.” (CSB – Read the chapter)

Humility is one of the fundamental virtues necessary for growth and development in the Christian life. Embracing the Gospel begins from a place of humility—we must humbly accept that God is God and we are not. Along the way, though, ever more humility is required both to learn and to teach others. We see both sides of this humility in what Paul says next as he begins to turn much more personal as he is winding down this great letter.

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Buildings Matter

A year ago, we started out on a journey to expand and renovate our facilities here at First Baptist Oakboro. Over this week and next, we are checking back in on where we are, what God is doing, and why the work we are pursuing is still worth the effort. We’ll start today with the prophet Haggai and his call for the people of Israel to rebuild the temple. When we put God’s things first, He blesses the effort. Let’s dive in.

Buildings Matter

Have you ever hit one of those seasons when everything just feels like a rat race? You wake up, get dressed, go to work, come home, go to bed, and start it all over the next day. It feels like nothing ever really changes. You aren’t really going anywhere. You’re just doing the things that need to be done because they need to be done. You never feel like you get to the things you do just because you want to do them. No sooner do you get to what seems like it will be the end of one season than you find yourself back at the start having to run the whole thing over. It can all start to feel pointless. It can be depressing. How do we find purpose again when we get stuck like this? The answer is found in putting first things first. 

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Digging in Deeper: Genesis 3:8-10

“Then the man and his wife heard the sound of the Lord God walking in the garden at the time of the evening breeze, and they hid from the Lord God among the trees of the garden. So the Lord God called out to the man and said to him, ‘Where are you?’ And he said, ‘I heard you in the garden, and I was afraid because I was naked, so I hid.'” (CSB – Read the chapter)

It’s always interesting to see which things capture the cultural imagination and which don’t. Sometimes something will happen that seems like it should be shocking only for it not to move the cultural needle at all. Other times, something that feels like it shouldn’t gain any attention because the culture has moved on from it suddenly grabs everyone’s attention for a few days and absolutely will not let go. This second sort of thing happened a few days ago. The chatter about it has finally died down a bit, but for a few days there it was intense. And comical. Let’s chat for a few minutes today about Coldplay concerts and unfaithful spouses.

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How to Be Happy

It’s graduation season and this past Sunday we honored our graduates and scholarship recipients. With that in mind, the sermon this week was aimed right in their direction. We live in a culture that prioritizes happiness above just about everything else. We live in a culture that also tells us all the time that the best way to find that happiness is to follow our heart. But is that really how we get there? King Solomon didn’t think so. Let’s take a look at one of his more famous proverbs and talk about how to experience real happiness.

How to Be Happy

A couple of weeks ago, our youth participated in a kickball tournament. Actually, let’s correct that: they won a kickball tournament. The event was a fundraiser for a great local ministry called Faith Alive Ministries. They are driven by the idea that when Jesus’ brother, James, said that true religion is to take care of orphans and widows, that he meant it. Jordan and Taylor do an awesome job seeking out opportunities to do just that in practical ways both locally and globally. 

In any event, a few weeks before the tournament, they emailed out a set of rules by which the games were going to be governed. The morning of the tournament, they had a meeting with all of the coaches to go over the rules one last time and emphasize that they would be followed carefully. The reason was pretty obvious: they wanted the whole thing to run smoothly instead of devolving into little more than an endless series of arguments about rules. That’s how kickball worked on the playground when I was in elementary school. We’d spent 20 minutes debating the rules, and about five minutes playing most days because while there were a few broadly agreed upon basics, everything else was choose-your-own-adventure…and we all tended to choose the adventure that worked best for us rather than working to make sure we had all chosen the same adventure. As long as we were committed to living as we pleased, chaos tended to be the result. The Faith Alive folks understood this and planned accordingly. On the playground…not so much. In life more generally, the same basic principle is in operation. Today, I want to reflect for just a few minutes with you on what this means for us, and how we can avoid the chaos. 

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