Tag: Sermons

Big Living

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Living in God’s big world requires us to be generous. But what does that actually look like? Today, as we continue our series, How Big Is Your World?, we are talking about the secret to living as big as we possibly can. The key here is found in a practice that often seems like little more than a religious exercise, but has the potential to be much, much more than that if we get it right. Read on to find out what it is and how to do it.

Big Living

When I was in high school, I was in the marching band. Now, at some schools, the marching band is where all the band nerds hang out, and everybody else pretty much ignores them because they’re all really weird. At my school this was kind of the case, but not entirely. I say “not entirely” because there were 250 of us, and 250 people out of a total school population of around 2,000 is pretty hard to ignore. There were band nerds everywhere. I mean, everywhere. We came from every class and group in the school too. There were jocks, cheerleaders, traditional nerds, Goth kids, pretty kids, Christians, atheists, math nerds, the weird scholar’s bowl kids (I was one of those too), drama kids, choir kids, debaters, rednecks, preppy kids, the kids who didn’t really fit into a single category because they tended to be all over the place, and so on and so forth. The band was really the melting pot of the school, and we all got along pretty well. It didn’t hurt that my sophomore year we went to Hawaii. Things got pretty popular after that. 

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The Owner’s Kid

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Having a bunch of stuff is nice. Being able to afford basically whatever you want to do is convenient. But not many have access to that kind of wealth, to those kinds of resources. Thankfully, there’s another way to be rich. This other way doesn’t come with quite as much stuff as the first way, but the benefits are still pretty great. As we continue our conversation about living in God’s big world, this week we are talking about another way we can be sure to do just that. Let’s dig into it together.

The Owner’s Kid

Have you ever been to one of those trampoline parks like Urban Air? Those places are great. We don’t get to them very often, but the kids always have a ball when we do. But they tend to require large places to be able to set up, they’re pretty expensive to visit, and they are usually pretty far away from the country. Several years ago, there was a brief flash of businesses designed to be an answer to this problem: Bouncy House places. They weren’t as big or elaborate, and they tended to be focused on slightly younger, smaller kids, but they could operate much more inexpensively than their bigger cousins, they didn’t need as much space—a simple storefront is fine—and what kid doesn’t love a bouncy house? And if one is good, a whole building full of them is obviously better. 

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Living in a Big World

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Sometimes the world feels small. Everywhere we go, things feel crowded and cramped. We know vastly more about the world and what’s happening in it than we did a generation ago. In fact, sometimes we know what’s happening on the far side of the world than we do with our own neighbors. Sometimes we know more about the former than we do about what’s happening in our own house. We want space. We want to be able to stretch and spread our wings and live to our full potential. King Solomon offers us a way to do that. As we begin our new teaching series, How Big Is Your World, let’s talk about the key to living in as big a world as possible.

Living in a Big World

How big is your world? When we lived in Colorado, we made several trips to the top of Pike’s Peak. It was always a beautiful drive on the way up there, and the view was stunning. There was one picture I took on the way up that is still framed and sitting in my office that really captures the experience for me. Standing at the top of the mountain in the early fall, there is an uneven sea of green stretching out in front of you. Punctuating the green landscape in the background are pops of brilliant yellow where the Aspen trees are at the peak of their color change. There is also a clear, mountain lake in the distance, beautifully reflecting the crystal blue sky. From the picture itself, it looks like it was taken from the top of the world. I can tell you that standing there the sense was even more humbling. I remember feeling tiny in a huge world. 

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Beautiful Feet

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This was a standalone week between series. So, I took the opportunity to share with the congregation something I’ve been studying in my own devotional time. I’ve been working my way through Romans, and I’ve made it as far as chapter 10. Paul writes about salvation there in terms that are crucial for followers of Jesus today to understand. Let’s explore what he has to say.

Beautiful Feet

Have you ever washed a bottle with a small opening? I’ll admit: I hate doing that. You can use a bottle brush, and those are moderately effective, but I find the best approach is to squirt some soap down into them, fill them a bit, and then shake the mixture up really, really well. As long as the bottle isn’t just completely filthy on the inside, that usually does the trick. The only problem with this method is that you have to rinse it really thoroughly or else the next person who uses it gets a mouthful of soap. You can accomplish this in one of two ways. You can carefully run water down the side of the bottle, shake it up with the clean water, dump it out, and do it again. And again. And again. Until after about 100 repeats the bottle is ready to go. The second approach is a whole lot more wasteful, but also more effective. And faster. You just hold the bottle under the tap, turn it on full, and let the clean water run into the bottle until the water coming out of the bottle is clean. 

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When God Shows Up

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When life gets hard, we want answers. When life gets really hard, we demand them. We want to know what’s going on, why it’s happening, and what is going to be done about it. Job certainly did. He cried out to God for answers on why all the terrible things he had experienced had happened to him. God doesn’t always give us direct answers to our questions – He’s certainly not entitled to – but He did finally come and respond to Job. It wasn’t the response Job was expecting. As we wrap up our series through Job today, let’s talk about what He said, and what we can learn from it for our own hard situations.

When God Shows Up

Do you remember the worst lecture you ever got from your parents? While I confess that I fall to it way more often than I should with my boys, my folks either weren’t much for lecturing, or else I’ve just forgotten all of them (which really isn’t very comforting news for all the wisdom we as parents impart to our children through the vehicle of the lecture…). Still, though, there are times when as parents we need to impart a great deal of important information to our children in a rapid-fire fashion. And, coincidentally or not, these times often happen to coincide with something they’ve done that wasn’t perhaps totally on the up-and-up, and when we are in a state of mild- to extreme-agitation. Now, if that happens to come across as a lecture, is that our fault? Well…probably…but that much is not where I want to go this morning. We’ll come back to this idea in a second. 

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