"Hillside Trust" (Matthew 4:1-11)

Watch here - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G2Bx0I5SXCU

Sunday, March 1, 2020 – Lent 1

            “Then the devil left him, and angels came and waited on him.”  That’s the end of the story.  Put yourself way out in the desert in Jesus’ shoes.  Instead of it being Jesus, it’s the same story, but you’re the one who’s out there. 

You’ve fasted to the point of being utterly famished, no food for 40 days.  The devil comes when you are at your weakest.  What’s God doing to help you through this impossibly hard trial?  You gut it out.  You stay faithful to God.  You stay true.  Finally,  the devil gives up for the time being and departs.  And then the angels come with assistance.  If it were me in Jesus’ place, I would have wanted help much earlier.

            Following Matthew’s story, we have just seen Jesus raised up out of the waters of the Jordan river.  Dripping wet from his baptism, he then saw the Heavens opened, the Holy Spirit came down, and a voice from Heaven, God the Father, said, “This is my son, the Beloved, with whom I am well pleased” (3:17). 

This did not happen when I got baptized.  Do you remember your baptism?  Mine came in summer of 1981, and in my memory, it has a mystical quality, but nothing like what we see in Matthew 3.  The Holy Spirit and the voice of God the Father combine to validate the arrival of God the son.  It’s a trinitarian moment and an incarnational moment all in one!

            But then, the Holy Spirit leads Jesus into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil.  No navy SEAL training can compare with the ordeal Jesus had to endure in preparation for his ministry.  Forty days of fasting left him famished.  Add to that that he was way out in the wastelands.  Out there, you need sustenance so you have the energy to make the grueling hike back to civilization.  He didn’t soften the edges of his life to make the extreme fast more bearable.  He didn’t situate himself in comfortable surroundings.  He fasted to the point of collapse while desert walking.  At his weakest, that’s the point the devil showed up.

            The devil’s temptations of Jesus recall the serpent’s visit to Eve in Eden, found in Genesis chapter 3. 

            The serpent asked Eve, “Did God really say, ‘You shall not eat from any tree in the garden’” (3:1)?  From that very minute she was in trouble because of what she didn’t do.  She did not say, “Hey, God, help me here.  I don’t know this serpent and He’s calling your promises into question. What do I do?”  She didn’t do that.  She looked at that serpent and she thought, “I got this.”

            She explained to the serpent that God gave plenty of fruit trees and that they were only to avoid the one in the center of the garden for if they ate from that one, they would die.  The serpent said, “You will not die.”  Again, Eve didn’t say, “Hey, God, help me.  This thing just told me something different than what you promised.”  She didn’t do that.  Instead, she started thinking about the serpent’s ideas.  “Your eyes will be opened.  You will be like God.  You will have knowledge of good and evil.” 

            On her own, apart from God, Eve decided to deal with the serpent’s temptation.  Before long, she was thinking the serpent’s thoughts.  She didn’t tell him how things were in the garden and in the world.  She saw how good that fruit looked and she took a bite.  As the juice ran down her chin, she discovered what people have discovered ever since.  In temptation, there’s some truth.  Her eyes and Adam’s eyes were opened, just as the serpent said they would be.  However, the man and the woman gained their new knowledge apart from God.  They immediately saw each other in new ways.  In communion with God, they saw one another as beautiful creations there to be loved.  Acting apart from God, they saw in each other a nakedness that needed to be covered up, hidden.  Then, they tried to hide from God.  They had never felt the need to do that before.

            That serpent didn’t do anything special.  He just told half-truths that lured the first humans away from God’s full truth.  Their own lack of trust in God did the rest.  Eve, didn’t trust God’s word enough to resist the lie embedded in the temptation.

            Adam and Eve were living in paradise, Eden, when they fell.  Jesus, ravaged by unbearable hunger, found himself in desert wastelands.  He would later on say these words to his disciples in Matthew 7, “Is there any among you who, if your child asks for bread will give a stone?  Or if the child asks for a fish will give a snake?  If then, you who are evil, know how to give good things to your children, how much more will the Father in heaven give good things to those who ask him” (v.9-11).  He trusted that God would provide him what he needed.

            The devil’s first temptation is “if you are the Son of God, command these stones to become loaves of bread” (v.3).  We just heart at the baptism which happens right before this hungry desert sojourn that a voice from Heaven declared him to be God’s Son.  The devil calls that into question and then tells Jesus to do what Eve did: act apart from God.  He didn’t tell Jesus to ask God for food.  He told him to command the stones to become bread. Jesus trusted that his father would give good things.  He declares he needed the word of God for life as much as he needed food in his belly.

            Next, Jesus allows himself to be led.  The Holy Spirit had led him out to be tempted.  So, Jesus faces the temptation.  The devil leads him to the highest point in the Jerusalem, the hilltop where the temple sits.  Jesus is told to fling himself off the pinnacle of the temple, a suicide jump.  Quoting Psalm 91, the devil tells Jesus angels will save him.  It’s not a complete a lie.  As we already read, at the end of this story, angels do come to help him.  But not yet! 

            The devil is using scripture for his own means, something we do all the time.  In political arguments or in church conflicts, we see our opponents as God’s opponents.  It’s “them” vs. “us,” and we always cast our side as the side of scripture.  We totally ignore the fact that our opponent uses the same Bible to defend a position opposite ours.  We’re not supposed to use the Bible.  The devil did that with this second temptation.  We are to submit to the God we meet in the pages of the Bible.  The Bible is not here to support our positions.  The Bible is to be a way the Spirit forms us in the image of Christ.  Jesus knew he was in the desert to be tested.  He wasn’t there to test God.  He trusted God and resisted the devil.

            In his third effort, the nefarious tempter brought Jesus to the top of a high mountain and from there gave him a vision of all the great kingdoms of the earth.  If Jesus bowed in worship before the devil, all these kingdoms would be given to him.  Whether the devil could deliver on such an absurd offer is beside the point.  Jesus knew the first commandment: we shall have no other gods before the Lord our God.  We worship him alone.  There’s nothing the evil one could offer that would deter Jesus from his singular devotion to glorify God.  He trusted that worshiping God is better than possessing power.

            Note too, God had given Jesus a mission – to die for the sins of the world.  Jesus would eventually be recognized as king of kings and lord of lords.  But first, he had to save the world.  The devil had him skipping the cross and going straight to the throne.  Jesus rejected this deception trusting that God’s story is the better story.

            Finally, the devil left the scene, and then the angels came to take care of all Jesus’ needs.  As I said, were I in Jesus’ shoes, I would have been just as happy to have the angels show up at the very beginning.  Jesus modeled confidence and faith in God’s plan even when trust appeared to be difficult. 

            In baptism, we are adopted as sons and daughters of God, and the Holy Spirit takes up residence in us.  Do we believe this?  If we say we do, then do we also believe this is for the best?  Do we trust this story for our lives is true and do we trust that it is best life we can have?

            In the desert, on the hillside, Jesus put all his trust in the heavenly father.  We might think, ‘well he, he’s Jesus.  We’re not.’  That’s true.  But we have this advantage.  We know where the story leads.  He defeated the devil and resisted temptation.  Later on, the night that he knows he will be arrested, the devil tempts him again.  Jesus is the second person of the Trinity, God the Son, in human flesh.  Being fully human, the abandonment by his disciples broke his heart.  The coming trial and crucifixion scared him.  The devil played on this and in anguished prayer, Jesus asked for another way.  We know God did not offer another way, and so Jesus went to the cross to take our death on himself. 

            We also know a few days, later, resurrected, he walked out of tomb.  On the cross he defeated Satan and sin.  In resurrection, he defeated death.  Just as he took our death on himself, he shares his resurrection with us.  We can be strengthened by this promise when the devil comes to tempt us, if we believe the story and trust that the Holy Spirit is with us. 

            That’s where the trust Jesus demonstrated transfers to us.  In this crazy political season, Democrats and Republicans are trying to sell a number of different narratives to the American public.  Advertisers sell narratives which put the product or experience they’re selling at the center of the story.  All these peddlers of stories want you to believe that the story they tell is the one you need to be in.  You need to adjust your life to live out that story. 

            What I’m suggesting is that Jesus, even flattened by hunger as he was, rejected the devil because he rejected the devil’s narrative.   He did that because he trusted that God’s story is the better story.  As we close, I invite you to think about this. For your life, is God’s story the better story?  Do you believe your hope for a happy, blessed life will be found walking the pathway of Jesus?  One thing is clear.  It can’t be both.  We cannot walk the way of the politician or the way of the propagandist or the way of the advertiser and walk the way of Jesus?  We have to decide which narrative we’ll embody. 

Don’t come and say all the ways the way of Jesus is opposite of the politician you oppose.  Notice all the ways the way of Jesus opposes the politician you’re voting for.  Then you’ve really cast your lot with the Savior.  You can still vote for whomever.  As citizens, we should participate in our democracy.  We do it remembering our eternal destiny is to live as subjects in the eternal kingdom of God under the merciful, just rule of King Jesus.  That story defines us and determines how we live. 

Decide which narrative is yours, the story will you live into.  Take this time to pray, asking God to help you trust the story he has for you. 

AMEN

The Fortified Church (Ephesians 6:10-20)

Sunday, November 26, 2017

            I hope your Thanksgiving included time spent with family, laughter, and good food.  But, I am under no illusion.  I know that some spent Thanksgiving away from family.  The holiday can magnify loneliness.  I’ll bet some spent time with family, but it wasn’t so happy.  The forced togetherness of the holiday has the potential to amplify already existing tensions.  If the family argument gets too heated, the happiest time of Thanksgiving is when you get to leave.  The pain we feel is one more thing the devil uses to tempt us to turn away from God.

            I really do hope your Thanksgiving was full of joy and full of life.  I do, though, ask you to have a sympathetic heart.  If you are basking in a happy Thanksgiving afterglow, I pray that, somehow, God will show you how to share those good feelings, that happiness and that love that you have.  There might be someone sitting near you who is as miserable as you are happy.  We share one another’s pain.  I pray that we can also share one another’s joy. 

We’ve referred to Ephesians 4:2 the last two weeks and it is appropriate for us look there once again.  As people called together in the household of God, called by the Holy Spirit in the name of Jesus Christ, we “bear with one another in love.”  Or as Paul says it in Galatians 6:2, we “bear one another’s burdens.”  The pain some of us carry can bring all of us down a little bit.  But what if, instead, the joy others have lifts everyone’s spirits? 

Paul has something to say about it – those times when we are gathered with family and it’s a rehashing of fights that have gone on for years.  Paul sees that young adult who longs for his parents’ approval only to have it made abundantly clear how disappointed they are.  Paul understands that persons who is alone, whose only relationships are failed ones.  “Our struggle,” he writes, “is not against enemies of flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers of this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in heavenly places” (6:12). 

Few of us envision our family Thanksgiving table as the battlefield where God’s angels and Hell’s demons collide in combat, but that is one of the places this fight happens.  That’s how the teaching in Ephesians ties together.  Chapter 4 – bear with each other in love.  Our passage from last week, 5:21, “Submit to one another for fear of Christ.”  And today, chapter 6, “Be strong in the Lord and in the strength of his power.  Put on the whole armor of God, so that you may be able to stand against the [treachery] of the devil” (v.10, 11b).

Last fall, during the election and in the aftermath, we witnessed American politics divide people in God’s church.  The various issues in our country – the immigration & refugee crisis, violence suffered repeatedly by African-Americans, marriage equity, and what may be the most damaging but least addressed, the growing divide between a few rich people and a burgeoning working poor class – these issues have set people against each other.  As Christians in the United States, we are in the midst of all these struggles and they affect us. 

Your family’s Thanksgiving table is one battlefield where demons and angels fight.  The political and contemporary culture scene is another.  The challenges that come before us a church, and in the last 12-15 months there have been many, is another arena in which God does combat with evil. 

Ephesians describes preparation for battle.  How do we play our part?  We bear with one another in Christ.  We live in reverent “fear” of Christ; this fear leads us to love our Lord with all our hearts and to receive the grace, love and mercy he has for us.  Bear with each other.  Fear and love the Lord.  And then we see what’s here in 6:10 – “Be strong in the Lord.”

 I’ve titled the message “The Fortified Church.” We read this that we are “strong in the strength of [the Lord’s] power.”  We “stand against the devil’s wiles.”  We are to “put on the armor of God.”  It sound militant until we go deeper in the passage and see what is meant by this military metaphor.  How do we participate in this fight?

Look at the words: truth, righteousness, proclamation (or the telling of), faith, salvation, Spirit, word of God.  Those don’t sound like fighting words to me.  And they shouldn’t.  Remember Jesus on the cross – that’s where Satan was finally defeated.  The spiritual battles all over the world today – in North Korea, in Syria, in the United Nations, in the Whitehouse, in our church, at your kitchen table – those spiritual battles are the last vestiges of a war that was won at Calvary when Jesus took on himself the death sin brings.  The skirmishes around the world now are Satan’s last gasps. 

To us, it feels like war.  In the heat of the moment when temptations reaches for us, drawing us to lash out in rage, or give in to ungodly lusts & carnal desires, or minimize the place of God in our lives, or become blind to generosity and love, blinded by greed; when these and other temptations visit us, the battle is real and so intense, we are overwhelmed.  From our perspective, the lure to live apart from God and to follow after our cravings is almost insatiable.  And so, Paul casts it as such, by way of military imagery. The armor of God is a belt keeping us girded and breast plate protecting us.  It is shoes in which we are ready to run and fight, and it is a shield with which we deflect flaming arrows.  It is a helmet and a sword.  Yes, this feels like war. 

However look again at the equipment.  Too many Christians have become enamored with the war-mentality to the point that this idea of spiritual warfare itself is distorted into an idol that distracts us to the point that we are defeated before we even start to live the life Christ has for us.  This is because all this equipment is not actually intended to help us win a fight but rather to help us live a life as God’s children and God’s witnesses in a dying world.

Look again at the equipment.  The belt is a belt of truth.  Do you know the Gospel truth?  I reject the idea that truth is relative. What’s true of God is true for all people.  So if we are to live in the household of God and be his witnesses and enjoy the abundant life Jesus promised, we need to know the truth.  Our knowledge of truth begins with love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength.  Growing from that base we mature in our knowledge of truth throughout our lives.  This is living, not fighting. 

The breastplate is righteousness; right-living, right-thinking, right-speaking, and most importantly loving rightly.  We can’t be righteous on our own.  We’re sinners.  Jesus’ death on the cross did not just defeat sin.  In his act, he also gave and continues to give his righteousness to us.  If we want to be in the right, we stay connected to Jesus.  This happens through worship, through prayer and Bible reading, and mostly through keeping our thoughts on him in every part of our lives.

The shoes are shoes of readiness.  We are to be ready to proclaim the Gospel of peace.  Right in the middle of his military metaphor Paul reminds us our fight is actually to help people come to peace – peace with God through forgiveness of sins.  No one is actually our enemy.  The enemy is sin, Satan, and death.  Satan’s great deception is to convince us that other people are our enemies.  There are people with whom we have animosity.  But we are called to love them and to pray for the people who persecute us. 

The shied is faith and the helmet is salvation.  Both are gifts given by God.  The sword, the most attack-oriented of the armor Paul describes, is the “sword of the Spirit,” which verse 17 says is the word of God.  Many Christians have taken this passage as a license to bash people over the head in condemnation, using Bible passages to judge others.  Such an approach to scripture is gross proof-texting and irresponsible abuse of God’s word.  Using the Bible to wear people down is wrong.  Judging and condemning are God’s jobs, not ours.  When we share the word we must be gentle about it.  Our witness to scripture must be given in love.  Note that when Paul mentions the sword, he speaks of the Spirit before the word.  Our relationship with God’s word, the Bible, has to be guided by and forever tied to our relationship with the Holy Spirit. 

Yes, demons and the devil are real.  Yes, they have some power – the power to tempt us and use our own temptations to draw us away from God.  Yes, a spiritual battle is happening in the world and we see it in the bad news that comes across our TV and Computer screens, and in the struggles in our church and in our own personal lives.  Yes, Paul speaks in military metaphor to describe this battle.

For us to play our part, we remember the ideas described in the word-pictures: truth, righteousness, the sharing of the Gospel of peace, faith, salvation, Spirit, word of God.  In these words we see that the Fortified Church is one where people will be welcomed.  The fortified church keeps its eyes on Christ and so will not fall when temptations come or controversies threaten the unity within. In the fortified church, people are safe to come as they and lay themselves before God.  They stand as new creations, a people in Christ. 

I pray that these past 9 weeks we’ve spent in Ephesians, learning what it means for us to be the household of God has been fruitful.  I pray that we have come to see that the church matters because the world is falling part.  Sin has run rampant, but we are here to love people and help them come to new life in Christ.  Hospitality, grace, and the willingness to bear with each other are the values and our relationship with God in Christ is the foundation. 

Next week, Advent begins. In our worship services, we will focus on the traditional Advent themes – Hope, Love, Joy, and Peace. We will read the familiar Christmastime stories from Luke’s gospel in worship, but the sermons will take an Advent look at a Gospel not usually read this time of year: the Gospel of John. 

We are now in the throes of the holiday season.  May our church be the household of God, a place of rest, joy, and equipping to each of you, and we pray that the Lord will lead unsaved persons into our community so we can love them and introduce them to Christ.

AMEN

Satan, Get Behind Us (Mark 8:31-39)

Satan, Get Behind Us (Mark 8:31-39)

Sunday, March 1, 2014 - 2nd Sunday Lent

            Jesus, in a private session with his disciples, explained that he, their teacher, the one they had watched calm storms at sea and conquer demons, must suffer.  The religious leaders and legal experts would reject him.  He would be killed.  It was coming.  It was inevitable.  Mark says in verse 32 that Jesus said this openly.  Throughout Mark’s gospel people heard Jesus but did not know what he was saying.  Misunderstanding was a consistent theme, but not here.  This was not cryptic.  Nothing was left for interpretation.  They would have no trouble getting the message, just difficulty swallowing it.

            Especially Peter.  It was too much.  He heard Jesus say, “the son of man must undergo great suffering … and be killed,” and that is all Peter heard.  Jesus said more, but Peter could not hear any more.  I imagine he grabbed Jesus by the arm and pulled him off to the side for a one-on-one session.

            Lord, you can’t say stuff like this.  You can’t lose your nerve, not now.  You’re scaring the other disciples.  I just stood up among everyone and put myself out there.  I have thrown my lot in with you.  I declared you the Messiah.  The Messiah restores Israel.  Don’t you know the stories, Jesus?  The Messiah makes things right.  The Messiah does not die.  We’ve followed you this far.  Now don’t lose the message.  No more talk about suffering.  You are Israel’s Messiah.  You can’t die. 

            Peter missed a key part of what Jesus said.  He mentioned being rejected, suffering, and being killed.  Right after that he said the Son of Man, which is how Jesus refers to himself in Mark, would rise from death.  But none of them expected the Messiah to be resurrected prior to the last day.  So novel was the idea of the Messiah’s resurrection preceding the general resurrection of all people the disciples simply did not hear it when Jesus said it.

Peter’s worldview demanded that he see everything in existence as it related to God’s selection of Israel as of his special people.  Sure, Peter wanted God to heal the sick, bring justice, and make the world right.  But that would happen when God set things right in Israel through the Messiah.  The world would be redeemed after Israel was established as the center of all human activity.  The Messiah would do this.  Peter believed Jesus was that Messiah.

            In fact Jesus was going to make the world right, but not in the way that Peter and most people in first century Israel anticipated.  The crucifixion was absolutely necessary.  Jesus had to die for us so we would not be eternally separated from God by our sins.  The resurrection was absolutely necessary because it was the signal that the death of our bodies would be a prelude to our resurrection.  Jesus gave the disciples the entire plan so that after he rose, they could understand the gospel and carry it throughout the earth.

           

            By sharing the plan with the disciples, Jesus was giving them a part in it.  Satan could not prevent this, but Satan could distract the disciples so that they failed to receive the invitation they had been given. 

Oh, you have been invited to follow this guy and to tell everyone that their sins can be forgiven when they turn to Him, give their hearts to Him, and follow Him.  Don’t believe it.  That’s the lie the enemy, the devil, whispered in the disciples’ ears.  He’s telling you the Messiah has to suffer and die at the hands of the religious leaders?  Whoever heard such nonsense?  That’s Satan.  He can’t hurt Jesus or those under Jesus’ protection.  But the disciples still had free will and could freely walk away from Jesus or impede Jesus’ progress in carrying out God’s design.  Satan could not get to Jesus, but could he derail Jesus’ followers?

Can he do so today?

We live as Christ followers in a family, a church family.  We don’t just come here because we like coming.  We come because we are invited by God.  God has purposes for us that are the same as those he gave the disciples.  We continue the work begun in them.  Our mission is to announce that Jesus is Lord and to help people become His followers.  We are to follow Him and help others join us as His disciples.  We are commissioned by the same Holy Spirit that formed the church in Acts chapter 2.

Our focus has to stay on who we are in Christ and who He is calling us to be and what He is calling us to think, say, and do.  Satan can’t stop us, but can put other thoughts in our minds.  We have to say to whatever distraction arises, “Get behind us, Satan!  For you are drawing our minds not to divine things, but to Human things.”  We need to keep our minds on the divine work God has given and the holy lives to which God has called us in Christ.Satan is right now trying to seduce HillSong into ignoring God’s word for us and instead focusing on human things.  We have to agree to say together, “Get behind us Satan.”

An example of Satan’s tactics can be seen in our church’s finances.  The report is in the bulletin each month and if you read that then you know we are way behind for January and February.  HillSong’s receipts are made up your tithes and we also have income from students who rent parking spaces, and outside groups that use our facility.  From these receipts we pay salaries, fund missions, pay the light bill, and any other costs that arise.  Currently our receipts are behind our costs.

The leaders of our church need to know this and pay attention to it and we are.  Satan wants our leaders to obsess about it.  Satan tells the truth, but manipulates it.  You know, since the beginning of last summer, eight families have left the church and they are all faithful tithers. [i]  That is true.  And our giving is down and it is quite simple to put the two together and say, we can’t hire a youth pastor right now.  We can’t fund a mission trip or expand our ministries right now.  We need to focus on belt-tightening. That’s what the enemy wants.

Yes, focus on the finances.  And the enemy wins. 

Our focus is on our mission to help people to become disciples of Jesus.  That’s our focus.  That is our mission.  It involves doing what we need to do to have a high quality youth ministry because we know that most people who make a decision to follow Jesus make that decision between the ages of 11 and 25. 

Part of doing our work is taking care of our money.  So, we stand before God and name the concern – our receipts and tithes are low.  We ask you, the church family to join the church leaders on our knees before God in prayer.  Together we ask Him to provide and to lift the anxiety we feel.  Number 1, we pray. 

Second, we make short term decisions without compromising our big-picture calling.  Heather and I are going to meet and discuss how we can tinker with the missions and ministry budgets.  We’re not going to change anything but we might put off spending until later in the year, after we have prayed and involved you, the church family in the process.  First is prayer.  Second is the leadership acknowledging the issue and keeping our eye on our calling – to make disciples.

Third we appeal to membership.  If you have given 10% of your income to church budget, could you give 12 or 13% this year?  If you can give more, we ask you to do so.  If you cannot, OK.  We want every member to join us in earnestly asking God to bring in new people who will participate in ministry and help us in our work of making disciples.

Prayer, leadership making short term decisions and keeping the focus on the big picture, and an appeal to members to pray and to give; this all leads us to the biggest step, number 4.  We believe.  We believe God can provide and will.  We believe God has given us a picture of our church, a safe space where people come to Jesus, are made new by Him, and sent into the world on mission for him.  We believe this is who God wants us to be.  We believe and we tell Satan to get behind us because our mission is the product of what Jesus did when he suffered and died.

We and churches like us around the world exist because Jesus was able to put Satan’s temptations behind Him and behind his disciples.  Those fishermen and tax collectors who are cowards and bumblers in the gospel become heroic in their witness in the book of Acts.  Jesus did not just defeat Satan.  He taught his followers how to put Satan behind them. 

Being reminded of who Peter becomes helps us keep our focus.  He moved past his initial difficulties and we can.  We have. 

Recall the years, 2008-2012.  The United States went through a recession and millions were hit financially.  Someone recently told me of a church they know where the members were so devastated by loss of income that they could not tithe as much and the church had to sell its building.  Now that church did not lose its focus.  It is a church called to lead people to Jesus and still does, but it had to carry on holding services in rented space at a fitness club.  They made changes and did what they needed to go to continue answering God’s call.

Now think about HillSong and how God has been at work here.  For the other church, it may be that God’s best for them in the recession years was to close the building but the keep the congregation alive.   

Our focus is on what God has done here and continues to do among us.  Since the recession of 2008, one way Satan has tried to get churches off track is to get us to obsess about belt-tightening.  In that period time, we hired an associate pastor and added expenses, and increased our mission giving.  Then we hired a youth pastor and began doing annual youth mission trips.  Along the way, we had to make cuts, but we never sacrificed.  The ministry work has only grown. 

Since the 2008 recession, we have increased the number of local mission projects we do.  We raised well over 1000 dollars for relief after the Haiti Earthquake, and our members went there on medical teams and construction teams.  We also saw over 40 of our members become sponsors for kids in Kombolcha Ethiopia, and we are about to make our 4^th trip there. 

More pastoral staff, new mission trips, annual youth group mission trips, expanded ministries, and new local missions, all in a time of financial crisis; why could this happen?  It happened because God enabled us to say, “Get behind us Satan.  We don’t want to look at the temptations you’re dangling before us.  We won’t give in to the anxiety you’re suggesting.  Get behind us. We want to see what Jesus has for us, so get out of the way.”

Our deacons and our treasurer Kent Stone are key leaders and their work of raising concerns is vital to our church life.  I appreciate them and our deacons, pastors, and elders are going to take this information, pray over it, and pour our hearts out to God for His protection, and provision.  We’re going to make responsible choices. What drives us is what God has called us to do.  We are called and we are sent to make disciples.  Nothing is going to stop that work or even slow it down. 

Jesus said, “If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. ³⁵ For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake, and for the sake of the gospel,^[i] will save it. ³⁶ For what will it profit them to gain the whole world and forfeit their life?”

Is there some distraction in your life? If that distraction were moved out of the way, would you be free to follow Jesus wherever leads? 

You are invited to a time of silent prayer.  Ask God what it means in your life to take up your cross and follow Jesus.  Ask God what it means for you to deny yourself and to lose your life for the sake of the Gospel.  And ask God to help you say, “Get behind me Satan,” so that you can see and embrace God’s plan for redeeming the world and to live your part in that plan. 

We will pray and sing.  At any point, you are invited to come for prayer.  We will have people at the front and back to pray with you.

AMEN

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[i] Ginger Burkes, The Driggers, Matthew Lawrence, The Neumans, The Mooneys, The Parkers, The Sodens, and Sarah Stanley have all left the church.