Let us consider how to do it...

Okay… One time I agreed to photograph this person’s son. I took several rolls of film and basically got 7 exposures that I was REALLY proud of. The rest of the pictures were okay… but those 7 were the cream of the crop.

Let’s say I shot 5 rolls at 24 exposures each. According to Calculus that comes out to almost 125 pictures. Out of those: 7. Seven. If you are Dutch: Zeben. If you are German: Sieben.

But however you say it… I had 7 pictures I was proud of.

So… when I took these pictures to show the mother, she started flipping through them and she’d grab one and show it to me and say, “Ahhhh… this is precious.”
I’d think, REALLY? That ONE???. I’d say: “Yeah… he really looks happy.” I couldn’t believe that she thought that one was good. That happened several more times… and then she got to one of the exposures I was REALLY proud of and she flipped right past it.

I think all but one of the 7 I really liked, she flipped past. So I asked to see the pictures and flipped back to the ones I liked and showed them to her. She said: “Yeah… they’re nice.”

I couldn’t believe it! NICE?! Kitty Cats are NICE! These pictures are awesome!

But she just didn’t see it. She was very happy with the pictures. She put them up in her office at work and she said she gets compliments all the time. But honestly that was a lot more about how photogenic her son is rather than a reflection of my photography skills.

But it didn’t change the fact that I thought that those 7 pictures seemed to be wasted. In these pictures, exposure, framing, white balance, f-stop… everything was perfect.

But it was only perfect to me. I took the pictures. I know how hard it was to get those pics. I know how unique they were. But that is NOT a guarantee that everyone else will see it and appreciate it.

I was proud of those pictures. But it would have been nice to have outside confirmation of, what I saw as, my creative success.

God creates all of us.

But do we always see the beauty? Do we always see the creative awesomeness?

Do we always see the value in all his creations?

Have you ever said something about someone that wouldn’t fall under the category of encouraging? I have.

Have you ever seen something about someone else that you didn’t like and pointed it out? I have.

Have you ever done this with someone in the Lord’s Church? I have.

Let me tell you one of the biggest problems with life. Ready?

We are often called upon (or we just take on the responsibility on our own for no good reason) to speak on a subject that we are less than experts in. Such as, I don’t know… ---- people.

For us to truly understand the Human Condition, we must see ourselves for who we really are. I lived many years under self-delusions. CRAZY self-delusions as to the type of person I was. I once thought I was cool. See… told ya it was crazy.

When I was a kid… there was this guy I went to school with. People used to talk about how his clothes were so old… and they were. One day his pants ripped in class… and everyone laughed…

He looked so embarrassed. I didn’t understand till much later that his pants probably ripped because they were so old. He couldn’t afford to buy new stuff… He wore it till it absolutely wore out. They were probably hand-me-downs many times over.

That didn’t change the fact that he was a person. He never had many friends. Everyone thought he as strange. The friends he had were pretty much like him… strange. Or so I thought.

In High school… when classes get harder and good grades become harder to come by… this guy was holding steady. He was really smart. I was assigned to a research assignment with him. It took a couple of days... but he opened up and he was just like me.
I just needed to look a little harder to see it. His name was Shawn.
He wasn’t really popular. But he was real. God made him. Just like he made me.
Think of someone you really don’t care for. If they were to walk into church… would you be happy?

Would you encourage them?

Would I? I wonder…

Would it be hard? Probably. Would I…..?????

Hebrews 10: 23Let us hold fast the confession of our hope without wavering, for He who promised is faithful;
24and let us consider how to stimulate one another to love and good deeds,


Well there’s my answer. I have to.

Is it for me to say anything about anyone other than to encourage them in a loving manner? No.

Think about people like pictures… you flip through God’s pictures… Do we see what God was thinking when he made that picture? Do we see why he cares about it? Do we want to do what we can to help God preserve it?

Surrender.

I surrender. Have you ever said those words?

To surrender means to yield (something) to the possession or power of another. It is either demanded of you and you give it freely, or it is given up by force.

Whatever the motivation… it means you lose.

There was a mass surrender of German Troops to the 347th Infantry Regiment on May 6, 1945. That was the day before the unconditional surrender of all German forces was signed on May 7th. The day before…

They knew it was over. Sometimes you just know it’s over. You play a game with someone that is better than you at the game… or maybe you just make a mistake and it really costs you in the long run. And then you are at a point where you think, ‘I’ve had it. There’s no way out of this.’

It’s a bad feeling. When you know you are not going to win. Don’t you always want to win? Sure.

Being beaten is one thing… but to surrender carries the understanding that you could postpone your defeat, but there’s no point… it’s over. So you give in to the inevitable conclusion.

So in effect you are saying to your opponent, “Look. I’m beat. I could delay this… but allow me to bow to your superior ability or position.”

Surrender also does something else. Something special. Surrender engenders peace.
It takes a conflict situation and brings about unity. Maybe it is rather begrudgingly… but the conflict is taken away.

If it is accepted fully. Sometimes it’s not. Sometimes compromises are made. Remember Pharaoh. (we’re doing Moses this year in VBS). Pharaoh made compromises, didn’t he? He was a master at compromises. Pharaoh was beaten. Over and over and over again.

When Pharaoh wanted Moses to go out and make supplication for him before God, and Moses said he had to go 3 days journey into the wilderness… Pharaoh said:
Well, okay… but… Don’t go too far…
Well, okay… but… only the men…
Well, okay… but… leave your flocks and herds behind…
Compromise, compromise, compromise.

That’s why unconditional surrender is so handy. You either surrender or we will wipe you out. Your choice.

Pharaoh was beat. In fact, he was beat several times over. He just refused to believe it. It’s funny how we will submit to ANY terms rather than yield to complete submission… we want some power… no matter what it is.

James tells us to Submit. To God.

It’s a surrender. An unconditional surrender. Anything less is not Submitting. It is holding back what you are unwilling to give up.

You wake up and your house is burning down… you are going to lose that house. If you run back in for something it is because you feel that you are not willing to let it go. What would you run back in for? Jewelry? Photos? T.V.?

Green Lantern Comics? ---- oh… wait… I’m thinking… hang on… (kidding)

You are gonna lose your house. You are surrendering it to the fire. You are powerless to stop it. Do you stay and fight against the inevitable or do you give up and live another day to build a new house?

Your life is up for grabs… a battle is being fought and you are the prize. Before the end comes… you can say, “Okay… I yield. To you.”

Who is the “You”? Is it God?

Romans 8: 6For the mind set on the flesh is death, but the mind set on the Spirit is life and peace,
7because the mind set on the flesh is hostile toward God; for it does not subject itself to the law of God, for it is not even able to do so,
8and those who are in the flesh cannot please God.

Right now… if you need to… Just give up.
Submit to God.

Time is of the Essence
It is. Extremely. The phrase is popular in contractual language meaning that the specified time in the contract is mandatory. It implies that, “I’m really serious about this time thing…”.

How serious? How about grounds for negating the contract…?

Time is of the essence. That just SOUNDS serious. Say it. It sounds like something a protagonist might say in a movie when things are starting to get really good!

The plan we’re attempting to execute is gonna have to fall within a certain timeframe. Or we’re in trouble.

In our Christian lives… time is of the essence. I used to work in a morgue.

Take my word for it. Time is of the essence. I used to look at the toe tags and think… I wonder if they were ready for what happened yesterday?

I thought about myself… and I ultimately came to the conclusion that I didn’t have yesterday. It was gone. I don’t have tomorrow. Just a little consideration for tomorrow will bring you to the inescapable conclusion that tomorrow is just about as abstract a thought as you can have. Tomorrow never gets here. It never comes into existence.

It’s always today.

That’s what you have. Today.

That’s the time that is essential. What you do today is infinitely more important than what you did yesterday… I don’t care what you did yesterday. Unless you bought me a present then I want to know what it is (I just put that in to see if you were still reading…). But seriously, what you did yesterday… forget it. What you do today… right now is what’s important.

What you’re gonna do tomorrow? Forget it! Well maybe not forget it… but don’t place an importance on it that is equal to or greater than today. (man this is good advice… I should probably take it for myself).

Now… here we go. Ready?

How we spend our time is of the upmost importance. It easily defines who we are. It is a major source of our identity. Some people’s lives are their jobs. They eat, sleep, and tweet their careers. For some… its hobbies. For others: video games, children, charity work, an online life, etc.

We are locked in a cell our whole lives… it is a 24hour/day cell. There’s no lock on the door because there’s no door. There is no escape. We are bound to that time limit.

One day… you will give an account of how you spent your time on earth.
We are accountable to how we spend our time. What we say. What we do. What we think.

How we spend our time is gonna determine how we spend our Eternity.

2 Corinthians 6 begins with these words…

1And working together with Him, we also urge you not to receive the grace of God in vain--

2for He says,
"AT THE ACCEPTABLE TIME I LISTENED TO YOU,
AND ON THE DAY OF SALVATION I HELPED YOU."
Behold, now is "THE ACCEPTABLE TIME," behold, now is "THE DAY OF SALVATION"—

Now is the time to Obey the gospel.

Now is the time to rededicate your life.

Now is the time to let go of all excuses that hold us back.

Now is the time to find what it is that is keeping us from being closer to God than we are right now..

There is no other time. Only this time. Right now. That is why it is: of the essence.

The Silent Invasion

You live in your house.
Your whole family does.
You have a way you do things.
Your family does too...
And you do it that way because... that's just the way it’s done. It seems like it’s been this way forever…
For example. You have a certain time you set aside to eat. To sleep. to watch tv.
You have your own space. You have places where you come together with your family. you have certain freedoms and certain responsibilities.
In your house. Right?
You come home one day…
There's a guy in your house.
Wait...
He's not supposed to be there. Where did he come from? He hasn't ever been here before.
He's in your house!... like he deserves to be there. He's acting completely natural.
You speak. "Who are you? What are you doing here?"

He doesn’t even look up before responding… “Don’t worry about who I am. You’ll get used to me soon… I’ll be showing up from time to time… maybe once a month… every two months. Sometimes… I’ll stay for an entire month… whatever. When I show up… you’ll sleep in the back yard… don’t come in here… when I’m here, you sleep outside.”
What would you say to this person?
What would you do?
This is the time of the reading where you weigh your options… You know you need to do something. But… you are just floored that this is happening? Are you on Candid Camera? No… no one is jumping out of the shadows yelling, “Gotcha!”. Are you ready with your decision on what to do? Good. *INSERT OBVIOUS ANSWER HERE*
So what you are saying is that if something came into your life… and you didn’t like it… you’d do whatever you could ( if you could do something about it) to make it go away. To get things back to normal. To make your life right. Correct?
Well, then we agree. If that guy’s in your house when you get home… call the cops. Or Terminex. Either way… he’ll leave.
Sometimes we let things in our lives that get in the way of our walk with God. We don’t even know how they got there. We don’t know how long they’ve been there, sometimes. We just notice, one day, that it’s there. And it’s wrong. Regardless of what we once thought of this… now we see it for what it is.
It’s trash, basically. If it takes us even a step away from God… it’s trash. Throw it away.
Now let’s meet the players in our little analogy today.
Your house represents your Christian life.
You represent your knowledge and understanding of God’s word and His will for your life.
The man in your house represents anything in your Christian life that doesn’t belong. If it doesn’t belong in your Christian life… it doesn’t belong in your work life, your spare-time life, your waiting-in-line-at-the-store life, etc… cause they are all the same life anyway.
The cops represent your will. They represent the power you have over your own mind. When I quit smoking… my mind was the battleground where that fight was won. It wasn’t anything physical. Make no mistake… if you have control of your own mind… you are a powerful person. And if you love the Lord your God with all your mind… You are a powerful soldier in the Lord’s Army.
Proverbs 16:
1The plans of the heart belong to man,
But the answer of the tongue is from the LORD.
2All the ways of a man are clean in his own sight,
But the LORD weighs the motives.
3Commit your works to the LORD
And your plans will be established.

That's the Plan...

Let’s talk about what makes a good plan.
Why good plans fail.
What characteristics formulate bad plans.
We are constantly making plans. Even if they are plans for the day. Grocery lists are plans!

My plan used to be for song nights was to NOT take requests cause there was a good chance I wouldn’t know it. But now I’ve got this little program that assigns the tones for me and I can learn the song… and most of the time the songs are on YouTube… now I take requests… if I don’t know them I’ll work it into my hectic social calendar and learn it for the next song service.
That’s one of my plans.

And when people ask me what my plans are for the kids for the summer I know what they are asking me… but really what my primary plan is for the kids to be closer to God at the end of the summer than right now. That’s the overall plan… but that’s a plan that we are all involved in.

The Legislators of our country put laws into motion formulating a future plan for our country. Our state. Our county. Plans for the world that our children will inherit from us.

When we develop a plan, we need an understanding of the topic we are developing a plan for. Is it easy to make up a grocery list at work? No. You’re not at home to see what you need.

The mother of the sons of Zebeedee had a plan to secure a position for her two sons, james and john. But she lacked the knowledge to formulate a good plan. In actuality she wasn’t thinking in spiritual terms but rather in physical… She wanted her sons close to Jesus… that would secure their position. Physical location was what she desired for them. IN Matthew 20:20-23 we have the story of how her request was met. Of how her plan turned out. Read.

When they answered WE CAN to the question of can you drink the cup that I am going to drink? James probably had no idea that he was in fact going to. It is recorded in Acts 12 that Herod had him put to death with the sword.

God had a plan to test Abraham. In Genesis 22:9 we find the story of God’s request that Abraham offer Isaac as a burnt offering. And of course Abraham did as the Lord requested, just short of slaying his son with a knife before the angel of the Lord stopped him. This was God’s plan to see if Abraham would really go so far, in attempting to please Him, even in killing his only son. Would he go that far? God was pleased with the answer.
But we can also see that there is another aspect to God’s plan. God is all-knowing. We hold this truth among the great truths… but if you can imagine what that’s like, think about it for a moment.

What if I was to tell you who was going to win the championship in one sport or another next year? What if I was to tell you what your child was going to grow up to be? When you were going to die. How you were going to die. Would it affect the plans we make??

Ponder that for a moment and we’ll come back to the first two considerations.
But the matter concerning death… many people make plans for their own deaths. They don’t want to be a burden to their family when they’re gone. These are age-specific plans generally… usually middle age people are just planning to get older. What will life be like when I’m older??? Those sorts of things. But eventually there will be plans laid out for what is to occur after the aging person is gone. This is a very responsible thing to do.
When you go to the doctor, and you fill out all that information… that’s so they can formulate a plan for their treatment of you. And again they need INFORMATION to do this.
Plans for when we die.

Jesus’s death.

The plan of salvation was wholly dependent upon how Jesus met his death.


Why do plans fail? WE have already touched on a few reason why plans fail. We lack the knowledge to put a solid plan together. If a plan involved more than one person, it may lack cooperation for one reason or another. Perhaps there is not a consensus among those involved that it is a good plan. That may affect people’s respective actions in the plan and it may fail due to lack of enthusiasm.

We make plans for the church at the men’s business meetings. If you have never been to one, you are unaware of how carefully, the decisions that are made are planned out. And it is not just the big things that will get attention. I mean the smallest things… the smallest aspects of service or concerning an activity or supplies for the church. The men that meet for the business meetings are taking it seriously. That’s the beginning of plans… And the more men we have the greater the knowledge base we can have. So do you see how, by that rationale---and I think It is valid--- that the more men we have, the better the plans we will make?

We all have individual plans.


We have plans for our families.
Revival.
VBS.

In satan's plan of condemnation, his infinite jealousy and perfect deceit meld into a justification for sinful man.
It leaves no one out.
It is ready when we are.
It fits our time. Our lifestyle. Our calendar. As long as we allow it to come between us and God.
It will shackle us to the darkness in Hell.

It is designed to exploit any and all weaknesses you may have. Satan… is real. And he’s very subtle. He’ll say, oh its okay… to do this or that… One time someone told me that it would be okay to miss a church service and get a group of people together to play paintball. There’ll be no one there…

I wish you could have seen me 12 years ago. The beginning monologue to my #10 on my top ten favorite movies has a line in it… the person says about something very insignificant… “You see that? That was nothing… but that’s how it always begins… very small.”

One little thing can set you off course… will it? I don’t’ know… but I just know it can… maybe it happens down the road based on decisions we make now. the rudder of a ship in James chapter 3… remember it.



In God’s plan of Salvation his Infinite Justice and Perfect Love meld into the solution for sinful men.
It leaves no one out.
Its ready when we are.
It fits our time, our lifestyle, our calendars—as long as these things are in accordance with God.
It will take us home to Heaven.

VBS!

starts next week... bring your friends!

The story of Noah...

and next year...

DRAMA: MOSES!