The Practice of Prayer (Luke 11:1-13)

This morning we’re moving into the part of our series on discipleship in which we begin talking about discipleship practices.  For the past three weeks, we’ve been taking an overview of what this spiritual journey we’re on looks like.  And depending on where you are on that journey, things will look slightly different.  Perhaps you’re still wrestling with who exactly Jesus is.  Or maybe you’re still trying to wrap your head around this religion known as Christianity.  Maybe you recently made a decision to follow Jesus, making him your Lord and savior.  Or maybe you’re an “old pro,” with 20, 30, or more years of church under your belt.  Where ever you may be, there’s always room to grow.

And I hope that you’ve had the opportunity over the past three weeks to start to narrow down where you land on that journey.

The next part of this series is going to focus on several practices – or habits or rhythms – that help us progress along this journey.  To be a disciple means more than just going to church once a week and calling yourself a Christian.  A few weeks back I defined disciple as a student, one who is learning a certain way of life.  And so there’s a sense that, no matter how long we’ve been doing something, discipleship never ends.

If growing and progressing along this spiritual path is something you’re interested in doing, then these next few weeks will make you salivate.  But I warn you, growth won’t happen if all you do is show up every week and listen to a compelling sermon from Pastor Henry or Amy and a mediocre sermon from me; you have to be willing to be challenged and shaped, to take some initiative on your own outside of church…

Lucky for us the first practice we’re looking at, our topic for today, is prayer.

Let’s start by reading our text…

READ 11:1-13

I think it’s safe to say that prayer is something that virtually everyone in America – perhaps even the world – is familiar with.  Granted, not everyone has the same understanding of prayer, but we’re all familiar with the concept.

Speaking for myself, I have a tendency to think of prayer as a bit like wishful thinking.  That’s not Biblical, but that’s how I often treat it.  I’m praying that I pass my finals next week, or that Mishaela will relent and allow us to go out for lunch after church today.

Filed under: Bible Study, Christian Living, Faith, Ministry, Preaching, Sermon, Theology, Worship , Prayer

Paul the Searcher (Gal. 1:11-17)

Well I’m kicking off a new series here at Monroe.  In the ancient church, the time right after Easter was intended to be a time of spiritual growth; a time to learn more about what it means to be a disciple of Jesus and what the life of a disciple looks like.  I don’t think we were intentionally following tradition, but today we are beginning a series on discipleship.

Let me give you a little heads up on what to expect over the next several weeks…

The first three weeks of this series are going to focus on seven points along the discipleship journey.  These are places that most of us have been to before, and all of us are at one of these places right now.  When you came in today, you should have received a “Your Spiritual Journey Guide.”  In this little booklet, you’ll find a list of these seven spiritual places.  This is intended to be a guide to help you discover where you are on your journey.  What we don’t want, is for someone to look at this and become discouraged because they’re not further down the line.  This does not tell you how good a Christian you are; this helps you recognize what areas you can work on and where you’re going…it’s like a spiritual map.

Pastors Henry, Amy, and myself are going to leads us as we look at the life of Paul and gain a better idea of where we as individuals may be through the example of Paul’s life.

And then after that, we”ll spend a few weeks looking at what are called “spiritual disciplines.”  These are tools that we can use to help ourselves and each other move from one place to the next and to the next.

So if we’re talking about discipleship, there’s something that we absolutely must do before we can very far into this conversation.  We need to define exactly what discipleship is.

Discipleship is the process of being or becoming a disciple.  That makes perfect sense, right?  Ya, right…

So what’s a disciple then?

Filed under: Bible Study, Christian Living, Faith, Preaching, Sermon, Theology

“The Anti-Triumphal Entry” (Luke 19:28-44)

So, today is Palm Sunday.  This is the day in which, traditionally, we celebrate Jesus’ final arrival in Jerusalem.  And that’s important because – well – Jesus had to actually get to Jerusalem in order to do what he was born to do: “to save God’s people from their sins.”

This is also the beginning of what we call “Passion Week.”  This was the final week of Jesus’ earthly ministry, the week he would be arrested, tried, tortured, and crucified.  But first he had to get to Jerusalem.

When I was growing up, my church made a big deal about Palm Sunday.  It was this celebration – almost as big as Easter Sunday (which is next week).  The church service would start with everyone singing at the top of their lungs, the big pipe organ playing as loud as it could, and as the congregation was singing, all the kids would walk down the aisle waving palm branches and lay them down on the steps at the front of the sanctuary.

It was a great day!  In California this time of the year, the sun is out, it’s warm, and everyone’s in a good mood…

When it was time for the sermon we would all be reminded about how Jesus was king and he came to save the world.  The minister would talk about the celebration of the people as they shouted, “Hosanna!  Glory to God in the highest!“

Filed under: Bible Study, Christianity, Church, Preaching, Sermon

Sermon on Col. 2:16-23 (“Freedom From the Rules”)

We’re continuing our series on the book The Shack.  Someone asked me last week “What angle are you taking?  What’s your perspective with The Shack?”  I assured this person – just as I’m assuring all of you now – that although this is a series based on the book, we’re not preaching the book.  The Shack brings up a number of themes that most of us have wrestled with.  We’re using The Shack has a starting point for looking at what the Bible says about some of these themes.

Today, we’re bouncing off a rather interesting conversation Mack – the main character – had with God.  At one point in the story, Mack and God get into a conversation about expectations.  Like we all have, Mack asks, “What do you expect of me?”  God responds by asking, “Why do you think we came up with the Ten Commandments?”  What ensues is several pages dealing with the relationship between Law and gospel.

This morning we’re going to take a look at what the book of Colossians has to say about this relationship.  So turn with me to Colossians chapter 2…

READ COL. 2:16-23

Let me give you a little bit of context to our passage…

The book of Colossians was written by the apostle Paul while he was in prison.  He spent a lot of time in prison – he was in and out for most of his life.  We don’t which bout this was, but we know he was in prison.  And while he was in prison, he got word that something wasn’t right with the church of Colossae.  Colossae was in Asia Minor – present-day Turkey.  So Paul receives word that there was a problem in the Colossian church and he decides to write a letter to try to fix things.

Now we don’t know exactly what that problem was.  Some of the smart people who study this stuff sometimes talk about the “Colossian Heresy,” but in reality, we just don’t know what was happening.  But our text gives us the best idea out any other part of Colossians.

Now something else that is worth noting about this book, is that Jesus is a big deal in Colossians.  I know, Jesus is a big deal no matter what book you’re looking at – but in Colossians, he comes up a lot.  And since we know that Paul was addressing a problem – a “philosophy” – as he refers to it in this letter, it’s probably pretty safe to say that it had something to do with Jesus…

So what exactly was this problem that Paul was addressing?  We get a hint of it in verse 16…

READ VERSE 16

Now I’m going to assume that we’re all fairly familiar with “religious festivals” and “Sabbath days” – as concepts, as ideas, we at least have some understanding of what that’s referring to.  But these “New Moon celebrations” – what are those all about?  The Bible does talk about “New Moon celebrations” or feasts, just not very often.  Despite what it may sound like, the “New Moon” thing was actually a Jewish feast – it was part of the religious practices of Judaism.

Filed under: Bible Study, Christian Living, Christianity, Church, Culture, Ministry, Preaching, Sermon, Theology

Sermon on Genesis 1:26-31 (“In His Image”)

This is the manuscript of the sermon for my assigned text candidacy sermon.  Happy reading…

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So at this point we’re kind of in-between series; we just finished talking about our church vision for 2009, and in a couple weeks we’re going to start looking at some of the issues raised in the book The Shack.

As many of you know I intend to graduate this year from Calvin Seminary and become a full-fledged minister.  But in order to get that point, there are a few things that I need to get out of the way.  Today is one of those things.  I’ve been assigned a passage that I needed to prepare a sermon on and preach, and since we’re in-between topics, we figured this would be a good time for me to get this done without breaking things up too much.

The text we’re looking at today comes from Genesis 1…

READ GENESIS 1:26-31

Before we get too far into the text, I want to “clear the air” about a few things.  This is a popular passage.  And because of its popularity, it’s a little tough to preach without boring everyone to sleep.

But this passage has also been used in a lot of different ways – some good, some not-so-good. For example: this passage has been used to prove that evolution is wrong.  It’s been used to argue that birth control is wrong.  It’s been used to argue that driving huge SUV’s that run on diesel and put out enormous amounts of CO2 is humanity’s God-given prerogative.  This passage has been used as a starting point for explaining what it means to be “created in God’s image.”  Within the past couple years, this passage has also been used defend the Christian environmentalist movement – or Creation Care as it’s sometimes called.

What I want to do this morning is try to avoid many of the typical interpretations and applications and present this passage in a more balanced way.  While it’s possible to go off in a variety of different directions with these verses, I want to stick to our text as much as possible and trust that, over time, many of the questions and issues this text raises will be answered for you.

Filed under: Bible Study, Christian Living, Church, Ministry, Preaching, Sermon, Theology